Peer & Conference Review
Manuscript review for journals in applied linguistics and language education, with abstract review for the TESOL Convention and AERA since 2023.
Ph.D. Candidate, Second Language Studies
Michigan State University
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Second Language Studies program at Michigan State University, advised by Dr. Peter I. De Costa. My research examines how multilingual children critically read and compose texts and how teachers work toward more equitable literacy education. I am particularly interested in how children critically engage with digital texts and technologies while drawing on their linguistic and cultural resources. I collaborate with teachers and schools to bridge research and classroom practice.
As a former elementary teacher, researcher, and teacher educator, I work at the intersection of TESOL and language and literacy education in multilingual contexts. I examine how multilingual children interpret and create texts, including those shaped by AI, and how teachers’ experiences shape their work with multilingual learners. My dissertation brings these strands together with multilingual elementary students and their classroom teacher.
How do children draw on their lived experiences and emotions to understand and critically interpret texts?
I examine how children connect texts to their linguistic, cultural, and community experiences, treating their multilingual repertoires as resources for meaning-making. I also look at how texts represent children’s languages and identities, and how emotion shapes reading engagement, comprehension, and vocabulary learning.
How do digital technologies shape the ways learners and teachers interpret and create texts?
I investigate how new technologies, including AI, change the production and interpretation of texts, and how digital and AI-generated representations can reproduce bias and exclusion. I also explore multimodal composing and counter-storytelling as practices of learner agency, working toward critical and ethical approaches to literacy learning in digital environments.
How do teachers learn to support multilingual learners within their institutional contexts?
I examine how teachers’ emotions and professional identities shape their instruction, particularly when their pedagogical commitments meet institutional and classroom constraints. I also study professional learning that helps teachers build on children’s multilingual resources.
Questions that come from classrooms and go back to them.
I conduct classroom-based research with teachers and students as participants and collaborators, building sustained partnerships with elementary classrooms and teacher communities.
I support the Postprint Pledge, a movement toward making scholarship more accessible. If you or your institution do not have access to any of the publications below, the postprint links will open an accepted version of each publication that is freely available.
Teaching Philosophy
My teaching centers on helping students develop their identities as capable readers, writers, and language users and fostering a curiosity and passion for reading and language that continues beyond the classroom. I design lessons that make room for risk-taking, treat mistakes as part of learning, and ground language and literacy learning in authentic, contextualized work. I draw on an asset-based pedagogy that recognizes students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds as resources rather than deficits, inviting their home languages, families, and ideas into the classroom.
I work with both current and future elementary teachers. As a teacher licensed in Michigan, Alabama, and South Korea, I try to carry these commitments into my own classroom.
Instructor of record for undergraduate courses at MSU serving preservice elementary teachers, connecting research and state standards with classroom practice for multilingual learners.
Mentor doctoral students and early-career scholars on qualitative research methods, dissertation writing, and scholarly publication through coursework, guest lectures, and invited panels.
Draw on a decade of experience teaching English language and literacy in elementary multilingual and EFL classrooms in my work in teacher education and research.
National and international approaches, methods, materials design, learner characteristics, and needs assessment in ESL and foreign language settings. Survey, evaluation, and application of major effective methods and materials. Prepared preservice elementary teachers to teach vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing through standards-aligned lesson design.
Basic principles of learning a second or foreign language. Issues in first language acquisition. Theories of second language learning. Aptitude, motivation, attitude, learning grammar, age, learning in a classroom, myths, and facts about second language learning. Guided preservice teachers in leveraging multilingual children’s first-language literacy to support vocabulary, reading, and writing development.
“Nari is an extremely empathetic instructor who clearly cares about the quality of teachers in this next generation. She cares about her students and about the kind of teachers they want to be. She is also personable, and I felt that she cared about my learning and success.”
“Her content is really helping me do what it is supposed to do: get me thinking about ELLs’ needs and how to create content that will help them be successful. Her content is relevant, and I can tell she constructed it with our work in mind, making me want to be more attentive.”
“I would say she is super on top of her side of things. Whether it’s making assignments accessible or having strong communication, she’s on it. Her lectures really pull everything together and narrow the content down, so it isn’t overwhelming and I know what is expected of me.”
“Nari did a great job of making the course feel engaging and supportive. The activities and assignments helped me really focus on the different needs that students have so that, overall, my lessons and activities are inclusive and can be done by all my future students.”
“I could tell that she really cared about teaching the material and knew a lot of information about it. She was very good at explaining concepts and being there for students.”
“Nari was super flexible and communicative. She also gave long, thorough feedback on each assignment that I really enjoyed reading and found very helpful.”
“She put so much effort into engaging with us. All the feedback she gave me was very helpful and thorough.”
“I have developed a much deeper knowledge of the theoretical basis of language learning and skills on making an inclusive lesson plan.”
I believe service is an essential part of sustaining a collaborative and supportive field. My service work includes reviewing scholarship, mentoring graduate students, organizing academic events, and offering invited teaching and workshops. Through these efforts, I aim to make scholarship and professional learning more accessible.
Manuscript review for journals in applied linguistics and language education, with abstract review for the TESOL Convention and AERA since 2023.
Panels at Michigan State University on K-12 research partnership, qualitative research practices, and graduate-school life.
Symposium organizing volunteer, KERIS content reviewer, and a member of the SLS graduate community.
Scholarly Review
Since 2023 I have served as an ad hoc reviewer across applied linguistics, education, and multicultural venues.
Knowledge-Sharing
I use invited panels and student sessions to translate research methods and graduate-school experience into practical guidance for peers and newer students at Michigan State University.
Association & Program Work
I contribute through the program structures that make scholarly exchange possible, helping organize events and host visiting scholars who connect the wider field.
The Language Pod
I contribute to making language science accessible to the public. I took part in public-facing language science at the Language Pod, the COSI (Center of Science and Industry) lab devoted to the study and communication of language.