Biography
Dr. Alvino E. Fantini holds degrees in anthropology and applied linguistics, and has worked in the fields of language education and intercultural communication for over 50 years. He has worked with languages (ESOL and a great variety of other languages) and cultures, in education and training, in intensive and extensive programs, in academia and in field situations, and in the U.S. and abroad, for the U.S. Peace Corps, development projects, and international educational exchange programs. He has consistently worked to bring these fields together and has done significant research resulting in numerous publications on bilingualism, language development, and language and cross-cultural matters, including the seminal work, Language Acquisition of a Bilingual Child, and New Ways in Teaching Culture, as part of TESOL's New Ways Series and his most recent publication, Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence in Educational Exchange: A Multinational Perspective.
Fantini served on the Advisory Panel that developed the National Foreign Language Standards for U.S. education. He is past president of the prestigious professional society, SIETAR International (the Society fo Intercultural Education, Training, and Research), and the recipient of its highest award, "Primus inter Pares." He is a recent graduate faculty of Matsuyama University in Japan and professor emeritus at World Learning's SIT Graduate Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont, which he helped to found in 1963, and currently serves as international consultant.
Areas of Expertise:
- Anthropology (General, Cultural, Applied, Field)
- Approaches, Methods, & Techniques of Language Teaching
- Area Studies (Latin America, Italy, Spain)
- Bilingualism & Bilingual Education
- Curriculum Design, Implementation & Evaluation
- Education & Training
- ESOL & Foreign/Second Language Teaching
- Ethnic Diversity/Cultural Pluralism/Multicultural Education
- Intercultural Communication & Training/Orientation
- Interpretation & Translation
- Language Acquisition (1st & 2nd)
- Language-Culture Paradigms: The Nexus
- Language Syllabi & Materials Development
- Languages (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, ESOL & Esperanto)
- Linguistics (general, theoretical, applied, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, contrastive & anthropological)
- Philosophy of Language
- Research Design & Methods
- Testing & Evaluation
- Teacher Training (TOT) & Education
Read an interview with Dr. Fantini in US News & World Report
