ih journa lof educa t ion and deve lopment

17 Autumn 2004

Is Grammar Innate? by Mark Lowe

Bombay, Bogota or Birmingham by Paul Roberts

Carrots Can Help You See in the Dark by Carrick Cameron

Putting the Learner Back into Distance Learning Programmes by Karen Adams

Discussions on the Bus by Shu Jing and Melissa Lamb

Grammar for Advanced Learners by Wayne Rimmer

Revisiting Old Routines by Abbie Carpenter

Exploring the Principle of Reciprocity in Teacher Learning by Tessa Woodward

Contents

International House Journal of Education and Development • International House, 106 Piccadilly, London W1J 7NL, U.K. Tel: +44 (0)20 7518 6900 • e-mail: ihjournal@ihlondon.co.uk • Editors: Rachel Clark & Susanna Dammann • Subscriptions Manager: HelenaRamalho • Editorial Board: Nigel Beanland, Steve Brent, Pippa Bumstead, Michael Carrier, Roger Hunt, Jeremy Page, Scott Thornbury

Subscriptions: Contact Helena Ramalho, Subscriptions Manager, IH Journal of Education and Development, International House, 106 Piccadilly,London W1J 7NL, U.K. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7518 6900 • e-mail: ihjournal@ihlondon.co.uk ISSN 1368-3292

journal of education and developmentIssue 17 • Autumn 2004

Editorial

Classroom MattersTeaching in Civil Unrest by Rob OversonBombay, Bogota or Birmingham? by Paul RobertsAccessing the Digital Mind by Joel Ashton

Learners’ MattersPutting the Learner Back Into Distance Learning Programmes by Karen AdamsDiscussions on the Bus by Shu Jing and Melissa Lamb

Language MattersIs Grammar Innate? by Mark LoweGrammar for Advanced Learners by Wayne Rimmer

Teaching Younger LearnersRevisiting Old Routines by Abbie CarpenterCarrots Can Help You See in the Dark by Carrick Cameron

Career Development MattersMastering It by Will Hutton

Teacher TrainingProfessional Training by Rob WilliamsExploring the Principle of Reciprocity in Teacher Learning by Tessa Woodward

Book SpecialCutting Edge – the latest edition: An Interview with Sarah CunninghamTask Based Lessons: methodology by Frances Eales

IHWO News

Book ReviewsVocabulary reviewed by Leslie Anne HendraIn English: Starter reviewed by Elena RoseLONGMAN Active Study Dictionary 2004 reviewed by Julian L’EnfantGilroy’s Grammar Cubes reviewed by Melissa LambThe History of English Language Teaching reviewed by Rodney BlakestonIdentity reviewed by Benita CruickshankFast Class reviewed by Mike CattlinCreative Poetry Writing – Resource Book for Teachers reviewed by Andy CoxBusiness Focus reviewed by Alan Cargyl

Back Page: Guessing the Question

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T his editorial has a valedictory tone: we are steppingdown as editors after five (!) very full and very happyyears working on a Journal which we hope you have

looked forward to receiving every six months and haveenjoyed and found useful. From the first issue we worked on,taking over the baton somewhat nervously from suchprestigious names as Paul Roberts (thanks for thecontribution to this issue Paul) Matthew Barnard and CharlesLowe (see p. 12 for more on Charles’ recent work for theJournal) to this one, we have learnt an enormous amount:about language; about the teaching of language; about thetraining of teachers to teach language; about runninglanguage schools; about getting writers to meet deadlines(and read the style sheet!); about how to design a page full ofprint and the technicalities of printing: if you want to knowhow to stop your tif bleeding into your gutter, we can now tellyou – we think – thanks to our wonderful printer Peter Hooperof CKLitho and our equally wonderful designer Guy Dammann(yes he is a relation).

Over the years we have had contributions from some of thegreat ‘names’ in ELT, both inside IH and out – Robert O’Neillwas in the first issue we edited (Issue 8) and Scott Thornbury,Dave Willis, Guy Cook, Mario Rinvolucri, Jeremy Harmer,Andrew Wright, Brita Haycraft, Ruth Gairns, Stuart Redman,Tessa Woodward (in this issue too) and Sue O’Connell haveall been generous with their time and ideas. We hope theyounger writers who have made their debut in these pages,will regard their appearance here as the start of a brilliantcareer; their ideas have been among the most innovative andinteresting we have published. We would like to thank themany many friends (far too numerous to name!) whosesupport and encouragement have been completelyinvaluable.

