About me
I retired from the British Army in 2006 having spent the final eight years of my 16 year career focusing on defence language training policy and quality assurance of language training. From 2006 to 2014 I was employed as a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster teaching undergraduates (academic English and the final year Bilingual Project) and working on a range of language testing projects and short language courses. From 2014 to 2018 I focused on Academic Enterprise both within the Westminster Professional Language Centre and the Faculty. In 2018 I became Course Leader, Polylang. Over the last 3 years I have been focused on benchmarking Polylang against the CEFR and making greater use of our VLE for formative assessment (listening, reading, grammar and language use) and for summative assessment (listening and reading). All Polylang assessments are based on CEFR-benchmarked test specifications which specify text genres and contexts, listening and reading actions, constructs and item types.
Teaching
Whilst working in a secondary school I taught French and German from beginner to A level. During my career in the Army I taught German, communication skills, maths, current affairs and management. Since joining the University of Westminster I have taught two modules on the MA in International Liaison (Military Institutions and Military Leadership and Management) modules in English writing proficiency and the final year Bilingual Project. Since 2018 my main focus has been on language assessment for Polylang.
Research
My current research is into the design of a language app to support language learners in all settings.