Language learning is an amazing thing. Languages provide us not only with an insight into other cultures, but through their differences they teach us a lot about our own culture. Those of us who have the opportunity to teach others their language have the scope to open their eyes to a new world, new customs, and in the case of English, new opportunities for work, travel and pleasure. As such I enjoy making lessons memorable, so that our students will want to learn, enjoy learning, and hopefully take away the language they’ve learnt with the memory of the lesson. Teamwork and Role Plays for Today are born of this desire. I tried to put all my favourite lesson ideas, my favourite contexts and activity types into lessons that will hopefully inspire students to communicate naturally in situations that reflect the massive gamut of contexts in which language can be used.

My interest in learning languages has never diminished. Whilst not being as fast as many of my students in picking up new vocabulary or mastering complex grammar, I have tried my hand at learning Russian, Italian, French, Ukrainian, Tigrinya and (very briefly) Turkish over the years. Thanks to my experiences with these languages, I feel in touch with the students I teach every day, as well as their needs and difficulties in learning English, and that helps to inform my lesson planning and writing as well as my teaching and teacher training. I think the secret to successful resource book writing is to provide not just for the teacher’s needs, but also for the students’ interests. I hope that my materials can provide teachers and students with the inspiration to brighten up lessons each week. Originality and creativity are the keys to making language learning a pleasure.

I have been teaching, teacher training and wrestling with foreign languages since 1995, working in the UK, Ukraine, Italy, Turkey and in Eritrea for VSO. As well as my photocopiable resource books, I have also developed a resource for helping teachers to make pronunciation lessons fun, called Pronunciation Learning Cards, which can be downloaded free from the internet.