James Thomas is a freelance teacher trainer and author. He taught at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic from 1997 to 2016. In the last eight years 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 was written up by his colleague, Nikki Fořtová, in the ILSB 2017 Papers. 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. In 2010, he hosted the biennial Teaching and Language Corpora (TALC) conference, of which he is a committee member. He is 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, China and Austria. And he has given lectures, presentations, workshops and courses in Algeria, Austria, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Northern Cyprus, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, the UK and the US. He is published in a variety of journals, primarily those concerned with language education and technology.
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. In 2010, he hosted the biennial Teaching and Language Corpora (TALC) conference, of which he is a committee member. He is 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, China and Austria. And he has given lectures, presentations, workshops and courses in Algeria, Austria, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Northern Cyprus, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, 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 15 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 15 years. See the Books page in this site.
