Louis George Alexander (15 January 1932 – 17 June 2002) was a teacher and writer, the author of
New Concept English and the
Direct English Syllabus and Course Structure.
Biography
A British author of
EFL course books, Louis Alexander was born in London and educated at
Godalming Grammar School and the
University of London, he taught
English in
Germany (1954-56) and
Greece (1956-65) where he was head of English at the Protypon Lykeion,
Athens (what is now the Scholi Moraïti).
Louis was a member of the
Council of Europe Committee on Modern Language Teaching (1973-78), and one of the authors of
The Threshold Level (1975) and
Waystage (1977), works developed for the Council of Europe that have been the bases of many communicative language courses and forms the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. He served on the Committee of Management of the Society of Authors (1980-83).
In 1986-88 he was adviser to the
University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate for the Cambridge Certificate in English for International Communication.
He was a writer of
EFL course materials from the 1960s onwards. Alexander consistently supported the cause of the relatively untrained non-native speaking teacher of English.
He was a consultant for Junior English for
China (1988-) on behalf of
UNESCO. He created the blueprint for the Survive self-study series (1980-83, reissued 1989) for modern languages and published courses in the field of computer-assisted language......
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