Alister Cumming

Alister Henry Cumming (born 1953) is a Canadian linguist. He is currently a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. He is most noted for early studies of composing processes in a second language in the 1980s, establishing that writing skills transfer from first to second languages, adopting Goal Theory from educational psychology to the study of second language writing research, and for his contributions to language testing.

Career Cumming obtained his Bachelor of Arts at the University of British Columbia in 1975, and a Master of Arts in 1979. He received his PhD at the University of Toronto in 1988.

He has been a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Second Language Writing and a dozen other scholarly and professional journals, including Language Learning, which he edited in the 1990s and for which he was its executive director until 2015.

He was also a member of the project Encouraging The Culture Of Evaluation Among Professionals (ECEP).

Research Cumming's research is primarily on language writing research. He adopted Goal Theory from educational psychology to study second language writing development. His main claim was that goals can emerge in three different ways: dilemma, intention, or outcome. He also claimed that goals play an important role in the development of second language writing.

In his paper entitled "Learning to write in a second language: Two decades of research," he identified three main areas of research on second language writing: 1. Textual features, 2. Composing processes 3. Sociocultural context.

Awards 2014: Changjiang Scholarship from the Chinese Ministry of Education 2016: TÜBİTAK scholarship at Yeditepe University 2009: Honorary doctorate from the University of Copenhagen