Anthony and Valentina Bamber | Since 1979 we have been running our summer English language courses for 10-17 year old students in Middlesmoor, a small village in Upper Nidderdale, North Yorkshire, in an AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) close to the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Yorkshire itself is half way between London and Edinburgh.

Teacher training and Development | We run teacher development courses for English language teachers in Middlesmoor at Easter and in August.

Intensive English language & culture courses for adult students | These take place throughout the year, and are planned according to the participants’ needs.

Professional experience | Anthony and Valentina Bamber have taught students and run teacher training courses in Middlesmoor, UK, and Europe for many years. Besides our teaching at Middlesmoor, Anthony has taught English language and literature at the Universities Bocconi in Milan, and later in Verona and Bolzano; while Valentina has taught English and done teacher training at the University of Bozen/Bolzano since 2005; there she also works as an online supervisor, supporting course participants in the development of their written and spoken English (through Moodle / Skype).

Published texts | Our three grammar books for Italian high school have been published by Bulgarini (Florence) in 2002 and 2007, and by Eurelle (Turin) in 1997. Our teacher training resource book The Teacher’s Kaleidoscope (1992) has been used in a variety of teacher training and development contexts.

Intensive English weeks in primary and secondary schools in Italy | As a result of a head teacher sending her daughters to Middlesmoor, we were invited to do an intensive week in an Italian secondary school in 2000. Since then we have done over 50 of such one-week courses, either organised by individual schools or as part of projects funded by institutions such as the Pedagogical Institute for the Italian community in Bozen / Bolzano, Italy. These intensive English courses are effectively teaching the students whilst at the same time introducing their teachers to different approaches, learning tasks and resources.

Conferences | We frequently give talks at British Council, IATEFL and other conferences on what our experience has taught us. Anthony has been writing a book to help teenagers to “Think the Modern World”, making use of his archive of newspaper articles and notes from books.

Lectures and concerts | Valentina Bamber is a professional singer and musician who gives frequent talks and concerts which illustrate the vocal repertoire in English.

English through drama work | English through drama activities is an important part of the teaching/learning in Middlesmoor; this has led to our theatre projects in Italian secondary schools, such as Anthony’s work on Shakespeare at the Liceo Visconti in Rome in November 2010. The students’ work was later presented at the TESOL 2010 Conference in Rome. This project is to be followed by a similar project in Spain in 2012.