Jane Willis: award winning writer, speaker and consultant on English language teaching

Jane and Dave Willis met in Ghana, West Africa, in the 1960s, teaching English—so it was a long partnership! They spent the next twenty years with the British Council, travelling the globe with their two daughters, teaching and teacher-training.

They returned to the UK in 1986. In 1990 Dave joined the staff of Birmingham University and Jane began working at Aston University, both teaching on TEFL/TESOL Masters programmes for teachers of English worldwide. Their specialist fields are task-based language teaching and lexical approaches; Dave was known for his work on pedagogic grammar and the relationship between grammar and lexis while Jane specialised in classroom interaction, especially young learner classrooms overseas. During this time they published several books, five of which have been prize-winners. In the early 2000s they retired gradually from their university work and moved to Kendal, a small town in the English Lake District, where they live close to their families and their five grandchildren. They have since written three more books.

It was Dave who set up this web-site in 2007 after he retired. He and Jane enjoyed the contact it gave them with teachers around the world.  Sadly Dave died suddenly in October 2013. He had nearly finished writing a book about why we need grammar and debunking grammar myths – for a general readership. Jane completed two final chapters and it is now available as an e-book from Amazon ‘Winning the grammar Wars: what grammar really is and how we use it’.   Jane has taken over the running of this new web-site.

For more about Jane, click here 

For more about Dave, click here