Karen Barto holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Arizona, and is a Content Developer and Lecturer at the university's Center for English as a Second Language. She has taught French, English applied linguistics and English as a second language in several contexts. She has designed, developed and taught teacher training classes and programs, as well as conducting linguistic and psycholinguistic research. Also an avid student of foreign language herself, she has studied French, German, Italian, Spanish, Lao and Latin.