At the moment, I live in Vilafranca del Penedès, a town 50 kilometres away from Barcelona where I divide my time between teaching secondary students, training teachers, participating in the organisation of training courses for teachers and looking for new ways to motivate students to learn.

Teaching English is what I’ve been doing for twenty years, and it is what I try to do better everyday.

I started teaching in a Primary school where I had groups from 6 to 14 years old. It was really very hard and at the same time challenging because there weren’t any materials suitable for young learners, and the older children had materials using an approach which wasn't very motivating.

So, I decided to attend ELT courses, reading and researching into a more suitable approach to teaching. I started co-ordinating seminars and giving courses organised by different institutions and writing articles for educational magazines.

Some years later the educational reform was introduced in Spain, and I was asked by the Catalan Department of Education to explain to teachers the main changes brought about by the reform. That's when I spent two years going round Catalonia visiting schools and teachers.

I needed to go back to the chalk and blackboard again, and I went back to school, a rural one, where I started to teach English through PE to 6 to 8 year olds. I participated in a project co-ordinated by the Resource Centre of Foreign languages of Catalonia investigating ways of improving methodologies for ELT.

As I needed time to write materials, I then asked for a secondment to write materials for the introduction of English to 6 year-olds through three approaches: Curricular, through PE and through Cross-Curricular Themes.

I then went back to teaching, this time to teenagers, and even after a hard day's work I found time to write Minibus with Maria which has been enjoyable, rewarding and great fun.

That's how I came to be an author with Macmillan Heinemann...