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Speaker Profiles

Ms Masha Bell

English spelling researcher and author, Lithuanian by birth, learned English as a second language and his written extensively on spelling reform and educational matters relating to spelling pedagogies.

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Mr Christopher Jolly

Educational publisher through the “Jolly Learning” company, and publisher of the very successful “Jolly Phonics” reading books.

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Dr Steve Bett

A former professor of typography and computer graphics, and a communications consultant involved in training faculty on how to build better e-courses. He contributed to the book, Internet Based Learning, Kogan-Page, 1999. He maintains a resource site on alphabets, alternative transcription systems, and spelling reform, and is a volunteer literacy instructor.

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Ms Zuzana Kotercová

Postgraduate student at Coventry University, UK. Carried out research into the amount of work undertaken by a sample of English primary school teachers in carrying out spelling instruction, as opposed to general reading and writing skills.

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Ms Raffaela Buonocore

Teacher of English as a foreign language in China, and professional translator of English-Chinese.

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Professor Anatoly Liberman

Professor of Germanic Philology at the University of Minnesota, and writer of both popular and scholarly books. Professor Liberman's primary interest has been the history of English words. In 2005, he published a popular book for lay readers entitled “Word Origins and How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone”, Oxford University Press, 2005, “An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology”, University of Minnesota Press, 2008. He has also collected more than 20,000 articles for “A Bibliography of English Etymology”. “The Oxford Etymologist” is Professor Liberman's weekly column on word origins at the Oxford University Press blog.

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Prof John Wells

Emeritus Professor of Phonetics, University College London. Prof Wells has been a prolific publisher in his field, and most recently has edited the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. He is also President of the Spelling Society.

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Dr Valerie Yule

Researcher and writer on spelling and literacy. Formerly clinical child psychologist in hospitals and disadvantaged schools, and academic in education, psychology and English departments, Universities of Melbourne, Monash and Aberdeen.

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Mr Tom Zurinskas

Researcher into spelling reform and the implications of the current traditional orthography as part of his work into language in general and into the computer applications of linguistics in particular.

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