Plenary Speakers

Jeremy Harmer has taught in Mexico and the UK and is currently on the faculty for the MA TESOL at the New School University,New York. He has trained teachers and offered seminars all over the world. Among his writing are the How to teach Writing (2004),How to Teach English (2007),The Practice of English Language Teaching (2007) and the prize-winning Essential Teacher Knowledge (2012)– all published by Pearson Education Ltd. He is the General Editor of the Longman ‘How to’ methodology list. Away from ELT Jeremy is a performer of poetry,prose and music and has recorded two CDs,Touchable Dreams (poetry and music with colleague Steve bingham) and Other Loves (songs). In 2012 Jeremy and Steve were commissioned to perform a special show for the British Council to honour Charles Dickens’ 200th anniversary.

Suresh Canagarajah is the Erle Sparks Professor at Pennsylvania State University. He teaches World Englishes,Second Language Writing,and Postcolonial Studies in the departments of English and Applied Linguistics. He has taught before in the University of Jaffna,Sri Lanka,and the City University of New York. His book Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (OUP,1999) won Modern Language Association’s Mina Shaughnessy Award for the best research publication on the teaching of language and literacy. He is the former editor of TESOL Quarterly and President of the American Association of Applied Linguistics.

Hossein Farhady is a former associate professor of applied linguistics at the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) in Tehran. He received his MA in TESL and PhD in Applied Linguistics from UCLA in 1978 and 1980,respectively. He has taught courses on language testing,research methods,and ESP at the MA and PhD levels for the last three decades in Iran,Canada,Armenia,and USA. He has published more than 10 books and 50 articles on various topics in applied linguistics in general and in language assessment,in particular. He retired in 2006,moved to US,and worked as a senior scholar and project manager for organizations such as Ordinate Corporation,Avant Assessment,and Lidget Green Corporation in California,and Second Language Testing,Inc.,in Rockville,Maryland. He also directed projects related to the scoring of Pearson’s new automated language proficiency test. From 2008 to 2010,he worked as the associate dean of the Department of English Programs at the American University of Armenia. Presently,he is a faculty member at Yeditepe University in Istanbul,Turkey and an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California,Los Angeles.

Ramin Akbari is Assistant Professor of ELT at Tarbiat Modares University,Tehran,Iran. He has concentrated his teaching and research mostly on second language teacher education and development,plus critical pedagogy. He has published papers in Modern Language Journal,System,TESOL Quarterly,ELT Journal,International Journal of Moral Education,and is the co-editor of The Middle East Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Dr. Akbari is also the president of the Iranian affiliate of TESOL,TESOL Persia.