Ian White was born near Exeter, England. After graduating in Bulgarian language and literature from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London University, he spent a year at the University of Skopje, Macedonia, where he studied Macedonian. His TEFL career started out in the early 1970's at St.Giles, London. He was appointed British Council Lector in English at Sofia University, Bulgaria, where he taught translation classes. After teaching English in Kuwait, Ian spent seven years in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia first teaching at the British Council, then at the Institute of Public Administration. Ian then gained an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Durham. In the late 1980's, Ian went to Istanbul as director of studies for a private language school. He moved to Izmir in 1995 working both in the Turkish private sector as director of studies and teacher trainer and as course tutor for Cambridge ESOL CELTA courses. Ian has also designed and run courses on teaching phonology and grammar at the British Council, Izmir. Ian was appointed teacher trainer and English language instructor at the Izmir University of Economics in September 2003. He also teaches Russian. Ian is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.