Miriam Akoto PhD

I am originally from Ghana but my experiences in many Francophone countries in West Africa instilled in me an interest in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication. My late mother was a high-school principal who sparked in me a love of reading and a desire to learn languages at an early age. She dedicated a lot of her time to helping me learn whether it meant enrolling me in classes at Alliance Française during school breaks or hiring private teachers to help me grasp difficult grammatical structures. 

​

As a result, during my undergraduate studies at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, I chose to major in French in the hopes of traveling more and potentially using it in professional world. I went on to pursue my master's at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where I got the opportunity to learn how to create different instructional activities and assessments and integrate pedagogical scaffolds for learning through technology. This training served as a crucial foundation for my subsequent doctoral studies in applied linguistics at Texas A&M University-Commerce where I accumulated a wide range of teaching experiences, from individualized tutoring and mentoring to teaching undergraduate courses both in French and in English. I bring all of these experiences to my teaching and consider myself as much a learner as a teacher at every moment.