All entries for Thursday 09 May 2024

Louis Alexander (1932–2002) – an EFL syllabus and materials master craftsman

Writing about web page https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/collections/elt_archive/halloffame/louis_alexander/biography/

There are many practical insights about EFL syllabus and materials design in this recorded lecture / memoir by L.G. ('Louis') Alexander, recorded in 1981 and digitised for the Warwick ELT Archive.

Probably the only author of language learning materials to have had a bust erected in his memory (above is a photo of it taken recently for us by Zhang Ao* in the garden of the Beijing publisher FLTRP), Louis Alexander entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1977 for having sold the greatest number of copies of any book by an individual author in one year (The Guardian, 9 July 2002). The popularity of his New Concept English (Longman, 1967) series in China seems to have been the main reason for this entry, though his subsequent series Look, Listen and Learn (1968–1971), Target (1972–74) and Mainline (1973–81) all additionally enjoyed great worldwide success. Alexander also co-authored the influential 'communicative' Council of Europe syllabuses The Threshold Level(1975) and Waystage (1977). A full account of his career can be found in the Warwick ELT pages dedicated to his achievements.

* Thanks, Zhang Ao, and Zhang Yi for arranging this!

Richard Smith : 09 May 2024 21:42 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem