About the Author

Stephen Mark "Gil" Silvers has a master's degree in Spanish from the University of California (UCLA). He has nearly forty years of classroom experience, having begun his career as a U.S. Information Agency English Teaching Fellow at the Manaus Brazilian-American Cultural Institute (ICBEU) in 1972. There, in addition to teaching, he was also responsible (along with two other teachers) for the teacher-training courses. From 1974 until 2003 he was an instructor in the Federal University of Amazonas's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, where he taught all levels of English, as well as American Literature and the methodology course for future English teachers. His work with TPR began there, and included the coordination of a TPR training course for teachers in the Amazonas state public schools, funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Education, under the Program for the Development of New Methodologies. With the help of TVE Amazonas (the Amazonas state educational television station), he also produced two films, one documenting TPR in a university setting, and the other in a junior high school setting. From 2004 until 2010, he taught English to engineers at CT-PIM, a science and technology center for the Manaus industrial pole. There, with help from the company's computer department, he created and developed English Room, a website for EFL/ESL learners. He was a presenter at the Twelfth Annual TESOL Convention in Mexico City, and made presentations at various BRAZ-TESOL conventions and ENPULI conferences (a Brazilian national conference of university-level English teachers). He is the author of Listen and Perform* (Sky Oaks), The Command Book* (Sky Oaks), Point and Touch: Grammar and Vocabulary Exercises for Beginning EFL Students (Federal University of Amazonas) and Listen and Act (special editions for the Amazonas state public schools). He is retired and lives in Seattle, where he continues to work on and develop EFL/ESL teaching materials.