Louis Alexander began in English language teaching as an English teacher in Germany in the 1950s and moved to Greece two years later where he spent most of his teaching years.  He was a member of the Council of Europe committee on Modern Language Teaching from 1973-1978 and one of the authors of The Threshold Level (1975) and Waystage (1977) works developed for the Council of Europe that have proved invaluable reference points for many modern English courses.

Fashions in language teaching and acquisition come and go and with them their advocates and authors.
Louis Alexander has stood the test of time because he moved with the times and was open to new ideas and technologies.  He continued to be fascinated by the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language throughout his long and successful career as an English language teaching author.

A prolific English language teaching author, Louis Alexander turned his hand to the writing of classroom course materials, self-study materials, grammar works and English usage books as well as producing computer-assisted language courses.  His most famous publications include: New Concept English (1967), Look, Listen and Learn! (1968-1971), Target (1972-1974), Mainline (1973-1981), Follow Me (1979-1980), Plain English (1987-1988), Longman English Grammar (1988), Longman Advanced Grammar (1993) and Right Word, Wrong Word (1994).  He also wrote courses such as Excel (1985) for Egyptian secondary schools and was a consultant for UNESCO on Junior English for China (1988).

Louis Alexander's success as an author was at its peak in the late 1970s.  In fact, his works were so widely known he achieved an entry in the Guiness Book of Records for the greatest number of books sold in a single year by any British author (4.7 million).
Louis began work on the Direct English course in 1994 and never looked back.  To him, the challenge of writing a motivating, 'guided self-study' course was too intriguing a concept to turn down.  Louis brought together the best of his ideas about course design and methodology and created some truly unique learning materials.  No other English language teaching author could have shaped a course that combines such light and manageable content with so thorough a syllabus.  It is widely believed that the Direct English course contains the very best of Louis' extensive work on language learning, combined with a freshness and innovation that you won't find in any other materials.