About Thor May

[The language in this summary is slightly simplified to help readers whose first language is not English]

  • Contact: Thor May
    + The Plain & Fancy Language Co.
    Department of English
    Sungsim College of Foreign Languages
    249 Pansong-Dong, Haeundae-Ku,
    Busan 612743, South Korea
    tel. 82-51-545 9484
    e-mail: thormay@gmx.net        
    homepage: http://thormay.net
    business:  The Plain & Fancy Language Company is an electronic editing company, registered in Australia. It specializes in making perfect English writing from material created by people whose first language is not English.

  • Origin: Thor was born in Australia in 1945. His ancestors came to Australia from England in about 1845.

  • Teaching: He has been teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language since 1976. For twelve years (1978-1990) he also lectured linguistics in universities.

  • Background Experience: Thor has taught in these countries: Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Indonesia, China, South Korea; (he came to Korea in September 2000). He has also visited perhaps twenty other countries. In Australia he taught hundreds of immigrants from every country in the world. Before he became a teacher Thor had many other jobs (about forty!), including aircraft dispatch officer, shipyard ironworker, office worker, commercial cleaner, newspaper copy boy, truck driver, taxi driver ... and so on. Nowadays Thor doesn't care how rich or important people are. He respects anyone if they try to do a good job, and doesn't respect them if they are lazy or dishonest!

  • Wealth: Thor has pretty simple tastes, moneywise. That's a necessity. He started poor, has always been poor (by Australian standards), and seems likely to retire and die a fairly poor man : years of study with part-time jobs, plus changing jobs and countries often is not good for making money!! However, he has never been in debt. Some folk have the lucky option of wealth + an interesting life. Thor's interests have often meant sacrificing a good income. No regrets, but donations gratefully received (smile)!.

  • Interests: Thor is an active person who stays fit with exercises every day. He likes running and walking a long way. No woman has convinced him yet that marriage is a better deal than being single, though he values good friends! Thor is rarely lonely or bored because life is so fascinating. He is very interested in computers, and has a huge "homepage" site of over 1000 files at http://thormay.net. Some of the files on this site are of book length. His other big interest is writing stories, essays and articles. You can see many things he has written on the homepage. At the moment (2002) he is also the writings manager and literary editor for Pusanweb, which is a kind of electronic information center and meeting place for English speakers in Busan, South Korea.

  • Everyone has at least one important question in their life. For Thor, the important question is "how does it work?". That is, he always wants to find out how everything works: a watch, a car engine, the human brain, China, Korean culture, you ...

  • Click here to see Thor's Résumé, and click here to see a List of Thor's Publications.

  • Thor's main qualifications are :
    1. Master of Arts in formal and applied linguistics
    2. Postgraduate Diploma of Teaching
    3. Cambridge/RSA certificate in teaching English as a foreign language to adults; (a syndicated course, done in Melbourne, Australia).
    4. Twice he spent several years researching a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy degree), but decided to discontinue each time after publishing some long articles. His first Ph.D. topic was in Generative Grammar (Grammatical Agency), and his second topic was in Cognitive Linguistics (about Formulaism in Language).
    5. At the moment (2002) he is doing a distance education course in technical writing at Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, England.

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