My first teaching experience was in 1984, when having graduated in English literature it was deemed that I could teach English language to a group of boisterous French teenagers. Let’s just say I learned a lot ‘on the job’, and thought this might be a good path for me to travel and learn more, so promptly signed up for an initial training course at the renowned International House. A couple of years teaching in London, and then my first posting: to fascinating Istanbul, with IH. From there I went on to Madrid for a further teaching post, staying an extra year to get my DTEFLA. Now I really was flying! It seemed this was to be my career.

Teaching has led to training teachers, which has been a great development. I have been training new and practising teachers since the early ‘90s, principally for CELTA and more recently with in-service teachers.  Last year my work took me to Mozambique, where I had the opportunity to take a year sabbatical and work with highly-motivated secondary school teachers, teaching in very different conditions to those many teachers in Europe expect. It was great to live abroad again, but this time to share the experience with my family.

Writing has fitted in well with family life and these three strands of writing, training and teaching weave a more satisfying, portfolio style of working. After writing workbooks for Skyline for Macmillan I was delighted to be invited to write Attitude, a course book series. This in turn has led to Expressions, once again working with my dear friend and co-author Barbara Garside.