About me, the transformation.
My Journey
Perhaps unusually for a writer of educational materials, I didn't really enjoy school. I did, however, love finding out how things worked, particularly cars, so I trained as a mechanic.
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After 10 years in the automotive industry, I went ‘walkabout’ and ended up in Spain. This led to me becoming a freelance ELT teacher for a number of years. I knew the reasons why I didn’t enjoy school and took every opportunity to ensure my students didn’t feel the same about my sessions, this is something I have remembered throughout my teaching and authoring career.
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A voluntary teaching vacancy took me to Zimbabwe, where I taught motor vehicle studies. What an eye-opener that experience was! It was during this role I realised I loved teaching. I loved imparting information and giving students the opportunity to learn new skills, skills that would change their lives.
On my return to the UK, I enrolled and passed my CELTA course at IH London. A teaching position soon presented itself to me, and shortly after I was on a flight to Poland where I was Senior Teacher in my first school, and then Director of Studies at the International Language School in Opole.
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After being head-hunted, I returned to the UK and took up a position at inlingua, Cheltenham. IH Newcastle was my next stop, where I completed my DELTA and I was then an ESOL lecturer for a number of years. The next few years saw me undertake a variety of roles, mainly teaching ESOL, functional maths and English.
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But life moves on, and so did my career, I was asked to author supplementary grammar and vocabulary materials for a major S.E. Asian publisher. On completion of this project, I felt I had finally found my niche.
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A Spanish publisher was my next project, where I authored three coursebooks which gave students extensive practice in all four skills and also exam practice for the Cambridge suite of exams.
I’m currently working on a large project for a major UK publisher, but confidentiality means I’m unable to share this with you.
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I have found my curiosity for finding out how things work has transferred itself to my teaching and authoring. I enjoy tinkering with language as much as I enjoyed tinkering with cars.
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Interested in finding out how I can help you? Let's chat about how I could help you create effective, user-friendly, creative content for your next project. Contact me by email, LinkedIn DM, or by phone.