An Interview with APPLE Lecture Speaker Professor Mary McGroarty

Abstract

On Friday, April 19, 2013, our journal (represented by Catherine Box and Victoria Parra-Moreno) had the fortunate opportunity to speak one-on-one with the Teachers College, Columbia University 2013 Applied Linguistics and Language Education (APPLE) speaker, Professor Mary McGroarty. She graciously agreed to take time out of her quite packed schedule, which included two talks with the Teachers College community, to converse about her thoughts on language policies in education, teacher training, bilingualism in the schools, and the progression of the applied linguistics field. Professor McGroarty is professor in the applied linguistics program in the English Department at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona. She is a former president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and editor-in-chief of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. She has also served on editorial boards for journals published in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Europe. She has published numerous book chapters, and her articles have appeared in journals such as TESOL Quarterly, Language Policy, Educational Researcher, and Language Learning. Her current research and teaching interests include sociolinguistics, language policy, pedagogy, bilingualism, and assessment. We would like to thank Professor McGroarty for allowing us to interview her and providing us doctoral students such rich food for thought on topics that we often grapple with as researchers and as parents of bilingual children. We would also like to thank Fred Tsutagawa for videotaping the interview, and Yuna Seong and Dr. Kirby Grabowski for helping to coordinate our time with Professor McGroarty.

Keywords

• Language policy
• Sociolinguistics
• Education
• Bilingual education
• English language
• Foreign speakers
• Study of language
• Teaching language
• Applied linguistics
• Mary McGroarty