[1] Widdowson was educated at Alderman Newton's School in Leicester and King's College, Cambridge, where he read English and modern languages.
[2] Having already received a Diploma in Applied Linguistics at Edinburgh during a period of study leave while working in Bangladesh, Widdowson gained a PhD in the subject at the same institution in 1973.
He has also published Defining Issues in English Language Teaching (2002), and Practical Stylistics: An Approach to Poetry (1992).
However, he has also published on other related subjects such as discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis, the global spread of English, English for Special Purposes and stylistics.The Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning calls him "probably the most influential philosopher of the late twentieth century for international ESOL" (674).
Defining Issues in English Language Teaching (Oxford Applied Linguistics) (1st ed.).