We have had a good time and it has been a fantasticpartnership. But now it’s time to stop. Susanna is leaving forShanghai (again) and Rachel is doing some writing work forCUP, activities which leave too little time to concentrateproperly on this job. So we are delighted to say that KatherineHill has been appointed as one of the new editors (it is stillhoped that someone else can be found to work with her as wehave found this is definitely a two person job).

We hope you will find this issue as packed with ideas andsuggestions for becoming a more effective teacher or trainer,as usual. It’s good to have contributions from people from allover the IHWO – we welcome Abbie Carpenter and CarrickCameron (IH Huelva) Wayne Rimmer (IH Moscow) Joel Ashton(IH Lacunza San Sebastian) Mark Lowe (IH Baku) as well asseveral this time from IH London – but we are also delightedthat old friends such as Karen Adams and Tessa Woodward,have been able to find time to share some ideas with us.

Language training and language teacher training have changeda good deal even in the short time since we started editing thisJournal. A computer is by now almost essential part of ateacher’s toolkit as is the Internet. The Lexical Approach is nowwidely accepted and it takes its place among TBL, NLP,DOGME, PPP and TTT and all the rest of the ingredients thatmake up the ELT alphabet soup. We need all these elements ofa principled but eclectically selective teacher’s methodologicaland linguistic battery in a relentlessly changing market. Theprofession will continue to develop to meet the needs of thestudents and trainees we serve, and we hope that the Journalwill continue to do the same to meet your needs – the teachersand trainers who are our readers and our contributors. Thankyou for all your support and kind words over the years – weknow you will support our successors as generously as youhave supported us. So goodbye and thank you!

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Susanna DammannCo-editor

Rachel ClarkCo-editor

Nigel BeanlandAdvertising

editor

Helena RamalhoSubscriptions

editor

Editorial IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

EDITORIAL

CLASSROOM MATTERS

A Staff Meeting With A Difference

I .D.P. Australia, in Phnom Penh, had decided that the besttime to schedule Professional Development meetings wasSaturday morning, as all the teaching staff would be avail-

able. Needless to say, the staff were not very happy about this.The meeting was on a large balcony. This morning the

Professional Development agenda was scrapped in favour of asecurity briefing and the latest Embassy Advisory. The Aussiesread it out.

‘The latest advisory carries a list which is available on hand-outs. But I want to make sure you all have a chance to look atit, so I’ll read it out to you. The embassy doesn’t envisage acoup but there may be some civil disturbance because of theelection result. So you ought to have at home the following: atleast 200 dollars, passports, birth certificates, driver’s licence ifyou’ve got one. And if you have a car, remember to keep thetank topped up.

‘Now if you have to stay put, you’ll need 3 days’ food andwater. We anticipate you’ll have power and water problems, sokeep back some water for washing.

‘We’ve been informed by the embassy that in the event ofgun fire, the safest place in your house is the bathroom.’

So there it was. Embassy Advisory. The safest place really isthe bathroom.

‘Are we going to be evacuated if it gets bad like the coup?’asks an Australian teacher.

‘The Embassy don’t think it will, but if it does everybody’sgoing to need to contact their own embassy.’

At this, the Brits groan audibly. During the coup BritishEmbassy advice had been to ‘Make your way to Thailand.’

‘Now, three teachers have been pulled off their bikes thisweek so we’re advising you all to be extra careful. We know it’sdifficult coming to work during the demonstrations. The policeare overstretched with the protests and a lot of thieves are try-ing their luck. The advice is: don’t carry your rucksacks on yourbacks. Put them between you and the moto-drivers.’

‘When I came in today it was really scary. What’s the policyon when it’s too unsafe to come in? Will we be told? I mean isthere a limit?’ another teacher asks.

The director says, ‘The policy is that each individual teachermust make a decision on that. Obviously if you feel that it’s toodangerous, then you shouldn’t travel in to work. However, asteachers, we can help to contribute to normalising the situationby continuing to come in.’

Teachers start interrupting. ‘But this is civil unrest. There aremobs out there!’

