Phil Ball

Phil Ball works for the Federation of Basque Schools (Ikastolas), based in San Sebastián. He has a degree in English Literature and Language, a PGCE in English, and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Essex University.  He began teaching in the late 1970’s in an English Comprehensive School, moved to a bilingual immersion school in Lima, Peru, then taught in Oman before ending the journey in Spain, where he has lived in the Basque region since 1991.  He taught Phonetics and Linguistics at the University de Deusto for six years before moving into materials writing and teacher-taining for the Basque Government and then for the Basque Federation of Schools, and has been closely involved with their successful plurilingual project, ‘Eleanitz’, now up and running since its inception in 1991.  He is also a distance tutor on the Funiber MA TEFL, and has recently written a CLIL module as part of the degree materials.  He has been involved in several European projects, has written five CLIL textbooks for the Basque Schools’ social science syllabus (studied in English), and co-written and performed the music for the award-winning primary project, ‘Story Projects’.  His book about his early teaching experiences in an English Comprehensive have been recently published in England (‘The Hapless Teacher’s Handbook’) and he is currently working on an adjunct scheme to publish English language materials which form a support syllabus for CLIL subject teaching. (ball.philip6@gmail.com)