Keynote Research Speakers
Dr. Gary Buck, currently Director of the Testing and Certification Division, of the ELI, at the University of Michigan, is an applied linguist with a strong assessment background. His career in second language education began with ten years of teaching experience in Japan. At the University of Lancaster, his Ph.D. research focused on the testing of second language listening comprehension; his subsequent book Assessing Listening Comprehension is the standard reference on this topic. Dr. Buck has been active in research and direction of testing programs for the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Defense Language Institute. He has published extensively on assessment related issues, and been honored by TOEFL and ILTA for his contributions to the research literature in this area.

Dr. Mark Moulton is a psychometrics researcher at Educational Data Systems in the USA. A graduate of the "Chicago school" of Psychometrics, Dr. Moulton has applied Rasch models to fields as diverse as program evaluation, economic forecasting, audio perception, and educational testing. For four years, he has served as a principal designer and psychometrician for the California Reading First evaluation and is familiar with the issues surrounding the measurement of elementary school English Language acquisition. His special expertise is in the area of multidimensional IRT models, having applied his own multidimensional software, NOUS, to the problem of equating local assessments.

Dr. Angel M. Y. Lin is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Communication at the City University of Hong Kong. Dr. Lin has conducted research for SCOLAR (Standing Committee on Language Education and Research, Hong Kong SAR Government) on monitoring and evaluating Hong Kong’s Native English Teacher (NET) scheme and has designed and written English curriculum materials for newly arrived children (NAC) in primary schools in Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada in 1996. Since then she has been on the cutting-edge of research in sociocultural theories of language communication and education, new media communication studies, critical discourse analysis and language planning in postcolonial contexts. She is the first Hong Kong scholar to work on developing inter-disciplinary approaches to second language education through drawing on cultural studies, multi-literacies theories, and language and identity research in developing innovative language teaching methodologies. She is the first Asia-based scholar elected as Member-at-Large of the Executive Committee of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and has served on the editorial boards of TESOL Quarterly, Linguistics and Education, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, and Pedagogies and-International Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism.

Professor David Ingram is an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the University of Melbourne and Director of a private language centre in Brisbane, Australia. He also co-directs his language testing organisation, ISLPR Language Services. Previously he taught in

Primary and Secondary Schools 14 years, in teacher education (14 years), before founding three university language centres from 1986 to 2003 in Griffith University, after which he became Executive Dean of Melbourne University Private’s School of Applied Language Studies and a Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne. He has extensive experience in consultancies in second language education and has published extensively, especially in the areas of language policy, curriculum design, methodology, and language testing. He was one of the developers of the IELTS Test and was IELTS Chief Examiner (Australia) for 10 years. He is the co-author of the International Second Language Proficiency Ratings (ISLPR). In 2003, he was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for service to education through the development of language policy, through assessment procedures for evaluation of proficiency, and through research and teaching.

To ensure smooth running of the Seminar, we ask that participants observe the following guidelines:

1. Please wear your name badge at all times during the Seminar.
2. No smoking is allowed inside any rooms. There are marked smoking areas on the outside terraces.
3. All Presenters and Seminar assistants should be present in the conference room 5 minutes before the session begins.
4. Time for presentations
(1) Each Keynote Presentation is allotted 50 minutes.
(2) Case Study Presentations are limited to 20 minutes.
(3) Participants are requested to please hold comments and questions until the 10-minute Q&A session at the end of each presentation.
(4) During the Q&A sessions, time allotted for each comment, question or response is 2 minutes; please make sure that your question is succinct so that others may also have the opportunity to ask questions
5. For recycling purposes, before leaving the Seminar, participants are asked to please return plastic nametag holders to the container on the registration desk or near the auditorium exit at the end of the Seminar. Thank you for your cooperation!