New Approaches to Materials Development for Language Learning

Peter Grundy

Conference Presentation: 'Optimality, context and materials in EAP'

Peter Grundy began his career in 1968 as a schoolteacher, and worked first in Britain and then in Germany. After a spell in initial teacher training, in 1979 he took up a post at University of Durham, where he remained until 2002 (apart from a two-year pick-me-up at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in mid-1990s). He retired 'early' from Durham in 2002 and currently has a 0.5 contract with Northumbria University, where he helps to promote research and staff development in the English Language Centre. He also works for University of Leicester on the professional doctorate programme in Hong Kong, teaches two MA modules at Leeds and has two PhD students at Durham. His two-year term as IATEFL President ends in April 2005, when he becomes 'outgoing' Vice-President. Together with Arthur Brookes, he is co-author of Writing for Study Purposes (CUP, 1990) and Beginning to Write (CUP 1998). He is also author of Doing Pragmatics (2ed. Arnold 2000) and of two books in the OUP Resource Books for Teachers series. He is currently working on an Art-based resource book with his Northumbria colleague Kevin Parker and expects shortly to start work on the third edition of Doing Pragmatics. Over the last year or so, he has been thinking about the kind of pragmatics appropriate to a lingua franca and the implications this has for language teaching methodology, hence the theme of his BALEAP presentation.

For more information, contact:
Olwyn Alexander
School of Management and Languages
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS,
0131 451 8189 | O.Alexander@hw.ac.uk

updated 22 October 2004