Language and linguistics have been inextricably intertwined with my research, education, teaching experience and publication. My particular focus has been on Second Language Acquisition, Sociolinguistics, and Language Testing. I am also interested in pedagogical applications of technology and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL).
I have been educated at the University of Michigan, where I was awarded both a Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1990 and an M.A. in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL) in 1988, and at the University of Edinburgh, UK, where I was awarded an M.S. in Applied Linguistics in 1979. Prior to those graduate degrees, I had completed my B.A. in Foreign Languages on yet another continent when I graduated from Baghdad University, Iraq.
My teaching experience beyond NYU has spanned the University of Michigan, Princeton University, Columbia University, the American University in Washington, Middlebury College in Vermont and UAE University in al-Ain in addition to Salahuddin University and Suleimaniyya University in Iraqi Kurdistan. During my summer teaching in Middlebury in 1991, I introduced my method of using a camcorder to videotape students' presentations to subsequently view, discuss and evaluate their linguistic performance. This became a routine procedure at Middlebury in subsequent years.
From 2005 through 2016, I supported linguistic assignments involving US Presidents and Vice Presidents in Kurdish and Arabic at the White House and internationally.
In spring 2010, I served as a ‘Distinguished Global Scholar of Kurdish Studies’ at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, where I taught a graduate course about the Kurds.
Currently, I am the President of the Association of American Teachers of Arabic (AATA). Prior to that, I was elected to the Executive Board of the Association AATA for four terms (1992-1995, 2000-2003, 2007-2010 and 2015-2018). I also served as one of the nine testers in North America certified by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) to conduct Oral Proficiency Interviews in the 1990's.
A major research project I have embarked on is the standardization of the Kurdish language for which I collected data in situ during a year of sabbatical leave and I have given various presentations about this project in Finland, Greece, Kurdistan and the US.
My next research project is producing a curriculum specifically designed to hone the language skills of non-native speakers of Arabic at the advanced level. It comprises authentic lectures on various topics conducted in Arabic by professors and scholars beyond the language-teaching community. This project will contribute to redressing the paucity of materials and interactive tools that learners of Arabic at more advanced levels encounter.