‘There is no civil unrest,’ the director concludes. ‘There is nocivil unrest, not in the sense of Khmer Rouge activity. That iswhat the embassy means. I know this is a difficult time, but wereally are helping to normalise the situation, and our studentsneed that. In the meantime, you can comfort yourselves withthe fact that you are living through history.

I had arrived in Phnom Penh in 1998 a month before theelections. The departure lounge for the flight from Bangkokheld 4 people. Tourists were being advised not to visit. I got ataxi in from Pochentong airport and had my first experience ofCambodian roads, which are justly infamous for their potholes.We passed the Ministry for Arts and Culture, which was cov-ered from top to bottom in red graffiti.

I was working for I.D.P. Australia (of IELTS fame) who have alarge and very successful school there. (Television adverts,unhelpfully, showed students flocking out of, rather than into,the school.)

My students were nice, although the situation made somethings hard to teach. Their knowledge about their own countrywas good, but given the lack of opportunity to travel and theisolation brought about by civil war, there were large gaps inwhat they knew about the world.Here are a few of the words/ phrases Istruggled with:

Teaching in Civil UnrestRob Overson

Robert Overson has taught in Italy and Japan and spent four years teaching inCambodia. He currently teaches in IH London.

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We’ve been informed by theembassy that in the event of gun

fire, the safest place in yourhouse is the bathroom.

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Classroom Matters

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Classroom Matters IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

FamousNormally you just give an example, don’t you? And so you sayRussell Crowe or Michael Jackson or Madonna and the stu-dents say ‘Ah yes, famous.’ But in Cambodia nobody hadheard of these people. I tried ‘Hun Sen’, (the Prime Minister)and this sort of worked, but he’s famous for something else.‘Famous’ proved difficult to teach until I’d learnt the names offamous Cambodian singers.

Escalator‘Escalator’ appears a lot in E.F.L. textbooks. In 1998, therewere no escalators in Cambodia and this made it difficult toteach. I tried drawing a picture on the whiteboard but it justlooked like stairs. I tried explaining, ‘Moving stairs, they go upand down’. The students understood but they didn’t believeme. (In fact, there was one escalator in Psa O Russei, but itwas ancient and broken).

GeographyNobody teaches geography in Cambodian schools, but if atext contains ‘She travelled on foot from Moscow to Rome’,and the concept question is ‘Was she tired when she gotthere?’ then students need to know something about geogra-phy. One afternoon I asked my students to fill in a blank world

map. Their attempts were mind-boggling: Greenland wasRussia or Germany. Some students couldn’t find Cambodia.Others thought it was Zimbabwe and so marked Zambia andMozambique as Thailand and Vietnam respectively, which Ithought was a nice touch.

What’s the longest journey you have ever made?In other countries this might be a 12-hour flight or a long busjourney. In Cambodia, a student told me, ‘I walked fromBehambang to Phnom Penh.’ (Concept question for theteacher: ‘How long did it take him?’)

Asking questions about extreme events to give practice ingrammar needs some thought and you might end up withmore than you bargained for.

I was in Cambodia at a time when the Khmer Rouge weredisarming and later made peace. The country is safe to visitnow.

Handy Hints for Survival in Civil Unrest

1. Robbery: Everybody got robbed, all the time. The situationwas such that you had to budget for robbery. Advice is togive the robbers your wallet and phone card and don’tmake a fuss.

2. Embassies: Some embassies are better than others atkeeping their nationals informed.

3. Keep lots of drinking water in stock. It’s scary when theshops all pull their shutters down in an emergency.

4. Keep your documents together. And some cash.

5. Avoid political demonstrations.

6. Carry your rucksack on your front.

7. Don’t stand near soldiers. They are a target.

In the meantime, you cancomfort yourselves with the

fact that you are living through history.

Bombay, Bogota or Birmingham?Paul Roberts

The NEST myth

For many years the myth of the superiority of the ‘nativespeaker’ teacher has exerted a powerful influence on theworld of English Language teaching. In the private sec-

tor, schools and institutions across the world have typicallyadvertised posts reserved for ‘native speakers’ and thenproudly presented these people in their publicity materials.Many public sector institutions have also tried to recruit ‘nativespeakers’ to their staff, particularly for conversation classes orin any case to help learners with the speaking skill. The extentand impact of this practice has meant that large numbers ofstudents, when asked, have expressed a preference for a

‘native speaker’ teacher and those researching into learnerlanguage have often used ‘native speakers’ as the yardstickagainst which to measure students’ success.

