About Your Teacher

My name is Lynne, I am a British expat and I started the Learn English web site in 1999 whilst teaching English as a foreign language in Darmstadt, Germany. Initially it was to be a small project to enable my students to practise and keep in touch after their courses ended. Of course the web isn't like that and since then I have received over 10 million visitors from all around the world - learners and teachers.

Unlike many other English language web sites, Learn English is completely free, unaffiliated to any school or institution and requires no membership to access the many features.

What about making money? Well, I have been approached by some people who wanted me to commercialise the site, but I have always turned them down.

Why?

• I love English and want to share my enjoyment of this great language.
• I believe in free education.
• I want to give something back to the wonderful world wide web which has helped me enormously in my career as an English teacher.

Nobody has yet come up with a way in which I can make money without compromising these ideals, and so I depend entirely on adverts, donations, sponsorship and affiliate links to help cover the ever increasing costs of hosting and developing the network.

In 2001 I got a bit bored just talking about English - I taught it - I spoke it - I wrote about it - and so I decided to start a site to help expats who were thinking of or had already moved to Germany. Hence was born the aptly named British in Germany web site. I like to think I have helped one or two people to find accommodation at least.

In 2003 due to the increase in traffic I set up a new web site called Learn English Online. This now runs the free lessons, there are now over 40 lessons and I hope to add more over time to enable everyone to improve their English in a fun, interactive way.

In 2004 my mother passed away. She had been ill for some time and I had been looking after her. This meant I spent a lot of time sitting by her bedside, and for want of something to do Complete Herbal came about. It started as a way of putting the book by Culpeper onto the www, but ended as being my tribute to my mother who was a wealth of information on all things to do with the garden. As she is the one who rescued the book from a fire it seemed only fitting. The project is ongoing, but I'm in no hurry.

Does the net really need yet another Blog? Probably not! But I am beginning to feel left out, so here I go. I definitely get the feeling that I may be becoming an Internet bore though.

At the end of the day I write so much that goes out once via newsletters or mails to visitors to my web sites I thought this would give me the opportunity to remember some of the rubbish that I send into hyperspace. So here you will find an eclectic mixture of news, personal thoughts and fun stuff - keep reading.

Oh and for those of you who keep asking, I'm happily married, with no children (if I had children I wouldn't have time for the site). I have two dogs and a cat. You can see them on my Flickr account.