Joanna Smith

Managing Director & Course Author

Joanna is the founder of Pukeko Learning Solutions, the owner of the Language Fuel brand. She is passionate about language teaching and learning. After completing her Masters in linguistics, she taught languages and trained language teachers for over a decade. She also spent time researching best practice with a specialty in pronunciation teaching. For a handful of recent years, she worked in the corporate arena as a Learning and Development manager, where she designed, delivered and managed training programs in both face to face and online modes for staff globally. Since 2016, Joanna has combined her language, training and business expertise by developing the brand Language Fuel, and the ELT Training Library product. She also manages the wider business, Pukeko Learning Solutions, which provides Learning & Development services for organisations across New Zealand.

Jill Hadfield

Consulting Editor & Course Author

Jill has been teaching English and training English teachers for many years. She has had a global career, with time spent in the UK, France, China, Tibet, Madagascar, and most recently New Zealand. She has also travelled extensively to dozens of countries, giving workshops, sharing research at conferences and promoting the books she has written. She has written dozens of books and numerous articles on English Language Teaching, published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Pearson, Routledge, Macmillan, MET, ETP and online websites. In 2018, Jill was a finalist for both the Ben Warren Award and the ELTons Awards for Innovation in Teacher Resources.

Emily Bryson

Course Author

Emily Bryson is an ELT Materials Writer and ESOL Lecturer. She has written digital ELT materials for publishers such as MacMillan and the British Council. Emily has been an ESOL Lecturer at City of Glasgow College since 2007 and in that time has gained experience teaching all levels of ESOL students and developed a wide range of ESOL for Vocational Purposes courses. She has also completed various secondments such as Project Co-ordinator at the ESOL Network Project, ESOL Development Officer at Education Scotland and Peer Education Programme Manager at the Scottish Refugee Council. Emily has spoken at various international conferences, and has published a book on ESOL Resources.

Sue Leather

Course Author

Sue Leather is an ELT Consultant, Trainer and Writer. She is Director of Sue Leather Associates, an ELT Consultancy group which supports international ELT projects, both face-to-face and online. Sue has also written some 30 graded readers with publishers such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Cengage/National Geographic. She won the Language Learner Literature Award in 2005 for her reader Dead Cold and has been nominated twice. She is a board member of the Extensive Reading Foundation. ​An enthusiastic proponent of extensive reading, she has talked to teachers about using graded readers around the world.

Niki Joseph

Course Author

Niki Joseph is an ELT materials writer, teacher trainer and teacher. She holds an MA in Education. She has written successful ELT materials for a variety of global and local publishers. Her writing portfolio includes course books, workbooks, teacher’s guides and teacher training materials. She has also contributed to a reader series. Niki has taught all ELT to all ages and levels in many different countries. She particularly enjoys lower levels and primary or preschool. But she loves the challenge of a C2 class as well! She is a keen teacher trainer and has recently trained in India. She also work as a speaking examiner. These experiences all help her to make her writing real for the learner – student or teacher. During her free time, she works with her horses trying to figure out how to communicate more clearly and effectively with them.

Marili Maldonado

Course Author

Marili is a former lecturer in Language, Phonology, Psycholinguistics and Methology at the Teacher Education Programme, Translation Programme and Interpretation Programme at Instituto Superior del Profesorado in Santa Fe, where she worked until March, 2015, when she retired. She has led workshops for in-service teachers since 2000 and has lectured in Argentina, Chile, the UK and Serbia. She has taught English at all levels and in many different contexts (rural, bilingual, public and private schools) for over 30 years. She has published works on Didactics and Phonetics and Phonology in specialized journals. She is also the author of a number of coursebooks published by both Macmillan Education and Pearson.

Jane Comyns Carr

Course Author

Jane is an English language teacher, teacher trainer, manager and writer. Over the last thirty or so years she has worked in the UK, Italy, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Australia and now lives and works in New Zealand. Jane started writing for Pearson Education while training teachers on Cambridge Celta and Delta courses in London. She has co-authored several student’s books, workbooks and teacher’s books for the Cutting Edge series. While running training courses in Sydney she wrote a series of online courses for AMES Australia, including a training course for home tutors of migrants and refugees.

