About the Book

About the Authors

Glenn Fulcher ¦ Fred Davidson

Glenn Fulcher is originally from Lancashire in the United Kingdom. He studied philosophy and theology at King's College London, in which he earned undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. As part of his studies at London, he was involved in an exchange programme that took him to study philosophy and linguistics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. It was this exchange that first that gave him a taste for Applied Linguistics, and his first masters degree employed structural linguistics in the analysis of Greek texts. He also studied Education at the Christ's College Cambridge, before going overseas to become a teacher of English as a Second Language. His longest appointment was at the English School, Cyprus, where he was Director of Studies. After doing this for a number of years, he took a second masters in Applied English Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, and then went on to research for a PhD in Language Testing and Assessment at the University of Lancaster. He has taught Applied Linguistics and Language Testing in a number of UK Universities, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Education (TESOL) at the University of Leicester, School of Education, Centre for Language Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics.

His main interests lie in the field of language testing and the philosophy of educational assessment, including validity theory, construct operationalization, and task design. He also takes a keen interest in research methodology and statistics in testing and applied linguistics research, and has worked in the fields of Second Language Acquisition, Discourse Analysis, lexis, CALL, teaching and methodology.

He has extensive experience of test development and design, and has been involved in a number of large-scale testing operations. For example, from 2001 to 2005 he was a Member of the TOEFL Committee of Examiners and was Chair of the TOEFL Research Subcommittee from 2003 to 2005.

In 2006 he was President of the International Language Testing Association (ILTA www.iltaonline.com), and had previously served on the Executive Board of ILTA as a Member at Large, and Vice President. He is also an expert member of the European Association of Language Testing and Assessment (EALTA www.ealta.eu.org/expert-members.php).

He is currently on the Editorial Boards of the journals Language Testing (Sage) and Assessing Writing (Elsevier), and reviews for a number of other journals. From January 2007 until December 2011 he is co-editor of Language Testing, with Cathie Elder (Melbourne University).

More information about Glenn is available on his website.

Fred Davidson is a native of Chicago, Illinois, USA. During secondary school, he became very involved in competitive public speaking and theatre. This led him to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) for his undergraduate work, leading to an Illinois teaching certificate in English and Speech (and by implication, theatre). Instead of a career in the schools, Fred joined the United States Peace Corps, where he taught English language arts and science in Ziah Town, Konobo District, Grand Gedeh County, Liberia. He next returned to UIUC to pursue a Master's in Teaching English as a Second Language. A doctorate in applied linguistics followed from the University of California at Los Angeles. He next worked for the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate – when, if his memory serves rightly, he first met Glenn Fulcher. Another post-doctoral year's job followed, back in the USA at the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Resource Center. Finally, in 1990, he joined the faculty of the same unit where he earlier earned his Master's degree: the Division of English as an International Language at UIUC, where he continues to work.

Fred's main interests include language assessment, research design and statistics for applied linguistics, and the history and philosophy of educational and psychological measurement. He has worked in a number of language test development projects and related research initiatives, and has supervised various teams of graduate student test developers as well as (of this writing) twenty-four doctoral dissertations and twenty-three M.A. theses.

He is past-President of ILTA (2002), and he has served on a number of advisory committees including the Board for the Test of English as a Foreign Language. He serves on the Editorial Boards of two journals: Language Testing and Language Assessment Quarterly.

Fred remains vitally interested in the ongoing challenges facing Liberia, and he is a member of Friends of Liberia and of an organziation of returned Peace Corps Volunteers and allied friends: the NPCA.

More information about Fred is available at his website.