Professor Barry O’Sullivan is the Head of Assessment Research and Development at the British Council. He has researched factors affecting spoken performance; assessing rater behaviour; assessing speaking and writing; specific purpose assessment; benchmarking and standards; and has worked on the development and refinement of the socio-cognitive model of test development and validation since 2000.
Liu Jianda is a professor and dean of the National Key Research Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He is currently vice-president of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He has worked in designing, developing, and validating language tests in China.
Dr JIN Yan is a professor of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. She has been involved in research and practice of language testing and assessment since the late 1980s and has rich experience in the operation of language assessment programs.
Luke Harding is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. His research interests are mainly in language assessment. He has published in the areas of listening assessment, pronunciation assessment, language assessment literacy, diagnostic language assessment, and the challenge of English as a Lingua Franca for language assessment.
James E. Purpura is a Professor of linguistics and education in the Applied Linguistics and TESOL Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Jim’s research has focused on grammar assessment, meaning assessment, and the cognitive underpinnings of assessment.