Alexander, Louis G.

Short biography

Louis George Alexander, born Elias George Ftyaras in 1932, was the son of two expatriate Greeks who moved to London in the 1930s. He spent part of his childhood in Australia with his mother, but they came back to the UK after WWII, when they were reunited with Louis’s father.
Alexander studied English at London University, and after graduating, he was selected to teach at the Army’s Higher Education Centre at Hohner Lager in Germany. His classes were attended by men who were going to be demobbed after their war service, and thus needed to qualify for a job or university. To support his learners, Alexander designed a syllabus that responded specifically to their needs.
After leaving the army, Alexander obtained a job as an English teacher in Athens at the Protypon Lykeion (now the Scholi Moraiti), where he soon became Head of English. The school was attended by children between four and eighteen years of age, who were preparing for enrolling in some of the most prestigious British, French, and American universities. Syllabus design was again a fundamental part of his job, but he also began to write his own materials, as he was dissatisfied with the ones available at the time.
In 1960, Alexander got in touch with Dennis Walker, a representative for Longman, who recommended him to the Chairman of this publishing house, John Chapple. In 1961, during a visit in England, Alexander was interviewed by the Board of Longman and was offered a three-year contract for writing materials full time, on condition that he moved back to England.
He met his second wife, Julia Mendus, at Longman, where she was working as a teacher trainer. During their life together between 1980 and 2002, the year of Alexander’s death, Julia Mendus assisted his husband professionally by commenting on and proofreading his works, and by checking the exercises and indexes. She also wrote the teacher’s book for Plain English and provided examples for Right Word.
In January 1998, Alexander was diagnosed with a severe form of leukemia, but in April he managed to give his last keynote lecture at the IATEFL Conference, where he discussed EFL syllabus design and teaching methodologies.