21/11/2014
Message from conference president , linelt, Dubai
Associate Professor Dr. Ali Rahimi:
We're very excited and honored to announce that Professor Dr. Vanci Osam has joined us as a keynote speaker.Prof. Dr. Ülker Vancı Osam
Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus
Keynote title: “Critical Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching”
Bio: Prof. Dr. Ülker Vancı Osam completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Hacettepe University, Ankara. She obtained her PhD degree from the same university in the field of Applied Linguistics. Her dissertation was on teaching English as a foreign language to adult learners.
Prof. Dr. Vanci Osam’s professional life as a language teacher and teacher trainer spans more than 30 years, mainly at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, where spent her 22 years, first at the School of Foreign Languages and then at the Faculty of Education. Since 2000, she has been working at the English Language Teaching department of Education Faculty, Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus.
As regards her academic performance, in addition to offering courses both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and supervising many MA theses and PhD dissertations, she has published articles and presented papers mainly on second language teacher education and ELT methodology. She has also took part in projects, one of which was the Higher Educational Council and World Bank Project of Developing National Education in Turkey, Accreditation in Pre-Service Teacher Education. As a follow-up of the Project, she co-authored the book titled Standards and Accreditation in Teacher Education in Turkey, published by the Higher Educational Council of Turkey in 1999.
Besides the academic study, Prof. Dr. Vancı Osam has experience as an administrator at different levels. To quote some of them, the founding chair of the English department, Director of the Center for Cyprus Studies, Director of the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research, Acting Rector, and finally Vice-rector (in the past 5 years) at Eastern Mediterranean University.
Prof. Dr. Vancı Osam has research interest in teaching English as a foreign language in general, and specifically in teacher education. Currently, she has been working on ways to enhance professional development for pre-service and in-service teachers, and on teacher identity.