Macmillan Business English
We are proud to have an excellent group of Business English Authors writing for us- who bring with them a wealth of Business knowledge and experience.
Find out more about the Authors behind the Macmillan Business English list by clicking on their profiles below.
I've been living and working in northern Spain for the last 17 years, having worked previously in Italy for a couple of years. I work at Academy Lacunza International House San Sebastian, which has around 3,000 students and a teaching staff of over 70.
In 1987, I was part of a two-man team which set up an independent business English unit. The department has gone from strength to strength and we have established an excellent reputation with the local business community, working with companies and institutions as well as private individuals.
When it comes to language study, I believe nothing beats a good teacher with strong classroom materials. I believe that business English students are engaged by the same universal themes and topics which stimulate and inspire all of us: money and power, ambition and success, loyalty and love, and so on. Whatever the circumstantial details, the underlying motivations and moral concerns which make us tick are the same. I co-wrote In Company, a business English course for professional adults.
Mark is one of the world's leading Business English communications trainers and the senior partner in a specialist language training consultancy based in Barcelona. In his 20-year career he has worked with a wide range of Global Fortune 500 companies as diverse as Nestlé, BMW and Credit Suisse.
Mark is also a director of a publisher of intercultural communication and language games based in Munich.
A dynamic and popular speaker on the international conference circuit, for the last 10 years Mark has also been a top trainer for the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry Certificate in Teaching English for Business, training more than 500 intercultural communication professionals from 20 different countries. He also offers the world's only Certificate in One-to-One Language Coaching.
Mark's best-selling language and business skills books, including the intermediate and upper intermediate levels of Macmillan's highly successful In Company series, are regularly in use at Pepsi, BP, Citibank, Yahoo, Daimler Chrysler and Exxon Mobil, amongst many others.
Mark's main interest, outside Business English, is in all aspects of live performance from classical rhetoric, voice coaching and drama training to Elizabethan theatre, storytelling and stand-up comedy.
I sometimes describe myself as wearing four different "hats". My first hat is a teaching hat. My 23 years teaching business took me all over Europe, as well as to the Middle East and Far East. I enjoyed my stint on the BESIG Committee. I am now enjoying the challenge of EAP in my work at Oxford Brookes University. For the first time ever, I have also moved outside language teaching, running courses on interpersonal skills and IT.
My second hat as a teacher trainer has given me fascinating insights into the area of teacher education and teacher development. For some years I was the Training and Development manager for Linguarama.
I describe myself as an "accidental author" - I wanted a book on CD-ROM so badly that I ended up writing one myself! Thanks to Summertown publishing for giving me that opportunity. My second book, The Internet and Business English, co-written with Barney Barrett, was Highly Commended in the Duke of Edinburgh ESU awards. It was a great day - collecting the certificate from Buckingham Palace. Thanks to writing the business English e-lesson for Macmillan I have started exploring the actual process of materials writing. It was also stimulating to do the Teacher's Book for Mark Powell's In Company Upper-intermediate (Macmillan).
My fourth hat? I review books and software, contributing the Reviews in brief column for the International English Book Centre, in the EL Gazette. I add reviews to my new website, created by Barney: www.te4be.com,which aims to inform teachers about technology in language teaching. One result of wearing so many hats? Seeing things from many different perspectives.
What drives me? Apart from the usual ELT wanderlust, technology really lights my fire. I am relishing the challenge of doing my M.Ed dissertation on E-language learning. I enjoy being on the Macmillan Dictionary Advisers committee as we are researching which aspects of CD-ROM users appreciate. I also love presenting at conferences - check out my website for future venues!
I'm a linguist in the sense that I am fascinated by ideas and the words people use to express them. When I travel, I always try to learn part of the language of each country I visit. It's a way for me to understand the thinking behind different cultures and how those people view the world. So languages for me are not academic subjects, but practical communication tools.
I have been providing English training for professionals since 1986. In 1998, with two other partners, I set up English @ Oxford offering courses in Oxford, in-company training and e-learning for managers from all over the world. They teach me about their work and I teach them the practical language and communication skills they need. My experience has taught me that, given the right type of training, everyone can learn to communicate successfully in a foreign language.
