Words of worth

Jon Beasley-Murray's contribution is a good way of ensuring that the teaching-research divide is complete ("Why I", THES , September 26).

Over-paid academics will pursue cutting-edge research into "why our discipline is so problematic" while overskilled and underpaid language teachers maintain the "mainly oral" curriculum. The latter will be consoled by the knowledge that they at least have students to teach and that events such as September 11 prove that they still have relevance.

Mark R. Ogden
Language Centre
University of Leeds