Marjorie Rosenberg

Course Author

Marjorie Rosenberg, originally from the USA, has been teaching general and business English in Austria since 1981 at university and in companies. She has written two books of photocopiable activities for business English: In Business (CUP, 2005) and Communicative Business English Activities (Express Publishing, 2018) as well as course books including English for Banking and Finance 2 (Pearson, 2012) and as a co-author of the multi-level series Business Partner (Pearson 2018-2020). Marjorie has also been an IATEFL BESIG member since 1995 and served as the Coordinator from 2009 – 2014 and as IATEFL President from 2015 – 2017. Marjorie is an active conference presenter and has given plenaries, workshops and talks around the globe.

Alex Semakin

Course Author

Alex Semakin has been a teacher of English since 1995, working mostly in Russia with short spells in the USA and Israel. Since 2002 he has worked for UK-based online TEFL courses as a trainer, director of studies, course writer and editor. In 2014 Alex received his MA degree in TESOL from the University of Manchester. His special interest is in communicative teaching of grammar. He particularly enjoys breaking down complex grammatical concepts into simple explanations for his students and materials users. Alex lives in Perm, Russia with his wife and two sons.

Patricia Oe

Course Author

Originally from the UK, Patricia Daly Oe has been teaching English in Japan to all age ranges for over 30 years. Recognizing the value of using picture books and storytelling methods, Patricia started writing and illustrating stories to use in her classes. Her first book “Peter the Lonely Pineapple” was published in 2001. Since that time she has had a further 14 picture books and 9 activity books published. In recent years, she has been writing texts for the series of Dragonfly Readers published by Oxford University Press. Over the past 15 years Patricia has been active throughout Japan in giving presentations to teachers on using picture books to teach English. She also holds workshops encouraging students of all ages to make and present their own stories.

Julie Belding

Course Author

Julie has a Masters degree in languages. She has enjoyed writing throughout her life and worked for two decades as a magazine editor. She is currently the co-director of a small publishing company, DayStar Books, for which she also edits manuscripts. In 2014 she gained a certificate in teaching English as a Second Language, and enjoys volunteer leadership of a weekly conversation class for immigrants. When not writing, editing or teaching, she enjoys tramping, Scrabble, and five lively grandchildren.

Daniel Barber

Course Author

Daniel is a teacher, teacher trainer and writer based in the south of Spain. He’s been teaching for over 25 years: in Mexico, the UK and Spain. As well as helping establish and run a language and teacher training school in Cádiz, he’s written for several publishers and self-published, too. He tutors on Trinity Certificate and Diploma TESOL courses and runs teacher development workshops at conferences. He’s written course books for primary and secondary school students, National Geographic Learning’s Look and Perspectives. Recently, he co-founded ELT footprint, a group dedicated to lessening the environmental impact of the ELT industry.

Anna Phillips

Course Author

Anna Phillips has worked in ELT for more than 30 years, teaching both multilingual and monolingual classes, in both the UK and abroad. Anna began writing materials for special courses as a senior teacher working for the British Council in Oman. Later, as Director of Studies and Owner-Manager of the International House school in Oman, she spent much of her time adapting and developing materials, owing to the lack of suitable course books for the needs of the students. Anna was also extensively involved in teacher training, both in-service and also for CELTA and DELTA. Anna has worked on a large number of textbooks for a variety of publishers. Her particular interest is making course books more ‘user friendly’ for teachers who are not native speakers of English.

Jen Dobson

Course Author

Jen Dobson is a teacher, teacher trainer, author and educational consultant specialising in early childhood English teaching. She has worked as a youth worker in London and has taught English in Spain for many years. Her first early childhood book was published in 2003, and she has worked with most of the major publishers, including coauthoring Oxford’s 'Mouse and Me', which was awarded an ESU in 2018, and most recently as lead author on Oxford’s brand new pre-primary series for Spain, ‘Archie’s World’.

Genevieve White

Course Author

Genevieve has been teaching English for over twenty years and has taught in a wide range of contexts. She has also spent the last six years designing ELT materials, many of which are relevant for teaching teenagers. She is delighted to share with us her best practices for teaching teenagers in today’s world.

Miranda Verswijvelen

Course Author

Miranda has been working for more than a decade in the eLearning industry. She is currently working as a freelance consultant and embarking on a PhD in education. She is passionate about creating high quality learning materials, and is particularly keen on gamification and action mapping as key parts of learning design. Miranda is a multilingual speaker herself, and through her partnership with Language Fuel, she aims to enrich the practice of language teachers with some of the latest elearning concepts.