At the same time, of course, most of the actual work ofEnglish Language Teaching across the world continues to becarried out, as it always has been carried out, by ‘non-nativespeaker’ teachers. Huge numbers of people now use Englishon a regular basis, having learned it from a ‘non-native speak-er’. Statistics are unnecessary to make the point that ‘non-native speaker’ teachers have been and continue to be verysuccessful indeed.

And yet the myth continues. Among my own students,recent discussions have turned on the same topic and the

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Classroom Matters

Paul Roberts has worked as an English Language teacher and teacher trainer in eightdifferent countries and has published a handful of ELT books. He is currently at theUniversity of Hertfordshire, where he is undertaking research into international English

same result has emerged: ‘native speakers’ are better. Littlewonder, then, that there has been a great deal of ‘fightingback’ on the part of ‘non-native speaker’ teachers and at leastsome support for their cause from the ‘native speaker’ quarter.

Exploding The MythIn the late 1970s, L. Smith suggested that, at least in some sit-uations, ‘non-native speaker’ teachers would be moreappropriate. Throughout the 80s and 90s, the questions ofownership of, authority over and competence in English have allaffected the debate, as has the question of an internationalstandard in the language. At the same time, the more funda-mental question of deciding who is or is not a ‘native speaker’has also been addressed. It has become clear that linguisticevidence alone cannot determine native-speaker-ness and that‘native speakers’ can only be distinguished from ‘non-nativespeakers’ on national or ethnic grounds. This matches manystudents’ perceptions of ‘native-speaker-ness’ as having to dowith a combination of skin colour, facial features and surname.

But supposing that a distinction, however rough and ready,can be made; supposing, even, that a national, ethnic distinc-tion were a valid one (and in my view it most certainly isn’t); canit be argued that, pedagogically, ‘native speakers’ are likely tomake better teachers of English than ‘non-native speakers’?

Until the 1970s, you could have made a case, albeit a flimsyone, for saying so, since most people learning English neededto communicate with ‘native speakers’. Even now, if a Brazilianlearner wants to know how to ask for a ticket at a railway stationin Harrow, how to make polite conversation at a dinner party inHarrogate or how to chat with a group of teenagers in Hornsey,a ‘native speaker’ will be most helpful, at least at some stage.‘Native speakers’ know what ‘native speakers’ say.

An International CodeBut most people today do not see themselves as ultimatelyaiming for any of the situations I have referred to: the vastmajority of people learning English need an international,cross-cultural communication tool which, where it isn’t familiar

in England, the English will just have to adapt to. Even if youaccept that the International English code is ‘Standard English’(another myth, in my view), the majority of ‘native speakers’ arenot the owners of, nor the arbiters of, nor even the most fluentin, that language.

The best people to teach English are those who are profi-cient in the language and who have some kind of experienceof using it cross-culturally and/or internationally. This is quiteirrespective of accidents of birth and how the language hasbeen acquired or learned. Whether English Language teacherswere born or brought up in Birmingham, Bogota or Bombay, islargely irrelevant: the only relevant factors are their expertise inEnglish and their ability to teach.

A version of this article was first published in English TeachingProfessional (March 2004).

ReferencesAhulu, S. (1997). General English: ‘A consideration of the nature of

English as an international medium’ English Today 13/1 (49): 17-23.

Annamalai, E. (1998) ‘Nativity of Language’, in Rajendra Singh (ed.)The Native Speaker (New Delhi: Sage Publications).

Braine, G. (ed.) (1999). Non-native educators in English LanguageTeaching (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).

Canagarajah, A. S. (1999a). ‘Interrogating the “Native SpeakerFallacy”: Non-linguistic roots, non-pedagogical results’ in Braine(1999).

— (1999b). Resisting Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press).

Chiba, Reiko., Matsuura, Hiroko., Yamamota, Asako (1995).‘Japanese attitudes toward English accents’, World Englishes 14:77-86.

Coppieters, R. (1986). ‘Competence Differences between Native andFluent Non-native Speakers’, Language 63(3): 544-73.

Dalton-Puffer, C., Kaltenbock, G. and Smit, U. (1997). ‘LearnerAttitudes and L2 pronunciation in Austria’, World Englishes 16/1:115-28.

