Andy Alvarez, TESOL

Andy expects to graduate in December 2021 with his MA in English (TESOL) from San Francisco State University, where he previously completed his BA in Sociology. In addition to studying multiple foreign languages at SF State, Andy has spent more than 5 years offering free informal tutoring to EFL students from more than 30 nations. Andy’s love for language and culture have inspired him to travel to 30+ countries on 5 different continents; this love is reflected in his principal interests, which include cross-linguistic influences, foreign language acquisition, and speech training for EFL students.

Nariman Ayesh, TESOL

Nariman Ayesh is currently a graduate student, working as a tutor at Tutoring and Academic Support Center (TASC), SF State. As a proud Arabic-English bilingual practitioner, she enrolled at the College of San Mateo in 2014, where she majored in English and completed her associate degrees in English and Social Science; she transferred to SF State where she received a BA in English Literature in 2019. While she was a college student, she fell in love with research and got published through the Writers’ Project LABYRINTH, 2017. Nariman is still interested in research and writing as she is completing her MA in TESOL, with a strong interest in Written Corrective Feedback.

Greta Galliazzo Berger, Linguistics

Greta Galliazzo Berger is a graduate student and teaching assistant in the Linguistics Program at San Francisco State University. She was born and raised in Italy and she received her B.A. in Modern Languages from the University of Trento in 2018, specializing in English and French. Her major linguistics interests are computational linguistics and natural language processing, multilingualism and translanguaging, cognitive linguistics and metaphor. The focus of her M.A. capstone is the use of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to explore the concept of language itself.

Miran Cho, TESOL

Miran Cho, who grew up in both the United States and Korea, is a proud English Korean bilingual who loves languages and naturally engages in language education. She earned her BA in English Language Education from Pusan National University in Korea and will graduate with her MA in English: Concentration in TESOL at San Francisco State University this Fall 2021. She has been teaching students for over 15 years, assisting diverse learners, including literacy-level adult immigrant learners, spouses of visiting scholars at Stanford University, EFL students in Korea, and SF State students as a reading/writing tutor. She has a deep understanding of students' strengths and challenges and supports them by providing engaging and authentic lessons and materials. Her graduate capstone project focuses on developing an eight-session pronunciation curriculum for Korean English learners.

Natalia I. Ermakova, Linguistics

A native of Moscow, Russia, Natalia I. Ermakova is a professional language educator and a researcher. She is currently a teaching assistant in the Linguistics Program at San Francisco State University where she is working on her master’s degree in Linguistics. Having earned an M.A. in Russian language and literature from the Moscow Pedagogical University in 2010, Natalia has been working as a teacher, translator, copyeditor, writer, archivist since then. Her major research interests are cognitive linguistics, specifically how the cognitive approach can facilitate language acquisition; bilingualism and its consequences for mind and social identity; language attitudes and ideologies in multilingual communities, the latter of which is the focus of her forthcoming M.A. thesis in 2021. Other interests include computational methods in linguistics and corpus linguistics.

Erica Salas, Composition

Erica Salas is a first-generation Chicana who, notwithstanding her learning differences, obtained her B.A. in English Education with an emphasis in Literature at San Francisco State University in the Spring of 2020 and will be graduating this Fall 2021 with her M.A in English Composition. Erica also has experience tutoring immigrant students with 826 Valencia and is currently working with Metro in a Graduate Teaching Associate position for First-Year Writing in SFSU’s English Department. As a member of the traditionally marginalized groups in higher education, Erica strives to inspire students and is dedicated to increasing inclusivity within the classroom for student success, especially for those most excluded in traditional classrooms, which is the focus of her capstone project.