Mark Hellyer: For those that are interested, here’s a sixty-second summary: a modern languages graduate in French and Spanish, I did a CELTA way back in 1987 and started teaching on the Spanish island of Tenerife. While there I did the Diploma in TEFLA, which is the higher practical qualification in the industry. Then came back to the UK and worked in Manchester recruiting EFL teachers for a big nationwide summer operation. I left that for a stint in Abu Dhabi, and then came back and designed the University of Wolverhampton’s first pre-sessional courses; at that time some of my colleagues were just developing the first multimedia CD-Roms for English language teaching; they’d be museum pieces now, but back then before round-the-clock internet access it was all very exciting cutting edge stuff. While I was there I did a distance learning post-graduate Diploma in Linguistics at the University of Surrey, and then moved back to Torquay to run a year-round language school. I also became a local supervisor on International House’s distance learning Dip TEFLA course. In 2000 I joined LSC, where my main priority has been recruiting teachers and training them to deliver high quality English lessons. To complement my role at LSC I’ve spent a lot of my free time developing teaching resources under the Silver Hammer Publications label.

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