It is highly convenient to work out the suitable strategic mechanisms for us, language teachers, politicians and educative specialists and officers, to work on a different curricular model, able to foster learner’s autonomy.

For instance, students should develop techniques to use a dictionary independently which happens to become a powerful tool to extend lexical competence, functional grammar notions (thanks to the variation of examples of usage) and phonetic notions. But teachers don’t believe in this. They’re not used to the autonomy in language learning.

I will keep the best and eternal memories of his meticulousness, his sincere interest in people and stories, his patience to listen to people and speak to them (even if my English was not fluent), his great understanding of humour and his own hugely humorous narratives, his uninhibited laughter, his tranquillity when things around are chaotic or unpleasant (we were exchanging our experiences with procrastination), his ability to praise what people are doing, his incredible knowledge about the world, languages and countries (he even knew a lot about my parents‘ home country, Serbia, which he even has visited once), his sensitive attentiveness about what was happening around him and unrestricted interest from academic topics to so many others such as sports, his kindness to offer more than is expected; he was utterly empathic and enthusiastic, and as much as I missed him since my departure then, I will miss and never forget him and all the so pleasant characteristics he represents for me.

I am wreathed in sorrow because of his passing away, but try to find solace in that I was lucky to get to know him and spend some time with him as a supervisor and keep contact afterwards as friends, and, moreover, that through all his influence on people his personality will forever be a part of everyone’s life who had the great pleasure to knowing him.

I remember me telling him during our first lunch break on campus, when my internship started, that I felt so restricted with my basic English and that I could just live in Germany since German is my mother tongue; he didn’t agree with my pessimism, and in the following weeks and years, I came to understand what he meant. This is just one example of how he changed my thinking to the better: his optimism and openness to other worlds was just amazingly huge. Indeed, my English has improved; he was right: one can learn to a great extent. Basically, it has been his talent to create comfort in every situation and his so enjoyable personality that facilitated my learning of English. So, whenever I speak English now, it is deeply linked to the influence he had on me, to him as my sort of informal teacher in English and confidence, more than to all my English teachers in my nine years of lessons at school. In console myself with the thought that, in a sense, he is always around through these influences.

I first met Richard in 2000 at HKUST, when he spent one afternoon talking to a colleague and me about the self-access centre there that he managed. He was kind and patient, and was only too keen to answer our endless questions about issues relating to learner autonomy.

Our paths next crossed at the AILA Congress in Singapore in 2002. At that conference, Richard and his colleagues gave a presentation on an aspect of their work which had a great influence on similar work that colleagues and I were then doing in Japan. We met again at the Independent Learning Association Oceania conference in Melbourne 2003, and at the Maintaining Control 2004 conference in Hong Kong/Hangzhou.

Coincidentally, Richard returned to the UK from Hong Kong around the same time that I returned from Japan. I visited him at the University of Nottingham in early 2006 and told him of a PhD programme I had applied for. He suggested that I should apply to Nottingham as well, and seven months later I began my studies under the guidance of Barbara Sinclair and Richard.

Over these last few years, I was fortunate to work closely with Richard. With Barbara we co-organised a conference; together we ran a series of seminars at the University; we worked on a research project together and co-wrote papers; and during this time Richard read and commented on my doctoral work, always with diligence and detail – in his own words, ‘Professor Comma’. In early December I submitted my thesis and visited Richard that day to share the good news and to thank him. Two days later, he officially took sick leave from the University, and I was aware that this was probably the end of our professional journey together through learner autonomy.

Back in November, at the ‘Realizing Autonomy’ conference in Japan, Andy Barfield introduced Richard’s presentation by saying, “More than a few people, though, will say: ‘It’s Richard who got me started in learner autonomy and saw me through. He supported me and made me believe my learners and I could do it.’” Richard supported me in much of my work in learner autonomy; he saw me through my PhD, and made me believe I could do it. I will miss him greatly.