Noelia Martinez Alfaro

I am Spanish, but I have grown in a bilingual region, so I speak Spanish and Galician as my mother tongues. Moreover, I studied Applied Languages with Qualified Teacher Status in Portsmouth, so I have full competence in English. My main languages of study alongside English were Spanish, German and French. After my degree I did a masters in Conference Interpreting, in which my main languages of work were Portuguese, English and Spanish.

With regards to teaching, I have experience of giving individual lessons and also in small groups. I worked as a teacher of English for foreigners, Spanish for foreigners, piano, accordeon and musical language. Additionally, I studied education within my degree, so I did my placement in some Secondary Schools in England, teaching French and Spanish.

I am a language passionate. Regarding languages, I love culture, and grammar teaching. Those are my main subjects of research. When I was doing my placement, I learned how to use a lot of cultural references so that students could be more motivated to learn the new language. I also love grammar, and I strongly believe that it does not have to be difficult or boring, and because of this I did my final dissertation on grammar teaching in the UK.
In terms of my methodology, during my experience I learned that each student is different and I found this amazing. This is because not everyone thinks in the same manner, and they do not find the logic in the same way. This is why I think that it is vital for a teacher to be resilient and patient, because everyone is different and we have to learn how to work with all the differences. Therefore I adapt my teaching to each student's needs, pace, abilities, bearing always in mind their development and comfort, so that they are able to thrive in their studies.