I have been involved in teaching the English language for over twelve years. As well as currently working as a freelance language teacher in Oxford, I also find time to run my own company, WordsInTime, that specialises in teaching written communications to native and non native English speakers. I have taught general and business English in France and Italy and have run training courses in writing skills for company employees in Russia, Ex-Yugoslavia and Singapore.
I worked as a teacher and writer and then as a director of Regent language school before setting up my own school, English @ Oxford with my two partners, Colin Benn and Nicholas Sheard. I love language teaching and writing. As well as designing course programmes at our school, I keep various writing projects going, including writing for our on-line learning site. I feel very lucky to live in Oxford, which is a beautiful city, and to bring up my three daughters here. My ambition is to be able to use our skills for a charitable cause. There are a lot of people who would love to learn English but can't afford it.
I was born and brought up in London, then went to university in the north of England. I lived in Manchester for many years, working as a teacher in community education. My job involved the delivery of IT skills training. In the nineties I moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where I worked for six years as a freelance business English trainer.
I now live in north London, and work as a writer, teacher and teacher trainer in the field of business English. I have a strong connection withInternational House , London, where I teach for part of every year and run the LCCI Cert TEB training course overseas.
I have two Masters degrees, including an MA in Applied Linguistics. I have given numerous presentations at international conferences all over the world, and in my talks and workshops I like to combine wider questions of methodology with practical ideas for the classroom.
My publications include:
- Essential Business Grammar Builder
- First Certificate Language Practice
- Intermediate Language Practice
- Business Builder
- Business Grammar Builder
- Email English
My other interests and hobbies include yoga, rambling and spread betting on financial markets. I am also an active consumer of all the art, performance and culture that London has to offer. Just for fun, here are a few things that may be of interest:
- One of my greatest pleasures is listening to ResonanceFM, an amazing arts/cultural/ideas radio station based in London and streamed live over the web
www.resonancefm.com/ - My favourite musicians are the duos of Chris Wood & Andy Cutting; and Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill - respectively English and Irish folk music
www.englishacousticcollective.org.uk/
www.martinhayes.com/ - My favourite work on the stage is anything directed/created by Klaus Obermaier, an Austrian who mixes contemporary dance with video art
www.exile.at/ko/ - My second home is this wonderful yoga studio in North London - drop in for a class the next time you are here
www.yogajunction.co.uk/
My English teaching experience has involved working with executives at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Sumitomo Trading Company in Japan, where I also taught in Junior and Senior High Schools.
On returning to England, I went into publishing, working for Longman as their Asia publisher. I have since worked as a freelance editor, project manager and as a ghost writer and am now the editor of English Teaching Professional. I have recently written four levels of Teacher's Books for Inside Out, as well as working on In Company and am also the author of a workbook which accompanies a video for Pearson Education
I divide my time between teaching and writing ELT materials in Oxford, UK where I have taught for about fifteen years. During this time I have also taught in Paris, Macedonia and very briefly in India and Vietnam while travelling through.
I have authored or contributed to several ELT books, including Inside Out, In Company and soon-to-be-published Move series as well as a number of other ELT resource books and Internet-based writing projects. I particularly enjoy giving talks and workshops in different countries and meeting the teachers and students, that may, or may not, use our books.My ambition is to one day find the time to pick up my drumsticks and play the drums again.
I enjoy the challenge, in both writing and teaching, of trying to make classroom activities as meaningful, engaging and as enjoyable as possible.
The in Company web guides were researched and written by Adrian Tennant.
Adrian was born in Nottingham - home to Robin Hood - in 1966. After taking his TEFL Cert he started teaching in Spain and has since lived and worked in France, Hungary, Ecuador and the UK. While he was working in Hungary he took his MEd on a distance programme with Sheffield University.
In recent years he has run workshops and teacher training courses in the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia (Yugoslavia), Ukraine and Uzbekistan as well as in the UK.
As a materials writer he has been an advisor and co-author of five coursebooks - English Matters - written for schools in Uzbekistan and has recently written two resource books - Grammar and Writing for Skyline level 2.
I was born in Leeds, a city in the north of England. Today, I live in Oxford with my wife and young son. I have been teaching business English for twelve years and four years ago established English @ Oxford with my two partners, Colin Benn and Paul Dummett. English @ Oxford specialises in one-to-one and small group training for adults and professionals. Go to www.englishatoxford.com for more information.
