Roy Dunning taught French and German for 20 years in East London before teaching a PGCE course in modern languages at the School of Education, University of Leicester. He completed a PhD in Applied Linguistics in 1974. He is joint author (with Alain Sudre) of La prise de la parole (Heinemann, 1972), editor of French for Communication (University of Leicester, 1983) and author of French for Communication 1979-1990 (Multilingual Matters, 1994).