John haycraft biography
- John Stacpoole Haycraft CBE (11 December 1926 – 23 May 1996) was an.
- Together with his wife, Brita, John Haycraft founded the International House World Organisation in 1953, when they opened their first school in Cordoba, Spain.
- John Stacpoole Haycraft CBE was an English language teacher and author who founded the International House World Organisation, which has shaped the evolution of the profession of English language teaching.
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John Haycraft
For the British physician and professor in physiology, see John Berry Haycraft.
John Stacpoole HaycraftCBE (11 December 1926 – 23 May 1996) was an English language teacher and author who founded the International House World Organisation, which has shaped the evolution of the profession of English language teaching (ELT).[1]
Early life
He was born on 11 December 1926 in Quetta, British India. He was the son of William Church Stacpoole Haycraft (1891–1929), who was a British officer in the colonial Indian army. He was the grandson of John Berry Haycraft and nephew of Sir Thomas Haycraft. His mother was Olive Lillian Esmée (1901–1978). He had one younger brother, Colin Berry Haycraft (1929–1994). His father died when he was still young, killed by one of his soldiers.[2]
His mother supported her family on a small army pension and worked as a tennis player.
Education
He studied at Wellington, in Berkshire, where he showed his natural leadership qualities and became head boy. Later with his brother they came back to
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International House London has a rich and prestigious history, dating back to the 1950s. As one of the leading English Language schools globally, where the CELTA qualification was originally founded, we take pride in where we come from. In this blog, we take an in depth look at the history of our school, and of its founders.
IH London Founder, John Haycraft, was born in India but soon moved to England. He studied his degree in Oxford University, and a postgraduate in Yale. After completing his postgraduate degree, he began working as a Tourist Guide and teaching private English Lessons. He found that he enjoyed sharing his language with others and quickly it became his full time career.
In 1953 John and his wife, Brita Haycraft, were living in Cordoba, Spain. They had been teaching English for some time, and decided to open their own language school. They believed in international communication and building communities across cultures. This became the focus and guiding methodology of the school, allowing them to share English with their students in a me
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John Haycraft, who has died aged 69, was an intellectual pioneer of the post-imperial age. He devised an imaginative system for teaching English as a foreign language which he built up into a network of a 100 affiliated schools in 20 countries, based on his own International House in London.
His career was colourful. When he was a child his father, an officer in the Indian army, was shot dead by an angry soldier. John and his younger brother Colin - who became equally original as a publisher before he died two years ago - were brought up by their mother on a small pension. But as a child John travelled through Europe, before being educated at Wellington and Oxford. After a post-graduate year at Yale, John went out to southern Spain with Brita, his young Swedish wife and closest colleague, to start an English-language school. They stayed there for six adventurous years which he later described in his book Babel in Spain.
They developed an original approach to language-teaching which emphasised theatrical techniques to dramatise dull grammar and texts. Back in London they est
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