The English Language Testing Society (ELTSociety) is pleased to announce Professor Hossein Farhady as the recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award in Language Testing and Assessment for 2026. This prestigious award honors individuals whose lifelong work has made a significant and sustained impact on the field of language assessment.

Hossein Farhady is a former professor of applied linguistics who received his Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from UCLA. His major area of interest is research on various aspects of language testing and assessment. He has taught courses on language testing and assessment, research methods, and ESP at the MA and Ph.D. levels for over four decades in Iran, Canada, Armenia, and the USA. He has also presented papers at national and international conferences and has widely published on issues related to language testing and assessment. He has published around 10 textbooks and 50 articles on various topics in applied linguistics, largely in language assessment. He has directed MA programs in TEFL, nationwide research projects on EFL/EAP, test development and validation projects in Iran, and other places in the world. He has supervised over 60 MA theses and Ph.D. dissertations.

Professor Farhady moved to the US in 2006 and worked as a senior scholar and project manager for organizations such as Ordinate and Lidget Green Corporations in California, and Second Language Testing, Inc., in Maryland. From 2008 to 2010, he worked as the associate dean of the Department of English Programs at the American University of Armenia. In the meantime, he directed projects related to the scoring of Pearson’s new automated language proficiency test and validating the Versant test. He is a two-time ILTA award recipient in addition to research grants from Pearson, ETS, and ILTA. From 2013 to 2024, he served as a faculty member at the ELT department at Yeditepe University in Istanbul, Turkey. Since then, he has been working as an assessment and research consultant.

The ELTSociety is honored to recognize Professor Hossein Farhady’s enduring legacy and profound influence on generations of language assessment professionals worldwide.