Global Studies and Languages

A.C. Kemp’s interests are vocabulary acquisition and teacher training—in particular the training of International Teaching Assistants (ITAs). She has worked extensively with ITAs. She teaches two subjects that help students prepare to teach at MIT: 21G.217 Workshop in Strategies for Effective Teaching/ELS and 21G.23 Advanced Speaking and Critical Listening Skills. She developed The User-friendly Classroom, a video training series for ITAs with support from The Gilberte Furstenberg & Douglas Morgenstern Fund for Innovation in Language Instruction and the Alumni Class Funds. This video series, as well as accompanying exercises and teacher insights, is publicly available on MIT’s OpenCourseWare at https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-21g-001-the-user-friendly-classroom-sp...

Between 2002 and 2009, she wrote over 300 columns on slang and colloquial language for the popular Slang City website (www.slangcity.com). A.C. Kemp's humor book on obscure vocabulary, The Perfect Insult for Every Occasion: Lady Snark's Guide to Common Discourtesy, was published by Adams Media in March 2008.

Research Areas / Expertise: Teacher training; Vocabulary acquisition

Education:
2005 M.A. University of Massachusetts, Boston
1987 B.A. University of Massachusetts, Amherst