Linda Gijsen
Linda studied English Language and Literature at the University of Nijmegen and got her teaching degree at the Radboud Teachers Academy. After her studies, she taught English at several secondary and vocational schools and worked as a teacher educator of English and German at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Tilburg. Next to her job in the Research Group Multilingualism and Education, she also works as a senior teacher at the Instituut Archimedes, the institute for teacher education at the HU University of Applied Sciences. She finalized her PhD on Task engagement in virtual pedagogical lingua franca communication at Utrecht University in 2021.
"Communicative competence in a foreign language as a means to communicate, to learn and to function in an international, intercultural and multilingual society."
Linda is interested in how children and youngsters learn foreign languages and what language teachers can do to mentor their students in pedagogically sound ways in contemporary and multilingual classrooms. At the moment, she supervises research projects on meaningful foreign language education and manages the SPRONG Meertaligheid project. She also carries out research on translanguaging in a large national research project on multilingualism in vmbo-education.
Among other things Linda contributed to a podcast by TaalGewoonDoen, she wrote a book about her PhD-research named Task engagement in virtual pedagogical lingua franca communication which she presented at the international Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching conference in Innsbruck. You can find more information on this content at the bottom of this webpage under 'Documents and links'.
Expertises:
- (ongoing) Foreign language teacher education
- Communicative language teaching (CLT) and engaged language teaching
- The use of technology in and beyond the foreign language classroom
- International education for multilingual newcomers
