I work as the Director of Education at International House, a large language school in Budapest, Hungary. I teach on training courses like the CELTA and DELTA and specialist programmes like "One to One teaching". Interestingly for someone who has made a career out of language teaching, I am quite hopeless at learning languages myself. I am determined to crack Hungarian - but after a few years here I'm not much beyond Pre-Intermediate level.

Out of school, I'm very interested in contemporary poetry and I organise and co-present an English Language performance event every month or so in Budapest - which has proved very popular. We produce a small e-mail poetry magazine (If you'd like a free copy please e-mail me at jims@ih.hu). I read a lot - and recently moved out of Budapest so that I could have a 30 minute train ride each morning and evening for uninterrupted reading! Well, that wasn't the only reason for moving ...