A. C. Kemp has been a lecturer in
English Language Studies since 2007. She teaches classes to bilingual students in both written and oral communication, including freshman writing, public speaking, writing papers for publication, and teacher training for international teaching assistants (ITAs). She holds degrees in English Literature (BA, 1987) and Applied Linguistics (MA, 2005), both from the University of Massachusetts. Before joining MIT, she taught at the Center for English Language and Orientation Programs (CELOP) at Boston University. Prior to teaching, she worked in film and video production, graphic design and software training.
Kemp has written over 300 columns on slang and colloquial language for
Slang City since 2002, and her humor book on obscure vocabulary,
The Perfect Insult for Every Occasion: Lady Snark's Guide to Common Discourtesy, was published by Adams Media in March 2008. In 2020 and 2021, she wrote a monthly blog on ESL teaching strategies for the international organization Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). From 2016 to 2020, she wrote and produced
The User-Friendly Classroom, a series of instructional videos for ITAs available on MIT’s OpenCourseWare.
