Professor Rod Ellis
Rod Ellis is currently a Research Professor in the School of Education, Curtin University in Perth Australia. He is also a visiting professor at Shanghai International Studies University and an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of the University of Auckland. He has recently been elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He has written extensively on second language acquisition and task-based language teaching. His most recent books are Reflections on Task-Based Language Teaching (2018) published by Multilingual Matters. He has also co-authored Task-based Language Teaching: Theory and Practice (2019) published by Cambridge University Press. He has conducted seminars and workshops in numerous countries around the world. He is currently working on a project investigating the assessment of pragmatic competence.
Professor Alan Maley
Alan Maley’s career in English Language Teaching began with The British Council in 1962. He worked for the Council in Yugoslavia, Ghana, Italy, France, PR China and India over a period of 26 years. After resigning from the Council in 1988, he became Director-General of the Bell Educational Trust in Cambridge (1988-93). He then took up the post of Senior Fellow in the Department of English, National University of Singapore, where he stayed for 5 years His last full-time post was as Dean and Professor of the Institute for English Language Education, Assumption University, Bangkok, where he set up new MA programmes. Since retiring from Assumption in 2004, he has occupied a number of visiting professorial posts at Leeds Metropolitan, Nottingham, Durham, Malaysia (UKM), Vietnam (OU-HCMC) and Germany (Universitat Augsburg).
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He has published extensively and was series editor for the Oxford Resource Books for Teachers for over 20 years. He continues to write for publication. His most recent ELT publications include:
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Creativity in the English Language Classroom. (co-editor with Nik Peachey) 2015 British Council.
Global Issues in the Creative English Classroom. (co-editor with Nik Peachey) 2017 British Council
Creativity in Language Teaching: from Inspiration to Implementation. With Tamas Kiss. 2017 . Palgrave-Macmillan.
Alan Maley’s 50 Creative Activities. 2018, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Developing Expertise Through Experience (ed) 2019. British Council.
He remains active as a speaker at national and international conferences. While at Bell, he was involved in the founding of EAQUALS. He was a co- founder of The Extensive Reading Foundation, and of The C group: Creativity for Change in Language Education. He is a past-President of IATEFL, and was given the ELTons Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.
Dr. Hitomi
Masuhara
Dr. Hitomi Masuhara is a Higher Education Academy Fellow, full-time lecturer, and ex-Director of the MAs in Applied Linguistics and TESOL in the Department of English in the University of Liverpool
(http://www.Liverpool.ac.uk/english/staff/hitomi-masuhara/).
She is a founding member and Secretary of the Materials Development Association (MATSDA www.matsda.org), whose mission is to enhance collaboration between teachers, teacher educators, researchers, materials writers, and publishers.
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Her research interests include the neural network development process in the brain in relation to listening and reading; second language acquisition; syllabus design; curriculum development and its evaluation; materials development; teacher development.
She has worked in tertiary education in Japan, Oman, Singapore, and the UK and has given invited conference plenary/keynote presentations in over 40 countries. She has also been involved in textbook projects in collaboration with the Ministries of Education in various countries. Her career in teaching and research has revolved around language learning, teaching, and assessment. She won an Innovation and Leadership Chancellor’s Award and an LTSN grant for her work ‘The Cultural Twist’, a teacher and materials development project on incorporating cultural awareness in language teaching.
She has published books, book chapters, and articles. Her latest publications include:
Tomlinson, B., & Masuhara, H. (2021). SLA applied: Connecting Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/sla-applied/EB1771BB9C6EB1DFAF51E98759D35652
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Masuhara, H. 2021, "Approaches to adaptation" in The Routledge Handbook of Materials Development for Language Teaching, eds. J. Norton & H. Buchanan, Oxon: Routledge.
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Masuhara, H. 2019, "Paradox 2018: diversification of learners, contexts, and modes of delivery necessitates the application of universal learning principles" in Innovative language teaching and learning at university: a look at new trends., eds. N. Becerra, R. Biasini, H. Magedera-Hofhansl & A. Reimão, Research-publishing.net, Voillans, France, pp. 9-17.
