María José de la Fuente

Professor of Spanish

Affiliated faculty of the GW Alliance for a Sustainable Future

Contact:

Email: María José de la Fuente

Office Phone: (202) 994-1517

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Dr. María José de la Fuente is a Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics, and affiliated faculty of the GW Alliance for a Sustainable Future. Her general area of research is Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA), specifically the role of pedagogical tasks in second language learning and the impact of the first language on the development of a second. She is also involved in the field of Education for Sustainable Development, where she researches sustainability case studies and problem-based pedagogy for foreign language learning. The results of her research in these areas have been published in refereed journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), and Language Teaching Research. She is the author of the book Education for Sustainable Development in Foreign Language Learning: Content-Based Instruction in College-Level Curricula. Routledge. She has also authored three Spanish textbooks: Gente (LingroLearning), Puntos de encuentro: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Advanced Spanish (Cognella Publishers), and the most recent Desarrollo Sostenible en América Latina: Developing Sustainability Literacy in Spanish (Cognella Publishers). She was the recipient of a 2008 Bender Teaching Award and is a founding member of the GW Academy of Distinguished Teachers.

Publications

2025. de la Fuente, M.J. Desarrollo Sostenible en América Latina: Developing Sustainability Literacy in Spanish (Cognella Publishers).
2021. de la Fuente, M.J. Education for Sustainable Development in Foreign Language Learning: Content-Based Instruction in College-Level Curricula (1st ed.). Routledge.
2020. de la Fuente, M. J. & C. Goldenberg. Understanding the role of the first language (L1) in Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA): effects of using a principled approach to L1 in the foreign language classroom. Language Teaching Research.
2020. Gente: a task-based approach to learning Spanish, 4th edition. Pearson Higher Education.
2018. Stepping out of the language box: connecting college Spanish to sustainability. In C. Melin (Ed.). Foreign Language Teaching and the Environment: Theory, Curricula, and Institutional Structures. MLA Series Teaching Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.
2017. Puntos de encuentro: a cross-cultural approach to advanced Spanish. 2nd Edition. Cognella Academic Publishing.
2015. Explicit corrective feedback and computer-based, form-focused instruction: The role of the first language in promoting awareness of second language forms. In Baralt, M., Cerezo, L. & Leow, R. (Eds.) Technology and Second/Foreign Language Learning: A Psycholinguistic and Psychocognitive Approach (Chapter 7). De Gruyter Mouton.
2013. Puntos de encuentro: a cross-cultural approach to advanced Spanish. Cognella Academic Publishing.
2012. "Learners’ attention to input during focus on form listening tasks: an empirical study on the role of mobile technology in the second language classroom". Computer Assisted Language Learning, Vol. 26.
2012. Gente, 3rd edition. Pearson Higher Education.
2009. “The role of pedagogical tasks and focus on form on acquisition of discourse markers by advanced language learners”. In Campos, H. Lardiere, D., and Leow, R. (Eds.) Little Words: Their History, Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Acquisition. Georgetown University Press.
2008. "What's the Problem? L2 Learners' Use of L1 During Consciousness-Raising, Form-Focused Tasks" In The Modern Language Journal, vol. 92, 1
2006. 2006. Classroom L2 vocabulary acquisition: Investigating the role of pedagogical tasks and form-focused instruction. In Language Teaching Research, 10(3), pp. 263-295.