I have been in the ELT profession most of my working life. I have always loved learning languages and travelling, and teaching English is certainly a good way of seeing the world. In fact I started out teaching French in Ghana, West Africa, where I met my husband, Dave - the start of a long partnership! After many years working largely overseas, we are now both semi-retired and are based in the North West of England, on the edge of the English Lake District. We still write about ELT and do conferences and consultancies. But we also enjoy being close to our five grandchildren and being surrounded by wonderful mountain scenery.

Where I have worked
After Ghana, I trained as a language teacher at York University and moved to Cyprus, where I taught English for some years and learnt some Greek. In Edinburgh for a year I taught ESOL part-time and then, with our two small daughters, we went off to Teheran, Iran, and taught at the British Council ELT Centre. The teaching was wonderful - highly motivated students, lots of ESP, and it was there that I developed a phrase book of classroom language for an appreciative audience of Farsi speaking teachers of English whose class sizes ranged from 30 to 90 learners. I acquired a fair amount of spoken Farsi (but still cannot read it) and also learnt to ski there - the Elburz mountains are quite high and there were some fantastic ski runs. Sadly the revolution in 1979 ended our spell in Iran rather abruptly and somewhat dramatically...No-one in the family will ever forget the events leading up to the revolution. Once back in UK, I used my newly found free time to develop the classroom language phrase book materials into my first book ‘Teaching English through English', which was illustrated by an ex-Teheran colleague and later published by Longman in 1981.

I subsequently did my Masters Degree by research in Birmingham University, investigating language classroom interaction, (based on the Sinclair & Coulthard model of Discourse Analysis) ), and began freelancing. I worked on teacher development courses in Britain and Europe, and then as a family we went off to Singapore, where I taught ESP in various institutions and a Language in Education course at the National University. From there I began to do ELT consultancies and run courses overseas in South East Asia, Middle East, China and South America.

But it was in Singapore, in 1984, that we first met N. S. Prabhu, who was running an experimental English teaching project in Secondary Schools in Bangalore, using nothing but teacher-led tasks. And here, in 1985, we began our own experiments with task-based teaching. I remember vividly using TBL for the first time with a beginners class of Japanese housewives - we had a lot of fun. I also loved making recordings of fluent speakers doing tasks - recordings I could later use in class. It was really fascinating, all the things that people said.

The Cobuild Project and Task-based Learning
The combined influences of John Sinclair from Birmingham University and N. H. Prabhu from Bangalore led to a conviction there were better ways to help students learn a language than the PPP (grammar presentation, practice and production) methodology we had been using earlier along with a functional-notional syllabus. And so began one of our biggest writing projects, a set of course books using a task-based methodology supported by a lexical syllabus based on the innovative corpus based research into ‘real' language pioneered at Birmingham University. Three years of full-time research and writing resulted in The Collins Cobuild English Course. Every day gave us fascinating insights into how language really works - and we quickly saw how different language is from the way it is described in pedagogic grammars. I also discovered that writing course books is really hard work, and after completing four levels, I needed a break.

A change of scene
Some years after moving back to Britain I joined Aston University Language Studies Unit, in Birmingham, where I tutored for 12 years on their Distance Learning Masters programmes in TESOL & TESP and taught English one day a week. I really enjoyed working with teachers from all over the world and still miss them. I retired in 2004, but I still enjoy speaking at conferences and doing consultancies and courses for teachers.

My main publications
I like writing books for teachers. My recent books include Task-based Instruction in Foreign Language Education: practices and programs co-edited with Betty Lou Leaver, (Georgetown University Press,) and three prize-winning titles: A Framework for Task-based Learning (Longman), English for Primary Teachers (with Mary Slattery) (OUP) and, with Corony Edwards, Teachers Exploring Tasks in English Language Teaching (Palgrave Macmillan), which won a British Council Innovations Award in March 2006.

Dave and I then worked together on ‘Doing Task-based Teaching' (OUP 2007) incorporating advice from teachers round the world who practise task-based teaching. For my last book - a CLIL title - out in 2008 - I collaborated with a friend who is a Primary School Music Education specialist and together we wrote English Through Music - to help teachers of Young Learners teach musical skills in English.

My topic for my Guest Expert month
My topic will be Task-based language Teaching: making the most of your text book. Many teachers who would like to use more tasks in their lessons do not do so because they are worried by time pressures and the need to complete the course book before the exams. I will try to show how text books can often be just slightly adapted to make an activity more task-like and more motivating for learners to do and learn from. And there will also be tips on saving time...

My interests
I've always been an outdoors person. I prefer sports that can be done in beautiful places where there are good views like riding, sailing, ski-ing and swimming in the sea (if it's warm enough). I took up Tai Chi twelve years ago and love it. We go walking regularly, and often look for home exchange holidays in places where the walking is good. We both do quite of lot of voluntary work to improve our neighbourhood and its amenities. I still enjoy learning languages and I meet up for a drink with French speaking friends on a Monday night, and Spanish speaking friends on a Thursday. On Tuesday nights we sing - not a choir but a community singing group, and in the summer we go on singing walks and sing by lakes, in forests, half way up mountains and - best of all in caves, where the acoustics and echoes make us sound very professional. During the week-ends we often spend time with two or more of our grandchildren who range in age from nearly 2 up to nearly 11. And we have at least one family meal a week - with all 11 of us round a table.

We seem to spend a lot of time planning trips - some work related, some holidays - and then researching environmentally friendly ways of getting to places. So, what with conferences and teachers' workshops and holidays, who knows, we might just meet up with some of you, some day. I hope so.

JW

Your comments and questions
During the month of June 2008 I will be the Guest Contributor. You can add comments or questions about this biography by clicking on Add new comment below. I will be regularly visiting the site, reading your comments and answering questions on my blog, about my articles and getting involved in discussions on the polls and forums.