Biography: Steven G. McCafferty is a professor of applied linguistics, teaching in the areas of second language acquisition/learning, curriculum, and assessment. He has lived and taught in Thailand (Peace Corps Volunteer), Malaysia and Japan. He joined the UNLV faculty in 1995. His research interests center on the application of sociocultural theory to second language (L2) learning/teaching. This work has concerned how L2 learners engage in the use of speech for the self (private speech) in their efforts to gain control over both the L2 and contexts and the interrelationship of thought, speech, and gesture in second language acquisition. He taught a course, "Lending a Hand: Gesture and L2 learning and teaching" at the 2009 Summer Institute in Applied Linguistics held at Penn State, is the recipient of the UNLV College of Education Distinguished Research Award for 2008-2009, and was a Gil Watts Visiting Scholar at Penn State University and a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago in 2004.

Edited Volumes

-Gesture: Second Language Acquisition and Classroom Research. Co-edited with Gale Stam. Routledge (2008).

-Cooperative Learning and Second Language Teaching. Co-edited with George M. Jacobs and Ana Christina DaSilva Iddings. Cambridge University Press (2006).

Guest Editor

-Special Issue: Gesture and SLA: Toward an Integrted Approach, co-edited with Marianne Gullberg. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, vol. 30, no.2, 2008

-Special Issue: Private and inner forms of speech and gesture and second language learning. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 14, no. 1, 2004.