She holds a Masters of Arts degree in Linguistics with a specialization in Discourse Studies. Her doctorate degree from UNED, Madrid, Spain is in Applied Linguistics. She has extensive and varied experience of language teaching at college level, and Spanish as a foreign language at all levels of proficiency and languages with Special Purposes. Her career includes in-service training, curriculum development, and instructional material design for English (TESOL) and Spanish courses. Dr. Merino's research areas include second and foreign language assessment, the effectiveness of particular teaching techniques in various contexts, the role of pragmatics and sociocultural factors on language teaching and learning, issues related to second language comprehension and written production, and cross-cultural pragmatics.