Л.Г. Александер: Ұлыбританиялық мұғалім және «Жаңа ағылшын тілі» авторы

British teacher and author

Louis George Alexander (15 January 1932 – 17 June 2002) (commonly referred to as L. G. Alexander) was a British teacher and the author of numerous EFL course books, including New Concept English. In 1977, he sold 4.7m books, which was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the greatest number of copies sold by an individual author in one year (1977).

Louis Alexander was born Elias George Ftyaras in London. His father, George Ftyaras, was Greek and his mother, Mary Ftyaras née Manolas, was an Australian of Greek ancestry – "so he spoke perfect English and perfect Greek". During much of World War II he was with his mother in Australia, later they returned to Britain, where was educated at Godalming Grammar School and the University of London. From 1954 to 1956 he was on national service in the British Army Germany (1954–56), where he had his first experience as an educator, teaching A level English as an Educational Corps instructor. He taught English in Germany (1954–56) and Greece (1956–65) where he was head of English at the Protypon Lykeion, Athens (what is now the Scholi Moraïti). In the 1960s he started being published with Longmans. In 1962 his first book, Sixty Steps to Précis, was published and became a bestseller. His second book, A First Book in Comprehension, was published in 1964. New Concept English, his first major book series, was published in 1967. With Longman he also published such series as: Look Listen and Learn (1968–71), Target (1972–74), Mainline (1973–81). Louis was a member of the Council of Europe Committee on Modern Language Teaching (1973–78), and one of the authors of The Threshold Level (1975) and Waystage (1977), works developed for the Council of Europe that have been the bases of many communicative language courses and forms the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. He served on the Committee of Management of the Society of Authors (1980–83). The statue bears the following inscription: " the man who cracked the linguistic code of the English language and made it learnable for millions of students worldwide through New Concept English and many other course books". include: