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Alison Mackey  

Language and Linguistics Expert

Alison Mackey is a Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University where she is head of the applied linguistics program. She has a range of research interests focusing on second language learning across the lifespan, specifically how additional languages are learned at different ages, looking at both younger and older children, as well as elderly adults. She has also examined the relationship between input, interaction, corrective feedback, and second language learning, the role of attention in second language learning and task-based learning in second-language classrooms. She is also interested in second language research methodologies.

She and Kendall King are the co-authors of "The Bilingual Edge," a popular audience book on child second language learning recently published by HarperCollins. They are also parents. Each of them have two children who are learning second languages. They can be booked together or separately.

Mackey has spoken about how languages are learned in a number of different venues, including multiple academic conferences, as well as to parent and teacher audiences.

Mackey’s work has been published in numerous scholarly journals including Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, the Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals, Language and Language Education, Language Teaching Research, System, the International Review of Applied Linguistics, TESOL Quarterly, the AILA review, Innovations in Language Teaching and Learning, and the International Journal of Educational Research, as well as in edited collections published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, John Benjamins, and others. She has published three books on research methodology (co-authored with Susan M. Gass), Stimulated Recall Methodology in Second Language Research (2000), Second Language Research: Methodology and Design (2005) and Data Elicitation for Second and Foreign Language Research (in press), all with Lawrence Erlbaum Associates/Taylor and Francis. She has published a state of the art edited collection on how conversation facilitates language learning with Oxford University Press.

Mackey holds a B.A. from Lancaster University, an M.Phil from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney in Australia, all in linguistics. Her work has been supported by grants from a number of different places, including the Spencer Foundation.

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