“Follow Your Interests Because Those Will Motivate You to Excel”: An Interview with Alister Cumming

Alister Cumming is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. He was a professor and head of the Centre for Educational Research on Languages and Literacies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (OISE/UT) for more than 30 years. His research and teaching focus on writing in second languages, language assessment, language program evaluation and policies, and research methods. Alister has been the principal investigator on numerous research projects and has published extensively on these topics. He has given more than 150 invited talks and conference papers and produced more than 200 publications, including 19 authored and edited books, 58 book chapters, 71 articles in refereed journals, and more than 100 technical reports, papers in refereed conference proceedings, popular articles, book reviews, and other publications. Alister’s research and publications cover a wide range of topics, contexts, and populations. A book of 14 essays and studies edited in Alister’s honor by Riazi, Shi, and Barkaoui (Citation2020) documents Alister’s scholarship and research on the learning, teaching, and assessment of second language (L2) writing.