eeee = 6,608 Scott Thornbury Macmillan Books for TeachersContents About the author About the series Introduction An A-Z of ELT Index of terms used in the entries Bibliography AcknowledgementsAbout the author Ihave broad experience in what is perhaps a narrow field, having worked in the private EEL sector all my working life, as teacher, director of studies, school director and teacher-trainer, now in Spain (where I live), but previously in Egypt and with short stints in the UK and my native New Zealand. Teacher education has always been my special interest and was the subject of my MA dissertation at the University of Reading, Recently, I have been moderating a busy internet discussion group. To give you a flavour of that group, here is recent posting of mine: Let me put it on record, though, that I really don’t believe ‘there is only one way to teach’. Even ignoring the truism that there are of course as many ways to teach as there are teachers, the variables of context, learner, teacher, and Janguage (je. what role language is playing in the immediate teaching-learning moment) suggest that any notion of effectiveness is going to be elusive, slippery, ephemeral, and problematic. But better, I suggest, an approach that embraces the elusive, slippery, ephemeral and problematic than one that attempts to pre-empt it or circumvent it, as in the traditional coursebook and its one-menugget-a-day, faux-scientific, text-as-pretext, learner-as-consumer, kind of methodology. Scott Thornbury Thanks + 0 my editorial team: Jill Florent, Adrian Underhill, Penny Hands and Anna Cowper. Huge thanks, also, to Felicity O’Dell, Jonathan Marks, and Alan Pulverness, whose insightful reports helped shape (and correct) the work in progress, and to Brian Brennan, John Field, Ben Goldstein, John Gray and Carol Read, who generously contributed expertise from their respective fields. (But only the author is to blame for any residual errors in the text). Finally, this book would never have materialized had xx not been for the inspiration and enthusiasm of David Riley, to whom I owe a remendous debt. Dedication Pis for Piet.