Dr. Alfredo Ferreira

I’m a lecturer in the science stream of the Academic English Program at UBC Vantage College. I have a broad interest in academic literacy development in content-integrated English language instruction at the university level. My research in educational linguistics focuses on the development of apprentice scholars’ capacities for varying levels of abstraction when they recontextualize disciplinary knowledge. My teaching and research are informed by an interdisciplinary perspective integrating Vygotsky’s sociocultural psychology and Halliday’s theory of language as a socially-evolved resource for making meaning. This approach encourages explicit instruction – based on principled, evidence-based research – of the links between rhetorical aims, wording, and knowledge construction in and across academic disciplines.

Research Interests

Academic literacy development; content-integrated English language instruction at the university level; the development of abstraction in apprentice scholars’ capacities recontextualization of disciplinary knowledge