Current Students: MA in Applied Linguistics/Teaching English as a Second Language
Seda Acikara has a BA in English Language Teaching from Middle East Technical University, Ankara (Turkey). She has worked as a Comenius Assistant for a year in Italy and as a full-time instructor at Bilkent University School of English Language, Ankara for 3 years. She holds a Cambridge ICELT (In-Service Certificate in English Language Teaching) certificate. Currently, she is pursuing her MA degree in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) and working as a graduate teaching assistant. Her research interests are motivation in second language learning, NNESTs, first and second language pragmatics.
Allison Clark is a Texas Native with a passion for teaching and research. She is currently in her second year of her MA in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). Her research interests include trial corpus study and linguistic advocating for changes in the law. She enjoys pursuing her education while maintaining involvement at NAU as the president of the Graduate English Organization, the representative for her program in the Graduate Student Association of Applied Linguistics, and the Vice President of University Affairs in the Graduate Student Government.
Andrew Dennis is a first-year graduate student in the MA in AL/TESL program in the College of Arts & Letters. He currently serves as the secretary for the Graduate English Organization (GEO) and is the first-year MA/TESL student representative for the Graduate Student Association of Applied Linguistics (GSAAL). Andrew teaches “Critical Reading & Writing” in the University Writing Program at NAU and serves as a writing assistant in the University Writing Commons. Andrew plans to pursue a career teaching English in Europe with hopes of obtaining a PhD in the field of Second Language Acquisition.
Rui “Sherman” Hu is working on his MA in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). He pursued his first master’s degree at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He teaches Chinese in the Department of Global Languages and Cultures. He is interested in the field of Applied Linguistics, especially corpus linguistics, and second language acquisition. Learning new languages is one of my hobbies. He has native proficiency in Chinese and English, can also speak French, and is learning Spanish.
Kiara Gissel Peña Ibarra is in the accelerated BA-MA program. She will graduate with her BSEd in Secondary English Education and certificates in Literature and Linguistics in May 2020. She will also graduate with her MA in TESL in May 2021. Kiara wants to be a secondary school teacher because she is extremely passionate about education, literature, and writing. She decided to also earn her (accelerated) MA so she can help more students learn English as a language, and its literature. She looks forward to her research and studies in the field of linguistics and teaching English.