In my spare time I enjoy long-distance running and I also spend a lot of time reading and listening to music. My favourite band is REM!
I grew up in Norwich, but now live in France. After three wonderful years in Cambridge doing lots of singing and a little studying, plus a year in Hamburg doing very little teaching and a great deal of other more interesting things, I went to the London Institute of Education to train as a German teacher. I quickly realized that I wasn't cut out for babysitting large classes of bored teenagers. Fortunately I had discovered the previous summer that teaching English to adults was much more exciting. (In those days you could still walk into a job with no qualifications whatsoever: I arrived at five to nine for my first day's training, only to have a book thrust into my hands and to be told my class was waiting upstairs!)
Around the same time I had also discovered the charm of France, and of one of its inhabitants in particular, so I decided to move over the Channel and on to TEFL. I parachuted into Lyon with all my worldly goods in the back of an ancient Renault 5, and once again fell on my feet. Twenty-five years later, I'm still here, still married to Brigitte, and still enjoying teaching English. In the meantime I have managed to acquire a TEFL Diploma, four children, a language school, experience on management and teacher training courses, a lot of grey hair and an immoderate taste for Côtes du Rhône and zeugma. I miss fish and chips, baked beans and choral evensong.
After several years commuting every day to Grenoble, I am now back in Lyon working for Infolangues where I am Director of Research & Development. We have eight training centres in South-East France and work exclusively with corporate clients, responding to professional needs in all languages. Our trainees follow programmes in our centres or in company, as well as by telephone, conference call and e-learning.
I have contributed material to Business Partners (LTP) and In Company, and I am currently finishing a book for publication in 2005. One of the fascinating things about writing classroom materials is (re)discovering all sorts of tricks and ideas I had forgotten I knew - it's an excellent do-it-yourself refresher course.
Much of my spare time is spent on music, mostly jazz; singing close harmony, playing tenor sax, composing and arranging for quartet, choir and big band. Listen to some samples.
Ceri Jones currently works as DOS at International House, Madrid Serrano. This is her third year in the post. She has worked in Italy, Hungary and the UK as teacher, trainer and Director of Studies. She has been involved with INSET training for non-native speaker state school teachers and in native speaker EFL courses. She has also co-written a number of books for ELT publishers, including Straighforward, Inside Out, and American Inside Out for Macmillan.
Teaching
I've been working in ELT since 1992. Like many people I ventured into the classroom partly through design and partly by chance. I was travelling in Poland, completing my MA thesis on performance of the final plays of Shakespeare in Central Europe (post-Cold War), when an American university in southern Poland asked me to lecture for a few weeks on drama and public speaking. Before I knew it I was also teaching business English and loving it. The scripting and performance of business situations such as presentations and negotiations all seemed to make sense to me. So what was planned as a few months in Poland turned into four years.
Managing and Teacher Training
Since then I've also taught in Austria, Italy and the UK. I've been a director of studies for two business English and ESP departments and I'm currently running a teacher training department in Cheltenham, UK.
Business English Writing
Most of my writing work is related to business English or teacher training. Most recently I've completed a CD of tests to accompany the Macmillan In Company course which is due out in spring 2005. I've also written materials for the Business Focus, Profile and Quick Work courses (published by Oxford University Press).
Teacher Training Writing
For a number of years the Guardian Weekly has run a monthly EFL supplement called Learning Teaching. I'm a regular contributor and with a new regular column in the paper I wonder if I can claim to be the first ever TEFL 'agony aunt'. New teachers are invited to write in with their problems in the classroom and I respond with advice. You can see some of my replies online at the Guardian Education TEFL website. I also have a book coming out soon for newly qualified teachers called 'Lessons in your rucksack' (Modern English Publishing).
Conferences
You'll often find me at an IATEFL conference and I've been a committee member of the Teacher Trainers and Educators Special Interest group.
Free Time
I have two children aged two and five - they are my free time!
Tricia Aspinall has over 25 years' professional experience of working within the education sector. She has degrees in English literature, education and theoretical linguistics and has taught English in the state system and English language at private language schools in Cambridge. She joined UCLES in 1982 and during her 17 years with the organization she worked in the Test Development and Research Unit, the English as a Foreign Language Division and the Research and Evaluation Division.
