Nawal Nasser is a native speaker of Arabic and Spanish pursuing OPI certification in both languages. She is working on her Ph.D. in Linguistics with a specialization in First Language Acquisition at the University of Texas at Austin. Nawal earned her M.A. in Linguistics at the California State University, Fresno (2003) and her B.A. in English Literature from Damascus University (1999). She holds diplomas in Computer Science from Microsoft, in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign language, and in Spanish as a Foreign Language (D.E.L.E.) from the Cervantes Institute in Damascus. Nawal currently is Instructor of Arabic at the University of Texas at Austin as well as a freelance translator and interpreter. She has served as secretary and translator at the embassies of Venezuela and Chile and at the Cervantes Institute in Damascus, and she taught Arabic, Spanish, and English as foreign languages in Syria (1994-2001).