My research is mostly in skeptical inquiry, linguistics, and second language acquisition. I have especially enjoyed being a contributor to Skeptic magazine since 2002. My long-term goal: the return of reason to the humanities.
Grants
Project Director (1996-2000), Spanish for Business Professionals, a $171,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education for the development of an interactive, intelligent, multimedia Spanish-language CD-ROM series.
Books and Manuals:
Second Language Acquisition: The Evolutionary Perspective. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008).
User Guide for the French Verb Tutor (Santa Barbara: Intellimation Library for the Macintosh). 1993.
The Random House/University of Illinois Video Program for French: Instructor’s Guide. (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1986).
Software:
Spanish for Business Professionals (Washington: U.S. Department of Education, 1998-2000).
French Verb Tutor (Santa Barbara: Intellimation Library for the Macintosh, 1993).
Articles, papers, etc.:
The Last One Forgotten: Bruce Perkins and Another Terrible Tragedy of the Recovered Memory Movement, Skeptic 23,2 (2018), 20-25.
A World without Myth. Chapter 8 in E. Cueva and D. Shelley (eds.) Lessons in Mythology (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2017), 149-170.
The State of Tumortown: The Cancer-care Industry’s Marketing is Among the Most Deceptive on the Consumer Landscape. Skeptic 21, 4 (2016), 43-49.
Kaputnik: Lessons from the Life and Death of the Language Lab, Chapter 2 in F. Kronenberg (ed.) From Language Lab to Language Center and Beyond: The Past, Present, and Future of Language Center Design. (Mobile, AL: IALLT, 2016), 15-32.
God’s Lawyer. Skeptic 20, 2 (2015), 55-58.
Anthropology No More. Skeptic 18, 2 (2013), 55-57.
Speechless: Facilitated Communication, a long-debunked pseudoscience, makes a surprising return. Skeptic 17, 3 (2012), 14-19.
Hagen Replies to Hirschfeld. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 6,1 (2008), 186-189.
The bilingual brain: Human evolution and second language acquisition. Evolutionary Psychology 6,1 (2008), 43-63.
Are the Textbook Wars Over? Skeptic 13, 4 (2008).
The Death of Philosophy. Skeptic 11, 4 (2005), 18-21.
The Texas Textbook Wars (with Lisa Morano), Skeptic 11, 1 (2004): 18-20.
Strange Fish: The Scientifiction of Charles Berlitz 1913-2003. Skeptic 11, 1 (2004), 12-17.
Creationism’s Expanding Universe: Linguistics May be the Fundamentalists’ Backdoor Into the Public Education System. Skeptic 10, 3 (2003), 64-69.
French Follies: A 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Turns Out To Be An Appalling Deception. Skeptic 9, 4 (2002): 8-14. Also appearing in Calabrese, J., (ed.). 2007. Legends, Lies, and Lore (New York: Longman), 32-38.
Pseudoscience at 30,000 Feet: Suggestology, Suggestopedia, and Accelerated Language Learning. Skeptic, 9, 3 (2002), 28-35
A Union Function for Agreement in Complex Coordinate Structures (with Michelle Moosally), Proceedings of the 20th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 2002), 428-441.
Unification-based Parsing Applications for Intelligent Foreign Language Tutoring Systems. CALICO Journal 12, 2/3 (1995), 5-31.
Constructs and Measurement in Parameter Models of Second Language Acquisition. Chapter 4 in A. Cohen, S. Gass & E. Tarone (Eds.), Research Methodology in Second Language Acquisition (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994), 61-87.
Teaching French Cleft Constructions to Non-Native Speakers: What Syntactic Theory Has to Say. (with Jean DeWitt). La revue canadienne des langues vivantes 49, 3 (1993), 550-566.
Reasonably Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Higher Order Language Skills. In F. Attia et al., eds., EXPERSYS-92: Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Applications. (Gournay sur Marne: Institut Industriel de Transfert de Technologie, 1992), 53-58.
Logic, Linguistics, and Proficiency Testing. ADFL Bulletin (Winter 1990), 46-51.
Papers and Colloquia:
Trouble in Tumorville. The Amazing Meeting 13, Las Vegas, NV. July 16-19, 2015.
How to build NLP-based language tutorials for Web 2.0 applications. Midwest Association of Language Testers and Technology for Second Language Learning. Ames, IA: Iowa State University. September 21-23, 2012.
Computer-assisted Writing Assessment: The Constraints of Accreditation and Remediation. Midwest Association of Language Testers and Technology for Second Language Learning. Ames, IA: Iowa State University. September 16-17, 2011.
The Live Literature Project: Bringing Portable Classical Literature to Notebooks. The 64th Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky. April 14-16, 2011.
The Evolutionary Foundations of the Adult Second Language Acquisition. American Association of Applied Linguistics 2007 Annual Conference. Costa Mesa, California, April 21 to Tuesday, April 24, 2007.
Story Telling Giant 1532-1548: Rabelais and the Rise of The New Skepticism. The 19th Annual International Conference in Literature, Visual Arts and Cinema Atlanta, GA. October 22-24, 2004.
A Union Function for Agreement in Complex Coordinate Structures (with M. Moosally). West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. University of Southern California. February 23-25, 2001.
Interactive Multimedia for Commercial Spanish. CALICO 15th Annual Symposium “New Directions–New Perspectives.” San Diego, California. July 6-10, 1998.
Machine-based Writing Assessment for Virtual Classrooms. Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium Annual Symposium. University of New Mexico. Albuquerque, May 27- June 1, 1996.
Computer-Aided Language Instruction and Parsing Software for Foreign Languages. Colloquium at Kent State University. Kent, OH. February 9, 1995.
HANOI Parsing and New Vistas for Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Second Languages. A paper presented at the parasession on the Evolving Design of CALL, 9th International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL. March 2, 1995.
Unification-based Natural Language Processing Applications for Second Language Tutorials. Computers in Applied Linguistics Conference. Iowa State University. July 9-13, 1994.
Expert and Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Foreign Languages. 43rd Annual Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference. Clemson University. October 7-9, 1993.
Reasonably Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Higher Order Language Skills. EXPERSYS-92: International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Applications. Houston, Texas. October 1-2, 1992.
Formal Properties of Natural Languages. Association for Computing Machinery. Houston Engineering and Scientific Society. Houston, Texas. September 9, 1992.
Intelligent Tutoring Systems in Education: Development, Evaluation and Assessment (co-author and presenter S. Hashemi). Ninth International Conference on Technology and Education. Paris, France. March 16-20, 1992.
Using Computers for Data Collection and Analysis in Foreign Language Pedagogy. 41st Annual Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference at East Carolina University. October 17-19, 1991.
Bridging Theory and Practice in the Foreign Language Classroom. Bridging Theory and Practice in the Language Classroom Conference. Loyola College, October 18-20, 1991.
Constructs and Measurement in Parameter-Based Models of Second Language Acquisition. Theory Construction and Methodology in Second Language Research. Michigan State University. October 4-6, 1991.
Computer Tutorials in Foreign Languages. Department of French and Italian Foreign Language Series. Stanford University. February 14, 1990.
Communicative Competence and Proficiency Reconsidered. Winter Statewide Foreign Language Conference of the Illinois Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. Aurora, Il. February 6, 1988.
Foreign Language Teaching Methodologies, Practices and Testing Strategies. Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education Forum. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. University of Illinois. October 22, 1986.
