Working with Jack – An Influential Quarter Century Experience

Abstract

Professor Jack C. Richards has been an enduring and highly influential contributor to the field of applied linguistics and English language teaching for the best part of 60 years. He has touched the professional lives of many people working in these fields all over the world – researchers and academic colleagues, materials writers, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students, teacher educators and teachers, and language learners, and publishers. His publication output is legendary and it continues to guide and inspire the ELT profession. To provide an example of how Professor Richards influences, supports and mentors those he works with, in this paper I trace my own personal history and experiences of my encounters with his publications, and my collaborations with him as an author. My intention is to tease out, at least in part, the scope of his many professional interests and the way in which they have affected my own work. These works include a focus on the teaching of speaking and listening, second language teacher education, language teaching, pedagogy and curriculum development, and language learning. The account is necessarily and unavoidably selective, as it is derived from my personal experiences of working with him for the last quarter century. However, my overall intention is to pay tribute to his remarkable career.