Paul Lennon

About myself: I grew up in Crosby, Merseyside, read English at Magdalen College, Oxford (MA Oxon) and then did an MSc in Management Sciences at Manchester University. After working for a year in the Media Department of Proctor and Gamble, UK, I went to Germany where I taught English for 32-44 hours per week at Inlingua and Euro language schools in Mainz and Wiesbaden for two years and lived to tell the tale. After that I did a one-year post-graduate diploma in English as a Second Language at Leeds University, This included some teaching at a secondary school (HAVO/MAVO) near Eindhoven in the Netherlands. I also taught 8-12 year olds at an immigrant reception centre in Dewsbury in Yorkshire during this time. From 1978-1979 I was British Council lector at Sofia University, Bulgaria and after 1979 I taught English at university level at Kassel University in Germany. In the summers I taught on international language courses in the UK and I have taught learners from all over the world.

I took a year off in 1982-1983 to do an MA in Applied Linguistics at Reading Universiy and then wrote my PhD part time while continuing to teach at Kassel. The PhD was a longitudinal study of the developments in spoken English made by German advanced learners during a six month stay in Britain. From 1987-1989 I was lecturer in Modern English Language at Birmingham University, UK. In the 1990s I was acting Professor of English for Economics and Business at Paderborn University, and then from 1994-2000 I had a lectureship at Gießen University, Germany. This involved a lot of work in teacher training. I was acting Professor of TEFL at Bielefeld University, Germany from 2000-2001 and then full Professor from 2003-2016. I now live in retirement near Manchester.

I am not the Paul Lennon who wrote Robbie: A Striker's Story, by the way.