Presenting the Plenaries – Part One

December 27, 2013 by Vicky Loras 2 Comments

Professor David Crystal, OBE

At ELTForum.sk, we are delighted to announce the first of our plenary speakers, who is none other than Professor David Crystal! We are honoured to have Professor Crystal as our keynote speaker at our June conference, where he will speak from his wealth of knowledge and expertise as the world’s foremost English linguist.

About David Crystal

Professor Crystal, who has been called a British ‘national treasure’, is a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster renowned for his research work in English language studies, in such fields as English language learning and teaching, clinical linguistics, forensic linguistics, language death, style, English genre, Shakespeare and lexicography. He held a chair at the University of Reading for 10 years and is now Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor.

His Writing

Professor Crystal is a prolific writer, with more than 100 books to his name. His two greatest works are his two encyclopedias, ‘The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language’ and ‘The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language’. More recently, his books include ‘The Story of English in 100 Words’ (2011) and ‘Spell it out: the singular story of English spelling’ (2012), as well as ‘Wordsmiths and Warriors: the English-language Tourist’s guide to Britain’ (2013), written with his wife Hilary.

His Activity

David and Hilary Crystal

Professor Crystal is currently the patron of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). He received an OBE in 1995 for his services to the English language, and was made a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2000. He is also currently consultant for the British Library ‘Evolving English’ exhibition (November 2010 to April 2011), and author of the accompanying book.

You can read more about Professor Crystal and his work on his website: http://www.davidcrystal.com/

We need your input!

I will be interviewing Professor Crystal and we are asking you to send us anything you may want us to ask him! You can email your questions to scet.ska@gmail.com.

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