Marilyn Plumlee majored in the teaching of French and German as foreign languages for her undergraduate degree at the University of Kansas (USA). She later obtained an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of North Dakota (USA) and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Hawai`i (USA). She has taught a wide variety of language and linguistics courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at universities in the U.S., South Korea and Egypt. From 2000-2012 she was a faculty member in the College of English, Dept. of Linguistics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul (South Korea) and from 2012-2018 she was Associate Professor and Director of the MA TESOL program in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the American University in Cairo (Egypt).

Serving terms as the national president of the professional association of English language teachers in both Korea and Egypt, she has given invited conference keynote talks and workshops on language learning, foreign language teaching methods and developing inter-cultural communication skills in Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Thailand, and Egypt. In the course of her studies, work and travel in several countries, she has acquired, in addition to her native American English, varying levels of competence in five spoken languages and three sign languages. She is currently studying Russian and Russian Sign Language.

She brings this background of her own experience at language learning and in teaching foreign languages and various sub-fields of linguistics along with her experience as writing mentor and thesis supervisor to non-native English-speaking graduate student writers to her role as an instructor in the Writing Center at NU.