Louis Alexander Essay, Research Paper

Louis AlexanderLouis Alexander, who has died of leukaemia aged 70, was a prolific writer of bestselling English-language text books. In 1977, he sold 4.7m books, a feat recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the greatest number of copies sold by an individual author in one year. In Britain, the name of LG Alexander was not widely known, but abroad he was a celebrity: delegations met him at airports, television cameras appeared and lecture halls would be crammed with people gathered to hear him speak. None of this affected his unassuming modesty or diminished the warmth and generosity of his heart. Born in the United Kingdom, Alexander spent the war years with his mother in her native Australia. After returning to this country, he was educated at Godalming school, Surrey, and Queen Mary College, London, with one term at Cambridge University. While doing national service in Germany, he taught A-level English with the higher education corps. From there, he moved to the prestigious Moraitis school in Athens (his father was Greek), where he was head of English language for nine years – an experience that convinced him that the teaching of English as a foreign language had become stagnant, and was in need of change. His first major book, New Concept English (1967), was a breath of fresh air. Alexander had an instinctive feel for putting together a syllabus as a foundation for effective learning, and showed a genius for organising the language in ways which students – and their teachers – found immensely stimulating. With his publisher, Longman, he then embarked on a string of groundbreaking works. Look Listen And Learn (1968-71), Target (1972-74) and Mainline (1973-81) all enjoyed phenomenal worldwide success, and brought their author rewards and reputation that might have persuaded a lesser man to ease up. Not so Alexander, with his boundless intellectual curiosity and urge to create. He sat on the Council of Europe’s committee on modern language teaching (1973-78), and collaborated on two of their teachers’ guides, The Threshold Level (1975) and Waystage (1977), which were invaluable to subsequent course writers. He invested enormous research and analysis in the creation of the widely used Longman English Grammar (1988) and Longman Advanced Grammar (1993). He worked with Unesco on Junior English For China (1988) – in China, his is one of the most widely known western names – and in Egypt, his work has been extensively used in secondary schools for a quarter of a century. Throughout his life, Alexander welcomed new ideas, and would embrace any aspect of new technology that offered accessible benefits to the student. In pre-video days, he collaborated with Halas and Bachelor to produce cartoons on loop film for language learning, and, in 1979-80, he provided the blueprint, and wrote the classroom materials, for Follow Me (BBC and Longman), one of the first major courses to contain a significant video element. In the early 1980s, he produced one of the first computer-based language learning courses, in French and Spanish, for Atari; and for Direct English (1994), he created a body of fresh and innovative learning materials, including interactive CD-Rom and video, with internet components. Despite this workload, with Alexander there was always a simmering sense of fun. One of his many outlets was mountaineering, and he and his second wife, Julia, spent many of their happiest times exploring and camping in the Peloponnese, armed with a rare set of local military maps. Music, poetry, literature, painting, photography and the performing arts all absorbed his interest. His 70th birthday party in January was large, noisy and memorable. Alexander’s first wife, Athina, died in 1979. He is survived by Julia, his daughter Marianna and his son George. · Louis George Alexander, author and teacher, born January 15 1932; died June 17 2002