I began my journey in English Language Teaching with a BA from Marmara University, followed by an MA from Boğaziçi University. Early on, I taught EFL briefly before joining Yıldız Technical University as a research and teaching assistant.
Eager to deepen my expertise, I moved to the U.S. to pursue a PhD in Applied Linguistics at Georgia State University. There, I conducted research in corpus analysis and online course design, and taught courses in linguistics, ESOL teacher education, and academic English. I completed my dissertation in the summer of 2020.
Returning to Turkey during the pandemic, I joined the School of Foreign Languages at Yıldız Technical University, where I continue to work as a lecturer. Between 2021 and 2022, I also taught undergraduate composition at Boğaziçi University, and from 2022 to 2023, I taught undergraduate TESOL courses at Yıldız Technical University.
For the past year, I have been involved in high-stakes writing test development, contributing to new assessment projects led by the Measurement, Selection and Placement Center and the Ministry of Education in Türkiye.
Applied linguistics has been at the heart of my professional life, and this site is where I share that journey—as a researcher, teacher, and academic. You can reach me at yilmazs@yildiz.edu.tr.