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Tomlinson, B., & Masuhara, H. (2018). The complete guide to the theory and practice of materials development for language learning. Hoboken, NJ: WILEY Blackwell.
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Masuhara, H., Mishan, F., & Tomlinson, B. (Eds.). (2017). Practice and theory for materials development in L2 learning. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Professor Jayakaran Mukundan
Jayakaran Mukundan started work as a school teacher and served for 11 years (1979-1990). He then joined UPM (Universiti Putra Malaysia) and has 21 years experience as a language instructor, lecturer, Associate Professor and Professor. He recently won the Vice Chancellors Award for Teaching. He was previously winner of Anugerah Pengajar Putra (Top Teacher Award) in 2007 and has won the UPM Excellent Service Award 4 times. He has successfully graduated more than 10 PhD students (He has a total of 25 PhD students) and more than 30 Masters students.
He developed RETROTEXT-E (Versions 1 and 2.0) software for evaluating English language teaching textbooks and Wordlist Creator which won Gold medals at the British Invention Show, UK and IENA (Germany). He is also inventor of the first on-line textbook evaluation checklist. He has copyrights on 4 software he has developed so far. As an Expert on the Ministry of Education and MARA Junior Science Colleges Advisory Panel, he constantly helps develop future curriculums for Malaysian schools. Jaya is one of the founding members of the Regional Creative Writing Group. He himself writes and publishes stories and poems during sessions but more importantly helps train teachers who will be future writers. He has always been active in community service and has adopted more than 8 schools throughout the country. He founded the Tun Mahathir UPM-ELS Scholarship Awards for empowering youth through English.
Professor Brian Tomlinson
Brian Tomlinson is considered to be one of the world's leading experts on materials development for language learning. In 1993 he established the world's first MA dedicated to the study of materials development for language learning (at the University of Luton in the UK) and he founded MATSDA (the internationally renowned Materials Development Association). He has been Chair and then President of MATSDA ever since 1993 and, as such, he launched the journal Folio and ran (with Hitomi Masuhara) a number of materials writing workshops in the UK and in Botswana, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Seychelles, Singapore, Turkey, and Vietnam. He has also organized and presented the opening plenary at thirty international MATSDA conferences. In addition, he has given plenary presentations on materials development in over seventy countries and has worked as a teacher, teacher trainer, curriculum developer, university academic, film extra, and football coach in Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Oman, Singapore, the UK, Vanuatu, and Zambia.
His many books on materials development are considered to be the leaders in the field. They include Materials Development in Language Teaching (Cambridge University Press: 1998, 2011), Developing Materials for Language Teaching (Continuum: 2003, 2013), English Language Learning Materials: A Critical Review (Continuum: 2008), Research for Materials Development in Language Learning - with Hitomi Masuhara (Continuum: 2010), Applied Linguistics and Materials Development (Continuum: 2013), SLA Research and Materials Development for Language Learning (Routledge: 2016), The Complete Guide to the Theory and Practice of Materials Development for Language Learning - with Hitomi Masuhara (Wiley, 2018) and SLA Applied: Connecting Theory and Practice - with Hitomi Masuhara (Cambridge University Press, 2021). He has also published a state of the art survey of the literature on materials development in the Cambridge University Press journal Language Teaching (2012). In addition, Dr. Tomlinson has also published books on language teaching methodology (Teaching Secondary English - with Rod Ellis: Longman 1980), on language through literature (Openings: Penguin: 1994) and on language awareness (Discover English - with Rod Bolitho: Macmillan 1995), as well as contributing to textbooks for Bulgaria, for China, for Ethiopia, for Japan, for Malaysia, for Morocco, for Nigeria, for Turkey, for Namibia, for Singapore, and for Zambia.
Dr. Tomlinson is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool and a TESOL Professor at Anaheim University in California.