Paul Davies

I first taught English for four months in Zaragoza, Spain, while I was still a student.  However, that initial experience of ELT made far less impact on me than Spain - Franco's Spain. When I graduated two years later, I still didn't know what I wanted, except to travel (including going back to Spain) and to "do things." In fact, I drove a truck in England for six months, drove down to Marrakech, Morocco, in an old Land Rover, worked in a travel agency in London for the summer, and returned to Spain with the savings.

The savings soon ran out, and I was "driven back to ELT" to keep body and soul together - just like hundreds or thousands of other British people around the world. My part of the world at that time was Madrid. Then it started happening fast. I met a Mexican girl, started enjoying ELT (among many other things), wrote weekly (or was it daily?) to that Mexican girl when she returned to Mexico after about a year, took a ship (yes, from Cadiz to Veracruz, because it was half the cost of the plane) and joined my then fiancée in Puebla.

Suddenly I was immersed in marriage, Mexico and ELT, and enjoying it all. My adult life had begun - with a vengeance. I was soon teaching full-time at the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla... it was 1965... 1966... 1967... and the atmosphere was getting tense, not just in France and Germany, but in Mexico. There were student protests, riots, and even a few deaths. The University virtually ceased to function and salaries went unpaid month after month until I was forced to look for a new job. We moved to Mexico City, where I became the director of a branch of the Anglo Mexican Institute. That was when 1968 exploded into history and we watched.

Even so, those were what many of us oldies still consider the "golden years" of the Anglo. Once the worst troubles of 1968 and its aftermath were over, and the "oil economy" began to grow, many things flourished in Mexico, with the Anglo among them. But a lot was also due to the management of Walter Plumb and Ethel Brinton. The Anglo had begun to attract bright young ELTers - Colin White and "Nick" (John) Shepherd, Jim Taylor, Richard Rossner, Roger Gower, Jeremy Harmer, Michael Long... - and I would like to think of myself as one of them. It was a time of opportunity.

Among those opportunities was the very first book-writing project of the Anglo, "Active Context English" or "ACE," eventually published by Macmillan after extensive use in its pilot edition in the Anglo. I was fortunate to be invited to participate after only a year or so in the Anglo. That led to many other writing projects.

However, there's nothing quite like classroom teaching for a real teacher, and I had discovered that one way or another I was one, and a beginner as a teacher trainer by that time too. Anglo branch directors were "expected" to teach at least one course, but most of us taught several.

In 1972 I went to England to study for an M.A. in Linguistics at the University of Reading. Among the staff were David Wilkins (a key figure in the notional-functional movement) and David Crystal (a key figure in general). Between my return to Mexico in 1973 and my departure to start on a Ph.D. in 1981, I was involved in numerous interesting projects inside the Anglo and outside, including being team leader of a Mexican Ministry of Education-British Council-Anglo up-dating program for secondary school teachers, and setting up the Anglo branch in Puebla. That took my family back to the provinces, Puebla, where we really belong, although our 9 years in Mexico City were enjoyable. At the London University Institute of Education I was fortunate to have Henry Widdowson as my supervisor, but I'm afraid I let him down by soon dropping the Ph.D. because of work and family commitments once back in Mexico.

In 1992 I left the Anglo after 26 years (my gratitude for everything the institution and the people in it gave me) and joined the British Council in its growing ELT activities, principally teacher development and self-access center development in the Mexican public universities. I also worked with Thames Valley University as a local tutor and teacher on its two generations of open B.A. in ELT in Mexico. That work took me all over Mexico to universities from the U.S. to the Guatemala borders, and from the Gulf to the Pacific coasts. I loved visiting so many different places, but again it was people that made everything so satisfying - the teacher-students of the universities and my colleagues at the British Council and TVU. I still work with the British Council, with several Mexican universities, and occasionally with the Anglo.

I may be a little bit of a workaholic (teacher training, ELT consultancy, book writing at all hours of the day and night), but I find time to share with my wife ("El tiempo que te quede libre...," she says), my animals (a Labrador, a beagle and a cat), my two daughters and one son-in-law, the NBA via TV (although it's not quite the same since "Air" Jordan and "Sir" Charles Barkley retired and Patrick Ewing left the Knicks), and occasional novels.

What next? Well, much more of the same, I hope, plus some interesting new twists. I'm in this thing until the end now.