Bio
Dr. David Newby was, until his retirement, Associate Professor of English Language Didactics and Applied Linguistics at the University of Graz, Austria, and subsequently Adjunct Professor of Language Didactics at the University of Bergen, Norway. He began his teacher career as an eighteen-year-old at a secondary school in Thailand; for three years he taught in the Language Centre of Kuwait University. He has held lectures at conferences and universities as well as workshops for language teachers and students in forty different countries. His main areas of interest are pedagogical grammar, cognitive approaches to second language acquisition, communicative language teaching, and learner and teacher competences. He has written grammar books, school textbooks, dramas and short stories, as well as a large number of academic articles. He has worked extensively for the Council of Europe and is the co-author and coordinator of the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages. He is currently consultant to the European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe.

Bio

Doreen Ewert is Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Language and Director of the Academic English for Multilingual Students Program at the University of San Francisco. Her areas of research include second language reading and writing, vocabulary and fluency development, language assessment, and curriculum design and implementation. She presents regularly at regional, national, and international conferences, as well as providing workshops for pre-service and in-service teachers. Her most recent publications are (2018) Teacher and Tutor Conferencing in The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, (2017) Getting ER into the curriculum: No excuses! CATESOL Journal, and with Sunyoung Shin, (2015) Teachers’ conceptualizations of a reading-to-write task in designing a data-driven rating scale, in Assessing Writing, and (2015) What accounts for integrated reading-to-write task scores? in Language Testing.

Bio
Dr. Ali Al-Issa has a Master of Arts in Education (TESOL) from University of London, U.K. and Ph.D. in Education (Applied Linguistics) from University of Queensland, Australia. Dr. Al-Issa is currently an Associate Professor of English Language Education at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), Sultanate of Oman. He teaches at the present time English Language Teaching (ELT) Methods and ELT School Curriculum courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students respectively and supervises ELT student teachers during the practicum. Prior to this, he taught Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) courses at the College of Law, SQU. Dr. Al-Issa has extensive experience in different areas of English Language Education and has been involved in the policy and planning of English Language Education for over 30 years. He has presented and published widely about English Language Education in Oman in local and international venues. He is a recipient of several local and international teaching and research awards and recognitions. Dr. Al-Issa has been the best cited Omani English Language Education scholar since 2005. His research interests include, but not limited to, foreign/second language education policy and planning and teacher training and education.

Bio
Dr. Mario Moya is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) in the UK and is currently the Programme Leader of the Master in English Language Teaching at the University of East London (UEL), where he teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the areas of language education, teacher training and psychology of language learning. He also examines and supervises PhD and EdD theses within the UK and internationally, and is a Visiting Scholar in Universities in Europe, USA and Asia. Mario is a consultant for the British Council on English as a medium of instruction (EMI) and advises Higher Education institutions in non-English speaking countries on the implementation of content-based language methodologies for the teaching of degrees through the medium of English. He is an active researcher in the field of academic literacies, multilingualism and literacy practices, and the psychology of language learning with a focus on the role of interpersonal relationships in the classroom. He publishes widely and conducts continuing professional development courses on these subjects. Mario is a keynote speaker in several international conferences and is a member of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) and of the British Educational Research Association (BERA).