JALDA's Interview with Professor James P. Lantolf

Abstract

James P. Lantolf is George and Jane Greer Professor Emeritus of Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics and former director of the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Applied Linguistics in the same academic unit at Xi’an Jiaotong University. He is founder of the Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning research group,which has been holding an annual meeting to discuss research in progress on second language acquisition from the perspective of sociocultural theory since 1993.He is founding editor of Language and Sociocultural Theory (Equinox Press, 2013 to present) and was co-editor of Applied Linguistics (Oxford University Press,1993–1998).He served as President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in 2004 and was recipient of the AAAL Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award in 2016. He has co-authored or co-edited nine books and has published more than 140 articles and book chapters. His seminal book entitled Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development (2006, coauthored with Steven L. Thorne) published by Oxford University Press coupled with a co-edited volume Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Research (1994, coedited with Gabriela Appel) ushered in a new upswing of research on language development and teaching from the sociocultural theory vantage point. His latest co-edited book The Routledge Handbook of Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Development was published in 2018. The following is a written interview with James P. Lantolf conducted by Saeed Karimi-Aghdam. Dr. Karimi Aghdam is Associate Professor of English Language and Didactics in the Faculty of Education and Arts at Nord University, Norway. He is a member of the editorial board of Language and Sociocultural Theory and serves on the advisory board of the Journal of Applied Linguistics and Applied Literature: Dynamics and Advances.