Kachru, B. (1982a). ‘Models for Non-native Englishes’ in Readings inEnglish as an International Language (Oxford: Pergamon Press).

Kandiah, T. (1998). ‘Epiphanies of the Deathless Native User’s ManifoldAvatars: A Post-Colonial Perspective on the Native Speaker’, inRajendra Singh (ed.) The Native Speaker (New Delhi: SagePublications).

Medgyes, P. (1992). ‘Native or non-native: who’s worth more?’ ELTJournal 46/4.

Mufwene, S.S. (1998). ‘Native Speaker, Proficient Speaker andNorms’, in Rajendra Singh (ed.) The Native Speaker (New Delhi:Sage Publications).

Quirk, R (1991a). ‘The Question of Standard in the International Use ofEnglish’ in: Tickoo-Makhan L., (ed.) Languages & Standards:Issues, Attitudes, Case Studies. Anthology Series 26. (CS:Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (Singapore),Regional Language Centre).

Smith, L. (1978). ‘Some distinctive features of EIIL vs. ESOL in EnglishLanguage Education’ in Smith, L. (ed.) Readings in English as anInternational Language (Oxford: PergamonPress, 1983).

Widdowson, H. (1994). ‘The Ownership ofEnglish’, TESOL Quarterly 28/2: 377-89.

The vast majority of people learning

English need an international,

cross-cultural communication tool.

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Classroom Matters IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

Turning Off the Toys

We are living the digital age: CD, DVD, MP3, mobilephones and the internet now form an integral part ofour everyday lives. Students come into class wired-

up like androids, pressing little buttons, locked into who-knows-what drumming in their ears (probably some unknowntribal band from Fuji with an online radio show!).

OK, right, let’s turn it all off and start class.Board, textbook, talk to your partner, listen to the teacher, or

if you’re lucky, sometimes a cassette are still the staples of theclassroom. Their academic value has been proven beyonddoubt. These fundamental classroom ingredients, used cor-rectly, will provide the student with practice and input in all theessential language skills. Of course, this is the theory…

How often have you got your students into class – turned offthe toys (which they were very interested in) and started yourclass? Professionally, possibly with a touch of fun, you outlinethe aims of the class, get the students going with a quick andactive warmer… and then when it comes to the meat of theclass you find the students have switched off. They are asfunctional as their switched off mobile phones; their memorycards inaccessible. What you did last week is forgotten today.What you do today will be forgotten by the next track on theMP3, programmed to start as soon as class finishes.

You could drill the present perfect for half an hour, formgroups for role-plays and get them to copy the grammar fromthe board, but this is not the language of the modern memorychip. In his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972) Paolo Freire,the forward thinking Brazilian educationalist developed a verystudent-centred approach to teaching English for an class ofuneducated farmers. One of his main hypotheses was theimportance of providing the students with the language theyactually needed – the words for their farming tools and the lan-guage to describe the jobs they did.

The medium for many students today is the Internet – evenif the knowledge it provides is more sporadic, bizarre andsuperficial than the solidity of a book, its sheer speed andbreadth are what engages the modern mind. Put your stu-dents in a computer room connected to the Internet and theyare instantly interested. They may not be doing what you wantbut they’re turned on and logged in.

It is in this area that we must develop our teaching and edu-cation – providing essential skills and language in the class-room that students need outside the classroom. Navigatingthe Internet is an art and absorbing the information it feeds adiscipline in itself. The essential ingredients of the classroomhave grown and we as teachers need to grow with it. A schoolwithout an Internet classroom is like a school without books.This is not to say boards, books and the classroom are redun-dant. Their value clearly remains; what we have is an impor-tant, modern extra ingredient.

Technology and multimedia are what our modern minds arefed. For example, the latest Cambridge exams in June includ-ed a PET reading on Pete Tong and how he uses MP3 and CD

in his work as an international super-star DJ. If students are notfamiliar with the English jargon of Pete Tong mixing it up inclubs and on webcasts around the world they are missing outon essential modern language, culture and modes of commu-nication that they need in their exams and beyond.

How do we make multimedia a useful and practicallearning and teaching tool?A first point to note is that a class using a website, a DVD or atrack from a CD is a class using authentic materials. This is theone of the best sources of teaching material because it is real.However, it can also be a problem for the teacher because itdoesn’t focus on a particular language point. Authentic mate-rials by definition use language as a whole to communicate.This doesn’t make the material any less valid in the classroom– it just means it takes a bit more imagination to find a focus inthe material.

