is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages. Her research is in Second Language Acquisition and includes the areas of Input and Interaction, Language Universals and Language Transfer.

More recently she has become interested in the area of attention and how it relates to acquisition. She has written/edited a number of books on second language acquisition and has taught and lectured in various parts of the world. She co-edits Second Language Research: Theoretical Issues with Jacquelyn Schachter and Second Language Research: Methodological Issues with Alison Mackey- both published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Currently at MSU, she is the Director of the English Language Center, Co-Director of the Center for Language Education And Research, and Director of the Second Language Studies Ph.D. Program. She is also President of the International Association of Applied Linguistics.

Contact Information

English Language Center
A 714 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
E. Lansing, MI 48824-1027
Phone: 517.353.0800
Fax: 517.432.1149
Email: gass@msu.edu

Education

BA-University of California-Berkeley
major: Italian

MA-Middlebury College
major: Italian

MA-UCLA
Linguistics

Ph.D.-Indiana University
Dissertation title: An investigation of syntactic transfer in adult second language acquisition.