Columbia SPPO

José Plácido Ruiz-Campillo

Senior Lecturer in Language

José P. Ruiz-Campillo has a Ph.D. in Spanish Language and a Master's in Spanish as a Foreign Language from the Universidad de Granada (Spain).  He has taught Spanish at the Centro de Lenguas Modernas of the Universidad de Granada (1991-2007), and as a collaborating professor at the Instituto Cervantes in Munich (2008). In addition, he is regularly invited as a guest professor in the Master’s programs at the Universidad de Granada, Universidad de Salamanca, Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, and Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo.  He has also taught several continuing education courses for Spanish teachers in some of the Institutos Cervantes and in other academic institutions in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom.

He is the author of numerous articles and essays about the teaching of grammar and cognitive linguistics, and coauthor of the Spanish textbooks Abanico (Difusión, 1995) and Ventilador (Difusión, 2006), as well as Gramática Básica del Estudiante de Español (Difusión, 2005) and the teaching manual Pronombres personales en la Gramática básica del estudiante de español (Difusión, 2008).

His main interest is in updating the methods of Spanish grammar teaching to a cognitive-operational focus.  One example of this interest that stands out is his doctoral thesis, titled La enseñanza significativa del sistema verbal: un modelo operativo, where he developed a map of the Spanish verb system based on spatial values instead of temporal values, useful as an educational tool in the classroom.  Above all of these technical interests, his teaching philosophy is simple: to learn is to enjoy. 

Office: Casa Hispánica 409
E-mail: jr2907@columbia.edu
Telephone: (212) 854-7299
Fax: (212) 854-5322