Life Beginner with the Spark platform

Life is a six-level, best-selling integrated-skills series with grammar and vocabulary for young adult and adult English language learners. Known for teaching students something new about the world through inspiring National Geographic content, the third edition showcases global perspectives and contexts relevant to students’ own lives that guide them to naturally personalize the language. Life continues to help learners connect with the world through its deeply integrated critical thinking strand, which now extends to developing the visual literacy, collaboration, and problem-solving skills they need for academic and career success.

John Hughes is an award-winning ELT author with thirty years’ experience of teaching and teacher training. He has worked with learners and teachers from all over the world and is a well-known conference presenter. For National Geographic Learning, he is an author on the course series Life, World English, Third Edition World Link, Fourth Edition, Success with Business, and Total Business. He’s also the author of the methodology title, Critical Thinking in ELT. His website is www.johnhugheselt.com.

Paul Dummett is a teacher and writer based in Oxford, UK, where he ran his own school teaching English to professionals from 1996 to 2006. He currently teaches refugee children in Palestine and Jordan with The Hands Up project. His main interests are the use of images and narrative in language teaching and how these can aid deeper learning and memory. Seeking out writing projects that explore these interests he has found a natural home at National Geographic Learning, co-authoring titles such as Life and Keynote and acting as a Course Consultant for Look, a seven-level primary series. He enjoys travel, exercise and live music/spoken word performance.

Helen Stephenson first taught business English in the 1980s. She has written in-house training courses and a course for upper-secondary students. She teaches at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.