laurafsoares

Laura Fontana-Soares is a second-year doctoral student at the University of Arizona in the Hispanic Linguistics program. She earned a BA in Portuguese and Spanish and a MA in Applied Linguistics from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. She has experience teaching Portuguese as a second language to undergraduate students, including as an instructor of Portuguese through the Fulbright FLTA program. Most of her experience teaching and researching is in the field of Portuguese as a welcoming language to adult refugees. She also volunteers as a program coordinator at the non-profit organization CIBAI Migrations (Italo-Brazilian Institute of Assistance and Instruction to Migrations). Laura's research interests are: teaching Portuguese as an additional language to adult refugees, Language Ideologies, and the use of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyze L2 textbooks. She is currently one of the coordinators of the Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics Working Group.