Biography
Ph.D., a native of Valparaíso, Chile, is Assistant Professor in TESOL/pedagogical linguistics, teaching courses in the M.A. in English with focus on teaching English as a foreign and second language, TEFL/TESL. She is also currently serving as co-director of the Center for Community Literacy, Research and Outreach in the Department of English at Colorado State University. Her research includes the following areas of expertise: second language reading, second language assessment, and ESL/bilingual teacher preparation. She is the co-author of Reading strategies for Spanish speakers. Other publications in journals and books include: Assessing English language learners (ELLs) in Mainstream Classrooms, The Reading Teacher (2006); Bilingual reading from a dual coding perspective. Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism. (2005); Preparing quality bilingual/bicultural teachers in the 21st Century: A PDS Model for Educational Change and Success, Transforming Teacher Education Through Partnerships (2004); Use of lexical borrowings in Sonoran border Spanish, MEX TESOL Journal, (2003). She serves in the editorial board of the The International Multilingual Research Journal, and she has been an active member, and frequent presenter at the annual meetings of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and the International Reading Association (IRA). In addition to serving in various TESOL committees, she is Past-President of Illinois TESOL, and a current member of Colorado TESOL.
