Vanessa Wenzell received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from UCLA, an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literature from UC Berkeley, and a B.A. in Russian from Stanford. Her research interests lie in the areas of second language acquisition, discourse, literacy, and World Englishes. She has published in second language acquisition and discourse in English and Polish, as well as in literacy of second language learners. She teaches undergraduate courses in linguistics and literacy, and graduate courses in the M.A. TESL program.