Professor Lin Mei Yi Angel

Chair Professor of Language, Literacy, and Social Semiotics in Education

Department of English Language Education

The Education University of Hong Kong

Keynote Speaker

Bio

Angel M. Y. Lin is Chair Professor of Language, Literacy and Social Semiotics in Education at The Education University of Hong Kong. She is also Co-Editor-in-Chief of Language Policy (2025–present). A pioneering scholar in plurilingual education and critical literacies, Dr. Lin's research spans translanguaging, trans-semiotizing, CLIL, critical media literacies, and Human-AI relationality. Her classroom-based research since the 1990s has reshaped English language education in multilingual contexts globally. With over 200 publications, she has garnered over 17,700 citations and an impressive h-index of 63. Dr. Lin has been named among Stanford University's top 1% most cited scientists from 2022 to 2025, and is also the first Chinese scholar selected to receive the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award by the American Association for Applied Linguistics. Her intellectual leadership has profoundly influenced the field and scholars across Asia and Canada.

Keynote Speech Title

Reimagining Academic Language Assessment through Ecological Languaging Competencies (ELC) and Bayesian Trajectory Mapping

Speech Abstract

English Medium Education (EME) programmes often rely on single-shot proxies for high-stakes decisions—IELTS, Duolingo, C-tests—that treat language competence as a stable, internal possession. Instruments rest on an “inter-action” ontology (Dewey & Bentley, 1949): test-taker and the environment are treated as separable, and the score represents what the learner “has.” I advance an alternative grounded in Ecological Languaging Competencies (ELC) theory (The New Territories Group, 2026). ELC conceptualizes academic languaging as first-order, embodied action and competencies as enskillment grown through co-participation. Organized around four compass points—attunement, adaptivity, relationality, and critical reflexivity—ELC redefines proficiency as emergent coordination potential rather than hidden trait. Building on the ELC perspective, I present a Bayesian assessment approach that treats classroom observations in authentic activities as evidence updating prior beliefs about a learner’s trajectory. Instead of a single score, it generates a probability report embracing uncertainty and tracing enskillment over time. I conclude with implications for EMI policy, placement practices, and teacher assessment literacy.