Laura Acosta-Ortega

Biography

Dr Laura Acosta-Ortega is Associate Professor and Head of Modern Languages at Northeastern University London. She is also a lecturer on the MA in Teacher Training for Spanish as a Second Language at SDI International Hochschule München (Germany)

Before joining NU London, Laura worked at the University of Oxford, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and Universidad Europea de Madrid.

She holds a PhD in Translation and Language Sciences from Pompeu Fabra University (2019) and a Master’s degree in Teacher Training for Teachers of Spanish as a Second Language from the University of Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra University (2013).

Qualifications

PhD Translation and Language Sciences (Universitat Pompeu Fabra).

MA Teaching Spanish as a Second Language (Universitat de Barcelona)

BA Translation and Interpreting (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), Advance HE

Research

Dr Acosta-Ortega’s research focuses on Interactional Competence in second language acquisition — the ability to co-construct meaning in interaction and to adapt communicative resources to different contexts — and on the teaching, assessment, and feedback practices that develop these abilities in the classroom. Her work sits at the intersection of applied linguistics, discourse pedagogy, and language assessment, with a particular interest in how assessment design shape what learners develop in oral skills.

She is currently a member of RASiCORAL (2024–2029), a research project on situated feedback in oral discourse competence led by Universitat Pompeu Fabra and funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. She has participated in six externally funded research projects in Spain and the United Kingdom, including Inter-ECODAL (2021–2024, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation), which investigated digital feedback literacy in plurilingual learning contexts, and COMUN-ES (University of Oxford and University of Salamanca), which examined oral interaction in online language tutorials. Her doctoral research was conducted within the ECODAL project (2016–2020).

Articles

García-Balsas, M., & Acosta-Ortega, L. (2026). Discourse marking mechanisms in argumentative interaction: A study of debates in Spanish as an additional language. Spanish in Context. https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.25011.gar

Muñoz-Basols, J., Fuertes Gutiérrez, M., Strawbridge, T., & Acosta Ortega, L. (2025). Interactional patterns in the online language classroom: A quantitative analysis across proficiency levels and lesson types. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 38(7), 1488-1514 https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2023.2286536

Acosta-Ortega, L., & García-Balsas, M. (2023). Establecer criterios para evaluar la interacción oral: Desde la pedagogía de los géneros discursivos a la práctica en el aula. Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de Lenguas, 17(35), Article 35. https://doi.org/10.26378/rnlael1735549

Acosta-Ortega, L., & López Ferrero, C. (2022). Exponentes pragmático-discursivos en la interacción oral de español LE/L2. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 9(1), 81- 96. https://doi.org/10.1080/23247797.2022.2051847

Cañada Pujols, M. D., Acosta-Ortega, L., & Obis Monné, A. (2022). «Oui» como marcador interaccional: Usos y funciones en francés como lengua adicional. Çédille, revista de estudios franceses, (22), Article 22. https://doi.org/10.25145/j.cedille.2022.22.11

Acosta-Ortega, L. (2017). La reparación en la interacción oral de estudiantes de ELE: Comparación entre interacciones de práctica en el aula e interacciones en contextos de evaluación. Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.1515/soprag-2017-0018