Andy Gillett has spent most of the last 45 years teaching English, applied linguistics, study & research skills and related subjects both in the UK and abroad. During this time he has taught mainly ESP – English for Specific Purposes – in universities, colleges, private language schools, offices and factories. For the last 35 years, most of his work has been involved with English for Academic Purposes – EAP – in British higher education. However, he has also been involved in projects in Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway and Tunisia.
Until 31st July 2009, he was predominantly involved in organising, planning and teaching EAP and study-skills courses to students taking a wide range of courses at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK. In addition, he taught courses in language studies at undergraduate level and supervised dissertation students and was also involved in postgraduate teaching in applied linguistics and English language teaching. This included designing, planning, running and teaching on the MA in English Language Teaching.
His teaching and research interests are all connected with the use of English in professional, academic and international contexts. He is particularly interested in the teaching of ESP, especially EAP, including the role of language and linguistic and study & research skills in academic and professional success, materials, course design, testing and teaching. As well as teaching, he has written articles on EAP for publication and given many presentations at conferences and meetings. He continues to be interested in current developments in ESP, ELT and Applied Linguistics.
Andy has been a member of IATEFL since 1976, and has been to and given presentations at many of their conferences. He has been involved with the ESP SIG since it began, and has recently been an editor of the ESP SIG journal: Professional and Academic English. He is also a member of TESOL, BAAL (British Association for Applied Linguistics), and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. For many years he has been involved with BALEAP – the Global Forum for EAP Professionals – and after spending some time as chair, he was then treasurer. He was previously Professional Issues Meetings Coordinator and in that role he organised several national meetings per year. Recently he has been attempting to put his EAP knowledge onto the Internet for use by students and teachers around the world. This has been available at https://www.uefap.org since 1999. He writes an ESP related blog, focusing mainly on EAP, at httpss://www.uefap.org/blog/