User:Garmstro/Gregory K. Armstrong

Gregory Armstrong was born in Schenectady, New York, and spent his formative years in Indiana. He has lived in Arkansas for the past quarter century. After earning a bachelors degree at Butler University (Indianapolis), he resided in Montevideo, Uruguay for two years, then later earned a masters degree with emphasis on Spanish and Latin American civilization from Ball State University.

From 1976-1981 he served as preceptor and associate instructor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University (Bloomington) where in 1981 he was awarded a Ph.D. in the instruction of Spanish language and literatures. Throughout his career, Dr. Armstrong has investigated the impact of language immersion and overseas experience on participants in foreign study programs. Between 1977 and 1995 he spent summers as director of Indiana’s Honors Program in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. While teaching at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (1981-90 and 93-94), he was awarded a Fulbright-Hays grant for study in Brazil and another grant to train Arkansas language professors in the techniques of using the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). He also developed and directed programs in Mexico and Madrid for international studies majors and participants in the UALR Donaghey Scholars Program.

A perennial advocate for overseas study, Dr. Armstrong subsequently taught at SUNY in Cortland, New York (1990-93) where he supervised student teachers and served on the campus study abroad scholarship committee.

The author of Language Study Abroad for High School Students: Indiana’s Program for Proficiency and Recruitment (Foreign Language Annals, 1982), Life After Study Abroad: A Survey of Undergraduate Academic and Career Choices (The Modern Language Journal, 1984), Cultural Understanding, Oral Proficiency, and Study Abroad: Getting It All Together (Perspectives on Proficiency: Curriculum and Instruction, 1986), Languages in Contact: Spanish and Portuguese along the Brazilian-Uruguayan Border (Hispania, 1991), Learner-Initiated and Learner-Friendly: Questions to Get Them Talking (Creative Approaches in Foreign Language Learning, 1992), and Impacting the Lives of High School Students: Stepping Forward with Study Abroad (Looking Back and Stepping Forward--75 Years of Service to the Profession 1992), Armstrong has also published in the Arkansas Encyclopedia of History and Culture (2006) and continues to write and make presentations at domestic and international conferences.

Having recently completing a term as president of the De Soto Chapter of The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP), Armstrong belongs to the Association of Academic Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean (AAPLAC), the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), and a number of historical associations. In April 2007 he organized and chaired a bicentennial symposium on the life and legacy of 19th century poet and preacher Parley P. Pratt, who became prominent in the formative years of the early Mormon Church in Latin America, the American West, and the Pacific, ending with his 1857 murder in Arkansas. Armstrong chairs the department of World Languages at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, and is married to the former Silvia Rial Castillo, a native of Montevideo, Uruguay.