Maria Victoria Abad Rabat

Victoria was born and raised in Madrid, where she lived until she graduated from the Complutense University, with a Master’s Degree in the Teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language. She started her teaching career in France for a brief time, before moving to the United States. She joined the Center for Languages and Intercultural Communication, at Rice University, in 2014, and has been working since then in reshaping its courses on Spanish for the medical professions. Victoria’s work is integrated in a larger project from the Center, which focuses on creating innovative lessons that will make its students communicate and interact effectively with native speakers of their target language. Her materials are research-based and have been carefully designed and tested over the semesters at Rice. One of Victoria’s main goals is to have her students think critically about language use and spoken interaction.