Dr Maria E. Rodriguez Gil

Lecturer in English Language Department of Modern Philology, Translation and Interpretation (DFMTI) Muy home page



Research specialisation

I am interested in two main research areas. I have worked mainly on the eighteenth-century grammatical tradition, focusing on (i) individual authors like the first female grammarian A. Fisher (my PhD dissertation topic); (ii) English grammar-writers in general and their works at different levels (for example content, writing purposes, target audience, editions); and (iii) the relationship between prescriptivism and descriptivism. The relevant project I have undertaken in this field is the Eighteenth Century English Grammars database (ECEG), a new online comprehensive database which contains annotated bibliographic and biographical information of grammars of the English language (ca.330 items) as well as of their writers (ca. 280 authors). The ECEG-database is freely available as a digital database for research and educational purposes.

I also work on the history of the teaching of English, especially in the Late Modern English period, both to native speakers and to Spaniards. I have taught some postgraduate courses on the teaching of English grammar during the eighteenth century, and have presented some conferences on female education, teaching techniques and English grammars written for Spanish native speakers. This interest expands to current issues related to the teaching of foreign languages, such as second/foreign language acquisition, e-learning, the use of new (inter)active methodologies as well as technologies in the classroom.



Projects and research groups

IATEXT: Research Institute of Text Analysis and Applications Variación y Cambio Lingüístico en Ingles – VARLING (Linguistic Variation and Change in English)