Find your material firstIt’s much easier to create a lesson around some materialrather than have a language point you want to study andthen trying to find the material to match it! So, how do youfind your material?

Look for material which complements a theme you’vebeen studying in class

For example, if you’re studying crime vocabulary maybe youcould look at a couple of scenes from a crime film (thou-sands to choose from!!). Students could act out the scenethey see, brainstorm vocabulary they hear or describe theevents to a partner who hasn’t seen the scene.

Ask the students what they’re interested inRemember you are trying to motivate your students by pro-viding material that is relevant to their lives. Students oftenlike English (or probably American) music. Ask the studentswhat artists they like, get the lyrics to some of the songsfrom the Internet and look for a theme you could exploit.Another option is to get students to make a profile and biog-raphy of a certain band by researching for information on theInternet – this could be done in class or for homework.Remember! To ensure effective learning it’s vital to prohibitcutting and pasting text from the Internet, from the start.This lazy technique can dramatically reduce what a studentlearns and needs to be controlled.

Classes using the Internet, movies and music are of coursenot a wholly new concept in teaching and there are many

teachers out there using these media in the classroom. Whatis changing is the amount of impact these media are having inour everyday lives. The youth (and some oldies) of today spendincreasing amounts of time in the digital world. Using a song inclass or having an Internet class has often been seen as ‘timeout’ or a breather from more traditional language learning. Inour modern world multimedia plays a much more central rolein our lives and this should be reflected in our learning. A mul-timedia class should be as structured and important as any

Accessing the Digital MindJoel Ashton

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Classroom Matters

class in your curriculum. Here are some ideas on how to makeyour multimedia classes effective and worthwhile:

Internet ClassesWebquestsA great way of manipulating the internet into a useful class-room activity is through a webquest. This modern activity isalready a classic. It gives the student a task-based activitythat, with the help and guidance of the teacher, can developreading comprehension and net navigation.

The best way to start creating a webquest is to find agood website, if possible with a topical theme for your stu-dents. The Olympics, Iraq, recycling, tourist attractions inTokyo. You name it, there is a great site for it somewhere onthe Internet. The key to a good webquest is that you, theteacher, navigate the website first and create a number oftasks for the students to complete. These tasks should beincorporated into a worksheet that can be examined togeth-er as a class before letting the students loose on theInternet. This way they will know what they have to do beforethey start. This is vital in the Internet classroom, as we saidearlier internet navigation is an art, and students need helpand guidance in this skill if they are going to complete thetask well.

Unless you have computers with fast Internet connectionsavoid sites with lots of Flash animation as they will take along time to load. It is this kind of knowledge you gain fromresearching your class well before using it in the computerclassroom. There’s nothing worse that designing a greatworksheet and watching the class grind to a disastrous haltas pages won’t load and students get distracted.

Internet Scavenger HuntWhile webquests tend to focus on navigating one site ascavenger hunt is Internet scan reading practicing how touse search engines (make sure the students use the Englishversion of a search engine!). For this activity you need tothink of obscure data and information you want the studentsto collect like the telephone number for Sydney OperaHouse or Tom Cruise’s birthday. You could also ask the stu-dents to find pictures of famous people or a flag for a certaincountry. A good scavenger hunt will have 10 to 15 things forstudents to find. Once again, you should find all the answersbefore using the worksheet in class. It’s also a good idea todo a few examples together first demonstrating how youwant the students to search for the necessary information.

It may seem at first sight that this doesn’t test the stu-dent’s English knowledge but remember, the students haveto navigate through a website to the correct information.They also have to think what information to put into a searchengine and then filter the results – all requiring comprehen-sion skills.

DVD / Video ClassesThe great power of DVD is that an unwatchable 2 hour moviebecomes a great 5 minute scene that can be analysed andused in the classroom. Forget all that fiddly rewind/forwarding

to get to the right place. What’s more DVD usually has a per-fect freeze frame giving the opportunity for all sorts of languageactivities much the same as you could do with a picture.

Music ClassesMusic is generally a popular choice with students particularly ifyou (or they) choose a song they like. What’s important whenusing music in the classroom is to think of what you as theteacher want to achieve by using music.

