About the Author
Richard F. Young, M.A. (Oxford), M.A. (Reading), Ph.D. (Pennsylvania) is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is trained as a linguist and as a language teacher, and his research focuses on the relationship between the use of language and the social contexts that language reflects and creates. His research has resulted in three books: Variation in Interlanguage Morphology (Peter Lang, 1991), Talking and Testing: Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral Proficiency (Benjamins, 1998) and Discursive Practice in Language Learning and Teaching (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) and numerous journal articles. He has served as President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Chair of the 2005 World Congress of Applied Linguistics, and as a consultant to Educational Testing Service as part of their major redesign of the Test of Spoken English and TOEFL.