As Deputy Director of International Development Division she managed the Cambridge-based secretariat. She also acted as a consultant within the Division and undertook consultancies in Europe, South America and East Asia. She worked on a variety of projects relating to language assessment, teacher training and curriculum development.
In 1999, she left UCLES to become a freelance EFL language writer and consultant in assessment. Tricia co-wrote BEC Testbuilder with Jake Allsop. Tricia lives in Suffolk, England with her husband, youngest son and two Border collies. She is also a qualified psychodynamic counsellor working for the National Health Service and in private practice.
After graduating from Oxford and Liverpool Universities, Jake Allsop began his ELT career teaching English in Italy and France before joining the Eurocentres organization. He worked at Eurocentres for thirteen years and was then promoted to Vice Director with responsibility for all the English schools. Then, after five years establishing and running an ESP establishment, Jake left ELT to become a Training Manager for a firm of Engineering Consultants. This experience took him into the world of industry, commerce and marketing, giving him a considerable understanding of the world of business.
Returning to the field of education, Jake formed, with colleagues, a consultancy called CADE (Cambridge Assessment and Development in Education) and participated in a number of curriculum and examination reform projects in countries as diverse as Vietnam, Turkey and Bosnia. During his varied career, Jake has been a prolific ELT author specializing in such areas as grammar, examination preparation courses and short story writing. Jake co-wrote BEC Testbuilder with Tricia Aspinall. He is also well known for his work in wildlife conservation, but currently lists his main hobby as trying to keep up with his five grandchildren.
I was born in Bournemouth, Dorset which was the biggest centre of ELT teaching in the UK outside of London, so it was inevitable that I would eventually get involved with ELT. I studied American Studies at Hull University with a Drama subsiduary. My first job was as a first year university student teaching eight German teenagers in my mother's front room. I used to call the material 'English for Zookeepers' because it consisted of lists of things like 'an ass brays', 'an ape gibbers' and 'drake, duck, duckling'. I had the sense to toss it in the bin and evolve strategies for teaching Beatles, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan lyrics instead and soon doubled my class size. This was highly beneficial, because you were paid per student per week.
I went on to do a research MA in English and American Studies with Malcolm Bradbury at the University of East Anglia, and then briefly worked as a road manager with a well-known rock band. I re-entered ELT at the Anglo-Continental School of English in early 1971, where my first supervisor was Colin Granger. I sat next to Guy Wellman in the staffroom, and Leo Jones was just upstairs.
Anglo-Continental produced much of its own teaching material, and we were encouraged to write and record from an early stage. There was a weekly stage show for students, run by Colin Granger, and the restaurant converted to a 400 seat theatre, which was always full. I was soon taking part with Colin and Guy, and met my wife Karen when she was brought in to do shows.
When Colin left, he bequeathed me the role of producer, for which I am eternally grateful. Roy Kingsbury joined us on piano, and sometimes when we did serious plays John Curtin would join in. I started co-writing seriously with Karen, turning out new stage sketches on a weekly basis, as well as an annual pantomime for host families and students. We split duties between production (me) and direction (Karen).
By 1975, I was Head of Elementary Studies at ACSE and was also writing with John Curtin on new material for ACSE London. That became a very early precursor of Survival English and was published by Mary Glasgow.
Streamline English with Bernie Hartley followed in 1978, and I started touring the world doing teacher-training and seminars. The rest of the Streamline series and American Streamline followed. In the mid 1980s, I started writing videos and working with Karen again, as well as developing the Storylines Graded Reader series. We specialized in video for several years, then co-wrote Grapevine (with an integrated video component) and its American version, Main Street. This lead to the Only in America video filmed in New York, which was Edward Norton's first professional film role and it was a thrill to work with someone whose work was so stunning that the crew applauded after takes.
In the mid 1990s we did one of the first ELT books with a communication skills syllabus, Handshake. Around the same time Heinemann approached John Curtin and me with a proposal to write a new course with the title and general approach of Survival English. To this I added Basic Survival, working on my own. I recently rewrote both and they were republished by Macmillan in 2004.
Karen and I have kept up our position of switching between work in British and American English, visiting the USA, where our oldest son lives and works, frequently. Karen and I still work heavily in video, and we adapted the three Wallace & Gromit animations into ELT versions, as well as writing the English Channel video series and then IN English for OUP.
Our website is www.viney.uk.com
