I’m a teacher and teacher trainer at University of Westminster, in central London. I’m also – along with Andrew Walkley – the co-author of two five-level General English series, OUTCOMES and INNOVATIONS, both of which are published by National Geographic Learning. I’ve been teaching since 1993, when I did my CTEFLA at Westminster College. I then spent several years working in Jakarta, Indonesia, before doing my DTEFLA at Hammersmith and West London College and my MA TESOL at the Institute of Education. As a young writer, I was lucky enough to be mentored by Michael Lewis and Jimmie Hill, the men behind The Lexical Approach, a book which has had a profound impact on my career and my life in general!
In addition to all of this, I’m the proud father of two wonderful children, a life-long supporter of Arsenal Football Club and a borderline obsessive collector of old 60s vinyl records. I’m lucky enough to get to travel all over the world for work, but am also lucky to call Harringay in north London home.
hughdellar 
Thank you for the seminar in Yaroslavl, Russia. Absolutely charmed by the class you gave in the morning and the speech on the history of the Outcomes.
Thanks Olga.
It was lovely to meet everyone and to have the chance to work with you. Glad you enjoyed the sessions.
Hope you enjoy the blog – and don’t forget our Facebook page either: http://www.facebook.com/hughdellarandrewwalkley
I definitely love Michael Lewis and the chunky chunks! As a second language learner who grew up practically with the North American English variety (sorry? and practically a 48-year old learner of English since womb days!), I notice grammar, phonemes, and tones embedded in chunks. It’s really a great way of learning English. I teach grammar only incidentally, by that I mean, well you know what I mean. 🙂 I love your blog. Just discovered it when looking for Scrivener’s term for actual language samples of communication functions–“exponents.” I expect to learn more from you. Thanks for sharing.
Hello there John –
Many thanks for finding me here and for the comment.
Nice to know you came here via Jim’s blog.
Hope you find plenty to get your teeth into and that I’ll see you posting again sometime soon.
As you can probably tell already, my whole attitude and method was very much shaped by Michael’s work and by The Lexical Approach in particular.
I often quip – but half-seriously – that it taught me everything I’ve spent the last twenty years learning!
Creativity which I mean is that the knowledge that someone has acquired from some body gets a new dimension to muse about and he can find it with a different perception and apply what he has learnt in his own terms.Nowadays the corporate form of education has been understood to be related only with applications ,that is creativity means applications.. not exactly ..creativity will give a route that the learner will find his own direction.
Thanks for this.
Not totally sure what you’re getting at with the comment above, and to be honest I have a different definition – and understanding – of creativity, but always nice to have new people here. If what you’re saying is that one of the joys of the Web is that we all have the chance to stumble upon new corners and to be exposed to new ideas, or ideas from outside of our field, and that this can help us look at what we do day-to-day, then yes I agree.
Grammar is Dead article was spot on! I’ve shared it with our Network of trainers. We are also in line as regards the Talking Tech premise. Keep up the great work HD!
Hi Crissy –
Many thanks for the kind words – and for finding me here.
As the advert says, we are aware that other blogs are available, so thank you for choosing this one, etc!
Great to know you’ve enjoyed my rantings and ravings enough to share them on.
Hope to get round to doing another online talk-through of a recent Powerpoint session I did at a conference, on the theme of teaching grammar lexically!
Watch this space.
Hi Hugh
Just wanted to say ‘nice one’ for the blog, and the Innovations and Outcomes series. As a long time fan of the Lexical Approach, I’ve just embarked on the adventure of ‘converting’ the language school in Moscow where I’m DoS into a ‘Lexical Approach’ school, and as well as Michael Lewis’ original books, I’ve found the work you’re doing very helpful and inspiring. It’s even better coming from a fellow Gooner as well…
Hi Dan –
Thanks for finding me here – and thanks also for the kind words.
Always helps to know there are folk out there finding all of this useful!
We’re actually working on a theoretical / methodology book called TEACHING LEXICALLY due out sometime next year with Delta Publishing.
Hopefully once that’s out, it’ll serve as some kind of manifesto / rallying call and make things slightly easier for teachers interested in learning more about the whole approach.
In the meantime, I’ll slog on here as and when I get the chance, of course.
I’ll be in Moscow sometime next year for sure, by the way.
Don’t know how long for, but I always pass through at least annually as I do quite a lot of promo work in Russia.
Hope you’re enjoying there. Great city!
Cheers for now,
Hugh
PS: Four points clear at the top of the league!
And November is supposedly our bogey month!!
Hi Hugh
I can’t find an email address for you – so thought I’d leave a comment instead. Would you be interested in running a workshop at the NATECLA National Conference on 28th or 29th June at Sheffield University. http://natecla.org.uk/event/677/NATECLA-National-Conference-2014. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve only just discovered your blog which, as a practising teaching as well as NATECLA Coordinator, think is great!
Hello there Laura –
Many thanks for getting in touch.
My usual email is hughdellar@mac.com for future reference.
Under normal circumstances, I’d love to come up and do a workshop[ at the NATECLA conference, but I’m afraid I’m going to be away in Russia at that point in June.
Thanks for thinking of me, though – and all the best with it.
Hugh
[…] Hugh Dellar has been blogging since 2012. […]
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I am just wondering why there are no more comments after March, 2014?
Hi there. That’s basically when I put this site to bed and switched over to http://www.lexicallab.com, which is where I now do most of my blogging.