FERNANDO MONCADA received his Phd in Linguistics from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso in 2016. His research has been focused on the description and processing of coherence relations in specialized contexts. He has published several scientific research articles both in national and international journals. He is currently conducting his postdoctoral research, which aims at measuring the effects of causal structures of texts on students’ deep comprehension and, eventually, on learning from text.  He is also co-leading a project granted by the The National Research and Development Agency (ANID), which attempts to build an automatic tool to measure Chilean school textbooks based on psycholinguistic evidence. From 2019 he teaches undergraduate courses at Universidad del Bío-Bío.

“How to assess reading comprehension: Insights from the cognitive approach to coherence relations”

SANDRA MOLINA is an academic from Bio Bio University, Chillan, Chile, where she studied to become a Profesor de Estado en Ingles. After she graduated, she taught English to young learners and was awarded with an internship in Sidney, Australia. She has a MG in Education. She has taught Phonetics, English Language, Didactics and Evaluation, Approach to the School system, Learning Environments. She has done teacher training in Didactics during winter and summer retreats, organized by Mineduc. She has also taught Spanish as a foreign language to american students belonging to the program “Español para extranjeros”.

Her research focus has been on Didactics: reading and writing abilties, scaffolding techniques, communicative approach in L2.

“Integrating Metacognition in Didactics Sequences”

MICHAEL WITBECK is an educator and writer who has lived and worked in various parts of the world including Japan, Spain, Yemen, Cyprus, and Turkey. Born in Utah, he currently lives in Oregon, where he worked for many years at Oregon State University. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Utah and a TEFL degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. His TEFL presentations and publications have focused on writing instruction, proficiency assessment and the use of technology in language teaching. He has published several books including Popayán Diary, impressions from a three-month stay in a mountain town in Columbia; Tibet Comes to Thailand, a record of a season spent teaching English to Tibetan monks on the grounds of a Thai monastery; and The Last Bookshelf, a collection of essays on selected novels from world literature. His weblog, Pandemic Diary, can be found at afterthepurge.net.

“Meaningful Writing/Meaningful Response”

EVE CHAMBERS is a former Director of the English Language Institute at Oregon State University, where she taught ESL for many years. She has done teacher training in the U.S. (SEP/COMEXUS Workshops for Mexican English teachers) and in Mexico, Colombia, Turkey, Cyprus and Taiwan. She has an M.A. in Language Arts from Middlebury College and has taught ESL/EFL in the U.S., Spain, and Thailand. She has also taught Spanish as a foreign language in the United States.

“Teaching Pronunciation: theory and sample exercises”

FLORENCIA CASANOVA is an English Language professor at the English Language Teaching Program - Universidad del Bio Bio. She has a Masters in Education from Oregon State University, USA. She is a visiting professor at Oregon State University and coordinator of the Study Abroad Program for Linfield University and Grand Valley State University. She is the coordinator of the Study Abroad Program at Universidad del Bio Bio whose focus is the teaching of Spanish by implementing a teaching model based on cultural and affective factors, and implications for language teaching. She is currently part of an international research project with Grand Valley State University that seeks to enhance webcam-based cultural and linguistic exchanges for English and Spanish L2 learners.

“The benefits of building rapport in language teaching”

CARLA TAPIA is a PhD candidate from Griffith University- Australia. She has a Master in Education with specialization in Early Childhood Education from Monash University – Australia, and she is an English Foreign Language teacher from Universidad del Bío Bío – Chile.

She is currently a Research Assistant and Teaching facilitator at Griffith University and Practicum Supervisor at Universidad del Bío Bío.

“The benefits of building rapport in language teaching”

GONZALO PÉREZ is a Senior Lecturer in English Language Teaching at London Metropolitan University, England, where he is also the course leader for the MA Teaching Languages (English) and the MA English Language Teaching (Distance Learning). He was awarded a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Southampton for his investigation of language ideologies in Chilean English language teaching programmes. Before moving to the UK, he worked as a lecturer in English phonology and applied linguistics at Universidad del Bío-Bío.

"Strategies to raise awareness of the cultural diversity of the English language in the classroom".

ELIZABETH QUINTRILEO is an academic at the Department of Arts and Letters – Universidad del Bío Bío, and a former visiting professor and Faculty member in the Department of Educational Specialties in the area of ESL and Bilingual Education at Northern Arizona University (NAU) - USA. She has also taught Multicultural Narrative Inquiry in the Masters in ESL and Bilingual Education at NAU. She has a Master and Doctor degree in linguistics from Universidad de Concepción – Chile, and completed her post-doctorate research on indigenous languages revitalization at NAU. Her research covers the area of Foreign and Second Language Teaching and the interdiscipline Computer Assisted Language Learning and its role in minority languages revitalization.

“Teaching English for the cultural value and revitalization of Indigenous Languages: A proposal for recovering Mapudungun”