Written by: Andrew Preshous was involved in the travel business for five years before deciding to switch careers. Since then he has taught English in Greece, Poland, Hong Kong, Malaysia and the UK. He has been an IELTS assessor and also has an MA in ESP from Warwick University. He is the EAP Team Co-ordinator at Solihull College and currently specializes in teaching academic English to students on A Level and foundation programmes. Andrew is co-author of IELTS Foundation and IELTS Foundation Study Skills. Rachael Roberts has been in ELT since 1989, working in Portugal, Brazil, Poland and the UK as a teacher, DoS and a teacher trainer on CELTA, CELTYL, DELTA and LEVEL 5 ESOL courses. For 10 years of this time she worked at an FE College in the UK, which involved setting up new EAP and IELTS preparation courses with her colleagues and co-authors, Joanne Gakonga and Andrew Preshous. IELTS Foundation and IELTS Foundation Study Skills were born out of this experience, particularly the need to produce materials suitable for students at a lower intermediate level, who still wanted to study for IELTS. Rachael now spends most of her time writing, with her most recent work for Macmillan being the CD ROM and practice tests for Ready for IELTS. She also works part time at the University of Warwick as a teacher trainer. Joanne Gakonga graduated with a degree in Agriculture, maybe not the most obvious entry into EFL, but after graduation she wandered the globe for a few years, trying hard to find a job that she liked, and then in 1989, Joanne started teaching in Taiwan, as a backpacker. Over the past 15 years, Joanne has become more qualified and more experienced, with her career taking her to Switzerland, Kenya, Australia, the Czech Republic and back to the UK. After a couple of years in Australia, work followed with the British Council in Prague and in Kenya, where she went to be with her husband-to-be. In all of these places, Joanne was teaching more and more students who wanted EAP and IELTS training, and when she had the opportunity to train as an IELTS examiner, and subsequently use this in Kenya, she leapt at it. After moving back to the UK the following year Joanne began writing so much of her own material, she realised that there must be many other teachers in many other staff rooms who would welcome a lower-level coursebook for IELTS, so along with fellow authors they set about trying to address that need - two years later IELTS Foundation and IELTS Foundation Study Skills were created. Joanne Preshous.
