I am a Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, where I’m the Course leader for our MA in Applied Linguistics and TEFL programme. I also work on a range of other courses and units, including the online version of our MA course.

Most of the learners that I teach now are in their early 20s (as they are at university) but I began teaching in 1987 and in that time have taught a variety of age groups and types of learner. One of my first jobs was teaching English in Athens, a place of which I still have many fond memories and I first began working on teacher training courses when I was living in Italy.

My work at Portsmouth gives me great variety, which I love. As well as teaching EFL classes, I also teach classes that are about language (discourse, pragmatics, models of politeness, male and female language and so on). I also work with teachers both on pre-service training courses and also those with great experience who are following our MA programme. So I get to work with people who are at both ends of the training-development continuum.

My main interests are teacher education and language teaching methodology and these interests are reflected in my writing. As well as Learning to Teach English (Delta Publishing 2005) I also co-authored (with Scott Thornbury) The CELTA Course Trainee Book and The CELTA Course Trainer’s Manual (Cambridge University Press 2007).