Department of Literature and Language

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Theresa McGarry

Theresa McGarry, PhD

Director of TESOL Program | Professor, English

Dr. McGarry has taught ESL in various countries since 1987. She earned her PhD in linguistics, specializing in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, from the University of South Carolina in 2004 and came to ETSU that same year. Here she directs the TESOL Certificate program and teaches ESL and linguistics. She is also interested in Sinhala, a language spoken in Sri Lanka. Liyanage Amarakeerthi and Dr. McGarry have produced a multi-media curriculum for learning Colloquial Sinhala and an online a translation of the reading passages in the most widely used textbook for Literary Sinhala. She is currently working on an analysis of letters to the editor in Sri Lankan and Kenyan English with Martha Michieka and is planning to document AwaPit, an endangered language of Ecuador, with Martine Bruil.