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Ken Wilson is an ELT materials author whose work also involves training, theatre, music, audio production, and writing for radio and TV. He has written ten series of coursebooks and vast amounts of supplementary material, including books of sketches and more than 150 ELT songs. His course material includes Smart Choice, a four-level course for young adult learners, also published by OUP.

Ken has trained teachers all over Europe, Latin America, and Asia. After working as a CELTA trainer, he began to develop drama techniques and incorporate them into more conventional teaching methods. With his wife Dede, he ran a summer school called ‘Drama Plus’ for ten years in Hungary. Teachers from 30 countries attended these courses. More recently, he has trained teachers in China and other Asian countries.

After his first teaching job in Seville, Ken moved to International House, London, where he became a teacher trainer. In his free time, he started playing in a band, which led directly to two new strands of his working life. Firstly, he wrote songs for his English students, which resulted in the recording of the first-ever album of ELT songs, Mister Monday. Secondly, he joined the English Teaching Theatre (ETT) as a teacher/musician. He eventually became artistic director of the company.

The English Teaching Theatre was the brainchild of John Haycraft, the founder of the International House chain of language schools. Over a period of 25 years, the ETT made more than 250 tours to 55 countries. The actors who worked at the ETT, and the teachers and students that Ken met in these countries have been a major source of inspiration for the ideas in this book.

Alan Maley worked for the British Council from 1966 to 1988, serving as English Language Officer in Yugoslavia, Ghana, Italy, France, and China, and as Regional Representative in South India (Madras). From 1988 to 1993, he was Director-General of the Bell Educational Trust, Cambridge. From 1993 to 1998 he was Senior Fellow in the Department of English Language and Literature of the National University of Singapore, and from 1998 to 2003 he was Director of the graduate programme at Assumption University, Bangkok. He is currently a freelance consultant. Among his publications are Literature (in this series), Beyond Words, Sounds Interesting, Sounds Intriguing, Words, Variations on a Theme, and Drama Techniques in Language Learning (all with Alan Duff), The Mind’s Eye (with Françoise Grellet and Alan Duff), Learning to Listen and Poem into Poem (with Sandra Moulding), Short and Sweet, and The English Teacher’s Voice.