People

Project Team

Megan Montee
Project PI

Meg Montee serves as the Director of the AELRC and is also an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Linguistics. Dr. Montee specializes in performance-based language assessment, and is committed to working with world educators to create and implement useful and practical assessment tools. Her research interests include oral proficiency assessment, rater training and scoring, and language assessment literacy. Dr. Montee received a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from Georgia State University and a Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language from Georgetown University.


Alison Mackey

Project Co-PI

Alison Mackey is a Professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and current Chair of the Linguistics Department. She investigates second language learning across the lifespan, including how additional languages are learned at different ages, looking at both younger and older children, as well as college age, prime-of-life, and elderly adults. One of her primary research interests is research methodology. She has published over 100 articles across all of the top scholarly journals in linguistics and edited collections by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, John Benjamins and others. She has published 19 books in total, three of which deal with researching children’s language learning and teaching.


Lara Bryfonsky

Project Co-PI

Lara Bryfonski is an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University, where she teaches courses on these topics and advises graduate and undergraduate linguistics students. She is an applied linguist and second language acquisition researcher. Her research interests include second language learning and pedagogy, task-based language teaching, interaction and corrective feedback, language teacher training, individual differences in second language learning, language learning in study abroad, second language research methods, and meta-analysis


Francesca Di Silvio

Expert Consultant

Francesca is the associate director at AELRC and the director of World Languages at the Center for Applied Linguistics. She has worked with the AELRC since 2019 and with Language Resource Centers from 2009-2014. She holds an M.A. in Linguistics from Georgetown University and also studied with the Faculty of Language and Linguistics as an undergrad. As Director of World Languages at the Center for Applied Linguistics, Francesca leads projects to develop language proficiency assessments for English and world language learners, manages research on world language instruction, and delivers professional development to language educators.


Student researchers

Eunae Kim

Doctoral Student, Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics

Evelyn Diaz-Iturriaga

Doctoral Student, Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics

Hadeel Arqbi

Doctoral Student, Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics


Executive Advisory Panel

Dr. Dan Davidson (American Councils), Mohammad Khan (University of Michigan), Dr. Meg Malone (ACTFL), Aron Muci (University of Texas at Austin), Liesl Picard (Florida International University), Dr. Bill Rivers (WP Rivers and Associates), Bethany Weppler (Georgetown University)