Earl Stevick studied government at Harvard University, earned a Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at Columbia University, and a PhD in linguistics at Cornell University. After he received his PhD, Stevick began teaching at Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, Tennessee. He applied for and received a Ford Fellowship and went to teach in Angola, Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) for two years. He then worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, creating courses to learn local African languages.7
As a linguist, Stevick was particularly interested in recording the tones of African tonal languages. In the language courses which he edited for the Foreign Service Institute, Washington, especially in the courses of Yoruba, Chinyanja, Shona, Kirundi, and Luganda, the tones are marked with a detail and precision not seen in previous grammars.
Stevick was one of a small group of language educators who created the Master of Arts in Teaching degree at the SIT Graduate Institute in 1969. It was called the School for International Training at that time. He continued to help with that program as a member of the advisory board.8 Stevick's person-centered approach to education influenced humanistic foreign language educators such as Gertrude Moskowitz.9
Stevick married Betty Rae Culp in 1948. At the time of his death he had eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.10
Lou Spaventa, "Remembering Earl Stevick" in Humanising Language Teaching, Feb 2014. ↩
Woodson, Daryl "Earl Stevick passed on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013, at the Mayflower in Lexington, where he had been residing. He was 89 years old." The News Gazette. Retrieved 2013-08-16 ↩
Arnold, Jane & Murphey, Tim (eds.) (2013) Meaningful Action: Earl Stevick's Influence on Language Teaching (Cambridge Language Teaching Library). ISBN 978-1107610439. /wiki/ISBN_(identifier) ↩
Stevick (2009, 2013). ↩
"Spotlight on Earl Stevick". Christian English Language Educators Association. July 2000. Archived from the original on August 16, 2013. Retrieved August 16, 2013. https://archive.today/20130816032535/http://www.celea.net/book/export/html/17 ↩
Kristjánsson, Carolyn "Earl W. Stevick: Keeping the Faith in Theory and Practice" Archived September 22, 2015, at the Wayback Machine International Journal of Christianity and English Language Teaching, Volume 2 (2015), pp. 62-66. ISSN 2334-1866 (online). Retrieved 2015-09-30. https://static.biola.edu/cook/media/downloads/PDF/kristjansson2015earlwstevickkeepingthefaith.pdf ↩
Fantini, Alvino (August 15, 2013). "Reminiscences of Earl Stevick". SIT Graduate Institute. Archived from the original on August 30, 2014. Retrieved August 16, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20140830013003/http://blogs.sit.edu/graduate-institute/2013/08/15/reminiscences-of-earl-stevick/ ↩
"What is HLT – Humanistic Language Teaching". Retrieved March 1, 2025. https://hlt.digital/what-is-hlt/ ↩