carla.pattone@ucsb.edu
Phelps 5328
For twenty-five years, until 2008, Carla Pattone was a full-time professor at Liceo Linguistico in Pisa, Italy. Italian is her mother tongue, and she possesses near-native fluency in Spanish. While she was teaching in Pisa, She was chosen by the Italian Ministry of Education to be part of a teacher education program. This undertaking was organized by the Italian Department of Education in conjunction with the Italian Broadcasting Corporation (RAI TV). A film in which she taught Spanish and English, illustrated main features associated with foreign language acquisition (listening, speaking, reading).
After the film was broadcast by RAI TV, her on-camera performance and competence as an instructor were praised by a committee of experts in charge of educational TV. In addition to Italy, she lived in Argentina for ten years and also in Ecuador, Costa Rica and Mexico—each for one year. Having traveled extensively throughout Spain, Central and South America, she is acquainted with a variety of colloquialisms, linguistic and semantic nuances peculiar to these regions; for this reason, she has been chosen to teach “Italian for Spanish Speakers” at UCSB.
At the University of Rome, she received a master’s degree in Spanish Language and Literature. The subject of her thesis was based on poets belonging to “La Generación del 27” and “the poetry of Pedro Salinas.” She obtained post-graduate degrees at the Italian Department of Education in Firenze (concorso a cattedre), based on National Examination Results for Tenured position to teach Spanish and English grammar and literatures.
In 2005, she took a one-year sabbatical from Italian Baccalaureate and taught Spanish/Italian language and literature at Las Positas College (Livermore, CA) and at Contra Costa College (San Francisco, CA). Since 2009, she has taught all levels of Italian and Spanish at Santa Barbara City College. From 2015 to present, she has been teaching Italian 1, 2 and 3, and Italian for Spanish Speakers at UCSB.
In her free time, she Volunteers at Mosaico Africano (ONLUS), raising money for children schools in Botswana and to help women acquire a trade (San People of the Kalahari). She also travels to Europe and Africa, during her vacations, to visit her family.