Music can serve all sorts of purposes in the classroom fromsimply relaxing students to practising a particular languagepoint to generating a discussion or for guiding a piece of writ-ing. All of these are valid and useful teaching techniques but it’sessential to carefully plan what you’re going to do in advance.

If you’re going to do an activity using the lyrics from thesong, look at the lyrics carefully first. Is there a lexical groupapparent in the lyrics, a grammar point or an underlying themethat can be examined in class?

Pooling Our Effort It may seem that it takes a lot more work to provide a modernmultimedia class than it would to simply teach the next gram-mar point in the book. This is true up to a point, but then agood class can always be used more than once and by shar-ing classes on the Internet we can all use each other’s class-es. This is the power of the digital age.

Your class today can be online for everyone tomorrow. Ateacher in Japan can access the same websites as a teacherin Mexico, just as a teacher in Italy can hire the same DVD asanother teacher in Indonesia. Therefore, if you produce awebquest it can be published online for any teacher with anInternet connection to use. If you design a DVD class to gowith Spiderman 2, teachers all around the world can downloadand use that class just by hiring the film from a video shop.

Englishdatabase.com is a new TEFL website offering aforum for teachers to submit and download multimedia class-es. Its aim is to always be providing new topical lessonsdesigned by its members for everyone to use. The websiteoffers lessons that use the Internet, DVD or music. Any teachercan submit or download material. Check it out today!

Students come into class wired-up like androids.

Joel Ashton has been teaching English since 2000. He has taught in Brazil, South Korea,Mexico, Spain and the UK. He is currently working at IH Lacunza in San Sebastian, Spain.His main professional interest is making multimedia an integral part of our classroomteaching. His ideas can be found on his website www.englishdatabase.com and he isalways looking for contributors and designers.

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Learners’ Matters IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

LEARNERS’ MATTERS

Putting the Learner Back into DistanceLearning Programmes

Karen Adams

Learning At A Distance

What are the key ingredients of an effective distancelearning programme? Looking at the descriptions ofprogrammes available across a range of disciplines,

you might think that there are three essentials: interactive web-based materials, online discussions and email contact with atutor or teacher. At first glance it seems that if you don’t haveIT, you’ve had it. But it doesn’t have to be that way…

In 2000, I was asked to produce materials for a new BBCWorld Service project. The BBC English Club was set up toserve the needs of learners of English in two key regions –China and sub-Saharan Africa – whose primary access tolearning programmes was via the radio and, more specifically,the English language teaching programmes of the WorldService. Learners would be invited to join the English Club bywriting in to Bush House, and, in return, they would receivematerials twice a year. Each set of materials would be com-prised of two booklets: a colour magazine, with quizzes andpuzzles designed to introduce the club member to new BBCprogrammes, and a themed ‘study booklet’ based on extractsfrom the programmes themselves. The aim was to reach up to10,000 listeners in these ‘hard to reach’ groups.

By the time it came to write issue 4 of the English Club mate-rials, more than 7 500 people had signed up to become mem-bers. More importantly, it had become clear via the question-naires which had been sent out with each issue that, in manycases, the individual member represented a network of people– family, friends, colleagues or pupils – who made use of thelearning materials. It had become very apparent that weweren’t speaking to individuals, but to groups of people, allvery motivated to make use of what was available to help themlearn. One challenge which then presented itself was how thematerials might be designed so that those who used themcould exploit more fully the learning potential which they rep-resented. And so the BBC World Service Learning Circleswere born.

Learning In A CircleThe idea of Learning Circles had been introduced in issue 1 ofthe material. The basic premise was simple – each member of

the English Club was encouraged to create their own club ordiscussion group, so that they could share their materials anddiscuss the radio programmes they listened to on the BBCWorld Service. Issue 3 gave guidance on how to set up aLearning Circle which was sustainable, and provided tips onlistening and speaking tasks which did not require a teacherfigure. In essence, the materials were providing learner trainingopportunities by telling the users how to adapt what is usuallyseen as ‘teaching’ methodology to their own learning situa-tions. The response to this was such that, in the followingissue, the Learning Circle Network was set up.

