James Thomas is based once again in Brno, Czechia, after almost four years in Uzbekistan (2019–2023), the first two teacher training for the British Council and then as Visiting Professor, Director of MA TESOL at Webster University in Tashkent,
He taught at Masaryk University in Brno from 1997 to 2016. In the last eight years there he headed the English Department's teacher training section which, in addition to standard teacher training courses, featured an extensive in-house practice teaching model, which is described in a paper written by his colleague, Nikki Fořtová, in the ILSB 2017 Papers.
In between the Masaryk and Tashkent years, James was working as a freelance teacher trainer mainly in China and Algeria, as an author-publisher, creating this website and the books and resources that it displays.
His research investigates the application of language acquisition and linguistic findings to a new generation of language teaching and learning approaches. The main focus of his work is the L in ELT, i.e. language. He is particularly interested in the use of corpora by language teachers and students, particularly in the service of the grammar of vocabulary. The online text tool, VersaText, available through this website, was conceived during this period and programmed by Vit Baisa.
In 2010, he hosted the biennial Teaching and Language Corpora (TALC) conference, of which he is a committee member. He was chair of the Corpus SIG at EuroCALL. The first book he wrote and published through Versatile is Discovering English the Sketch Engine.
He regularly conducts intensive teacher training courses in the UK and China. He has given lectures, presentations, workshops and courses in Algeria, Austria, China, the Czechia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Northern Cyprus, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, the UK and the US. He is published in a variety of journals, primarily those concerned with language education and technology.
He taught at Masaryk University in Brno from 1997 to 2016. In the last eight years there he headed the English Department's teacher training section which, in addition to standard teacher training courses, featured an extensive in-house practice teaching model, which is described in a paper written by his colleague, Nikki Fořtová, in the ILSB 2017 Papers.
In between the Masaryk and Tashkent years, James was working as a freelance teacher trainer mainly in China and Algeria, as an author-publisher, creating this website and the books and resources that it displays.
His research investigates the application of language acquisition and linguistic findings to a new generation of language teaching and learning approaches. The main focus of his work is the L in ELT, i.e. language. He is particularly interested in the use of corpora by language teachers and students, particularly in the service of the grammar of vocabulary. The online text tool, VersaText, available through this website, was conceived during this period and programmed by Vit Baisa.
In 2010, he hosted the biennial Teaching and Language Corpora (TALC) conference, of which he is a committee member. He was chair of the Corpus SIG at EuroCALL. The first book he wrote and published through Versatile is Discovering English the Sketch Engine.
He regularly conducts intensive teacher training courses in the UK and China. He has given lectures, presentations, workshops and courses in Algeria, Austria, China, the Czechia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Northern Cyprus, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, the UK and the US. He is published in a variety of journals, primarily those concerned with language education and technology.
James Thomas won the 2010 ELTon for Innovation in ELT Publishing for his co-authored book, Global Issues in the ELT Classroom, published by Brno Fair Trade Society. We were very happy to be recognised as innovators and to accept this leading industry award.
His music textbooks, Discovering Musicianship Grades 1 and 2, published by Pascal Press, have been selling for over 20 years. See the Books page in this site.
His music textbooks, Discovering Musicianship Grades 1 and 2, published by Pascal Press, have been selling for over 20 years. See the Books page in this site.
