About the Author

Robert Buckmaster (M. Ed, Dip. RSA, ADTLM) is an English teacher, trainer and educational consultant with over 25 years experience in teaching the English language to teenagers and adults. He has taught students and trained teachers in Scotland (at Edinburgh University), in central and eastern Europe, in Central Asia, in northern and southern Africa. He also examines for major English language examinations. He does most of his work for the British Council but was the Director of Studies at International House Riga for 5 years. Rob is the author of The Grammar of English Ideas (because there is a better description of English grammar) and the founder of the English Ideas Project. At heart he is a contrarian and iconoclast. One of his first published articles was about coursebook absurdities (in Modern English Teacher October 1999) and he hasn't let up on his critique of teaching and teaching materials since. Robert is a keen fly fisherman. If you can't find him in the training room he's likely to be out casting a fly to a wild brown trout or other fish in a mountain stream. Emma Valahu (MA, Dip. RSA) is an English teacher with over 25 years of teaching experience, including 2 years as a CELTA trainer. She has taught for the British Council in Eastern Europe, for Southern Cross in South America, and for Bell and Aberdeen University in the UK, in locations ranging from a bamboo hut on a beach in Ecuador to a university lecture hall. Currently, she teaches people all over the world from the comfort of her smallholding in Romania via the Internet. She would describe herself as a defier of established norms, especially in the world of English teaching but also life in general, and a free thinker. When not winning the hearts and minds of students, she is a keen reader of science and 'whodunnits'.