Aleksandra Zaparucha

Course Author

Aleksandra is a Geography and English teacher from Toruń, Poland, with 30 years of experience in Geography and EFL/ESL teaching, teacher training, translating, examining and materials writing, including over 15 years of Content and Language Integrated Learning. Besides Poland, she has worked extensively as a teacher and teacher trainer across Europe, including the UK and France, as well as in Asia (Qatar, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iraq and China). Aleksandra has presented at national and international conferences, such as IATEFL World, IATEFL Poland and HERODOT network, mostly on topics related to CLIL and Global Issues in an English classroom.

Amanda Mcloughlin

Course Author

Amanda is a freelance teacher trainer and materials writer based in the Bilbao area in the north of Spain. She taught EFL and science in a primary school near Bilbao for 8 years and has been training teachers for the British Council for the last 10 years, specialising in CLIL and EFL methodology. More recently, she has been working as an author of primary and secondary CLIL textbooks for the Spanish market.

Ben Goldstein

Course Author

Ben is a writer, teacher trainer and conference speaker. He teaches materials writing on the online MATESOL program of the New School in New York. He has published two methodology handbooks for teachers: Language Learning with Digital Video (with Paul Driver) and Working with Images. For students, he has co-authored Evolve - a new adult coursebook series for adults - and Eyes Open/Uncover for teenagers (all CUP) and previously Framework and The Big Picture for Richmond.

Adam Brown

Course Author

Adam has a PhD in linguistics from the University of Edinburgh, and has taught in the UK, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and New Zealand. He has recently been Director of Research at Auckland Institute of Studies, New Zealand. He has (co)written and (co)edited many books and articles, on topics such as phonetics and pronunciation teaching, English language teaching and applied linguistics. Adam writes courses for the ELT Training Library in his "spare" time.

Leslie Foster

Course Author

Leslie has a Masters degree in linguistics. She has been teaching language and culture learning programs since 2000. She is one of SIL International’s five Senior Language and Culture Learning Consultant. For the past several years, she has started focusing on helping non-beginners through online courses and remote coaching. Leslie writes and consults on many of our online courses.

Katherine Bilsborough

Course Author

Katherine Bilsborough is an ELT author and trainer with more than 30 years’ experience. She has published print and digital courses for most ages and levels but specializes in primary. Katherine has two main areas of interest, (1) increasing the focus of environmental and sustainability issues into teaching materials and (2) training teachers how to create excellent, principled materials for their classrooms. She is the author of How to write primary materials (ELT Teacher2Writer) and is a founding member of the award winning global community, ELT Footprint.

Rachael Roberts

Course Author

Rachael is a teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer. She holds an MA in ELT, a DELTA, and is also a qualified coach. She has written a number of coursebooks for Upper Secondary and Adult students, including Navigate, Reach Up (OUP), High Note, Total English, Premium, Real Life (Pearson), and IELTS Foundation (Macmillan). She also has many years’ experience as a trainer on CELTA, DELTA and other Diploma level teacher training courses. Rachael is particularly interested in how what we know about classroom methodology can be translated effectively into materials for the classroom, and in helping teachers to develop a more confident classroom practice, by identifying and understanding their core principles.

Tania Pattison

Course Author

Tania Pattison is a freelance materials writer and curriculum designer specialising in English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Before launching her freelance career, she was EAP Curriculum Coordinator at a Canadian university. She now divides her time among writing EAP materials, designing EAP curricula for colleges and universities, and working on various editing projects. She still enjoys teaching, and tries to get back into the classroom when she can.

Kate Absolum

Course Author

Kate Absolum has been teaching, writing, and designing learning materials in a range of educational environments for almost twenty years in South Korea, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand. She is currently an Academic Writing Advisor at AUT University. Before this she was the senior curriculum designer for DMM Eikaiwa, developing curriculum and learning resources for Japan's (and possibly the world's) biggest online language school, delivering more than 1 million lessons a month. Prior to this, Kate was a lecturer at AUT International House for over ten years, mainly focusing on pre-tertiary English language programs for international students. She has extensive experience in IELTS, FCE, CAE, EAP, and curriculum, materials and assessment design, and academic literacy education both online and face to face.

Paul Ashe

Course Author

Paul Ashe is based in Spain and has been involved in the world of EFL since 1997. He has had many hats within the ELT sector including materials writing and editing for different publishers, Teacher Training (online and face-to-face), Educational Consultancy, Director & Director of Studies and has had the pleasure of teaching teachers and training Academic Managers all over the world. Paul has been training teachers online since 2016 and published his first article about using technology in the classroom in 2007 and is still experimenting with new ideas.