Miriam Dam was born and raised in Amsterdam. After high school she was trained as a computer programmer at Cap Gemini and she worked as a computer programmer for several years. Gradually her interest shifted from artificial languages to human languages and she decided to study Dutch language and linguistics. She received her bachelor’s degree in Dutch language and Culture at the Free University Amsterdam (first major: Dutch Language Studies, second major: Linguistics). Through additional electives at the University of Amsterdam she trained herself for writing and editing. She obtained her master’s degree in Dutch Language, Culture and Society at Leiden University. The major themes were: Rhetoric and Argumentation, Text design and Persuasion-research, Pragmatics, Stylistics, Construction grammar and Evolutionary linguistics. She also followed a Teacher Training Course for Dutch as a second language in adult education at the Free University of Amsterdam. Miriam has taught groups of different levels, from adult literacy to State examination Dutch as a second language. For the literacy classes she developed a new education program. She also worked for the University Amsterdam – Institute for Dutch Language Education (INTT) as a Dutch language trainer at the academic writing centre. Miriam has many interests, but within her professional field she is especially interested in vocabulary acquisition, language constructions and idiom.

Research interests: 

Vocabulary acquisition, language constructions, idiom.

Selected bibliography:

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