LearnEnglish Hub
In our new Learning hub, you can put your language into practice. Take part in the activities and practise your English skills by writing comments, recording yourself speaking and sharing photos with descriptions.
Conference bios
Instructions
Do the preparation task first. Then read the text and tips and do the exercises.
Reading text
Julie Wong
Julie Wong is a leading researcher in the field of Robotics and AI. She has been published extensively as author and co-author of over 50 papers in highly regarded, peer-reviewed journals. She frequently speaks at international conferences and was awarded the prestigious Royal Academy Simone Fielding fellowship in 2012. Julie lives with her family in a smart home she designed herself.
Terrie Sharp
Best-selling author Terrie Sharp knows how to tell a good story or two, having twice won the Olive Crime Writer Award. Born on the housing estate with the highest crime rate in Glasgow, she learned to keep quiet, stay out of trouble and how to open car doors with a knife. Luckily, she only used her knowledge to write her novels and she's not so quiet these days, appearing on popular daytime shows like Police Today and at writing conferences throughout the UK.
Ahmed Modine
Ahmed Modine started his first business at age 14 and retired at 32. Along the way he went bankrupt twice and lost his house and car once. What he learned about starting again from scratch became the number one most popular online course on U-Learn.com: From up to down to up again – How to succeed when everything sucks. What he doesn't know about turning an idea into a profitable business isn't worth knowing.
Tips
- Bios are often written in the third person, especially for conferences, events and books. Social media bios can be less formal and in the first person.
- Use your full name in the first sentence and refer to an accomplishment to help people remember who you are. (Julie Wong is a leading researcher … / Best-selling author Terrie Sharp … / Ahmed Modine started his first business at age 14 …)
- Keep it short and interesting so people get all the key information before they stop reading.
- If the bio is for an event like a conference, only include the details that are relevant to this particular audience. For a general bio, for example on your website, you can provide links for readers to find out more.
- One or two personal details (e.g. Julie lives with her family in a smart home she designed herself ... / She learned how to open car doors with a knife. / ... he lost his house and car once) help create interest and a connection with the reader.
Discussion
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Telling the truth, I've never done it. I can't remember if I read about someone's bio before. Maybe, because I graduated from technical faculty and we not much wrote there in our days.
But if I have to write someone's bio it definitely would be some writer's or Formula-1 driver's biography because these are my passions.
Of course, not only these ones but being a racing driver is so dangerous and exciting (maybe because it's dangerous) and there were so many great personalities in this sport.
And I love reading and I am always keen to know something about authors.
Especially about those authors who wrote only one or two books which became to were masterpieces.
It's always interesting to me how they did it, not work as writers whole their lives, just wrote a great book and that was all.