The Learning Circle Network was designed to promote inde-pendent, self-directed learning on a wide scale. English Clubmembers who had set up Learning Circles were invited to writein, describe their Learning Circle and join a Network list. TheNetwork list was then circulated to all participating LearningCircles, with postal addresses and guidance on the type ofinformation to include in a first letter. In effect, it was a penpallist with methodology attached.

By issue 6, the English Club had more than 10 000 mem-bers in more than 40 countries – and a Network list of morethan 800 Learning Circles. More importantly, it was becomingclear just how effective and important the Learning Circleswere becoming in promoting and supporting English-languagelearning.

The first indication of the success of the Learning Circlescame via a British Council supported project in Thailand for thetraining of English teachers. Set up with the aid of the co-ordi-nator of the BBC English Club project, Tim Moock, this initia-tive used the Learning Circle material to encourage teachers toset up their own independent learning groups, in order both toshare teaching material and to practise English. As time wenton, Tim and I began to realise that the Learning Circle conceptwas taking on features which neither of us had anticipated.What had started as a penpal-type project began to be usedby learners in different ways to support both learning andteaching within and between peer groups.

Ever-widening CirclesIn issue 7, we asked Learning Circle members to write in to tellus about their learning experiences. Here is just a small sam-

Karen Adams started her ELT career as a volunteer teacher in Sudan. She then worked inEgypt and Yugoslavia before joining IH London as a teacher trainer in 1990. In 2000-2001,she was responsible for the development of The Distance DELTA, the IH/British Councildistance learning programme for experienced teachers. Karen currently works on thedevelopment of education and qualifications programmes for social and marketresearchers.

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Learners’ Matters

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ple of the types of projects which were set up: A considerable number of groups told us that they had used

the Network list to identify other Learning Circles in their region– not, as we had imagined, to contact people in other coun-tries. Neighbouring Learning Circles were meeting up to holdsocial evenings, English language quiz evenings and, inNigeria, a group of Learning Circles formed their own footballcompetition.

Another group of Learning Circles informed us that they hadset up a materials-sharing system, exchanging books, videosand ideas for English-language activities.

Two Learning Circles in Nigeria met up to plan and deliver aseries of talks in local primary and secondary schools, encour-aging young people to get together to practise English.

In China, the members of one Learning Circle were separat-ed when they went to different universities. They wrote to tellus that the individual members then set up their own LearningCircles at their universities – but the original group still meetsup in the holidays.

This small sample of some of the projects which are nowunderway as a result of the BBC English Club initiative under-lined to us one important issue. The English Club began as ameans of sending learning material to individuals but devel-oped as a means of empowering those individuals to directtheir own learning. By providing the prompts, in the form of theprinted materials and information on the radio programmes,along with information about basic methodology, the learnersin the English Club project were able not only to create themeans for their own independent learning, but to promote andsupport that of many others around them.

Learning from CirclesThe BBC English Club project has now come to an end, but ithas left behind a legacy in the large number of Learning Circlesnow planning new ways to access learning materials and topractise English. The project could have been a run-of-the-milldistance learning ‘programme’, with the focus being on thedelivery of materials and guidance on how to use them.Instead, it became a learning activity for the producers of thematerials, working out how the materials might help build on

and support the tremendous motivation brought to the projectby the English Club members via their Learning Circles.Without electronic resources, we could not bring the learnersto the centre in the way that online learning can via email anddiscussion groups. However, what we could do was to helplearners create their own learning centres.

Finally, no account of the English Club Learning Circleswould be complete without one story. One correspondent, arefugee from Sierra Leone now living in Gambia, wrote to tellus that his Learning Circle had contacted another in Togo. Inhis letter to a member of the Togo group, he recounted thestory of his leaving Sierra Leone – and of leaving his brother,whom he hadn’t heard from in 7 years. The member of theLearning Circle in Togo who received the letter then informedour correspondent that there was a group of refugees fromSierra Leone living in his region and, yes, tracked down thelong-lost brother.

This was only one of many stories told by learners, oftenliving in desperate conditions, for whom buying a stamp tosend off their letter to the BBC meant a significant sacrifice. Asthe writer on the project, I felt humbled by the dedicationshown by many of the English Club members to their ownlearning, and by their willingness to share their learning and thelimited resources available to them. So, in answer to my ownquestion – I do believe that it’s the learners, not the distance orthe programme, that makes a distance learning programmesuccessful.

I do believe that it’s the learners, not the distance

or the programme, that makes a distance learning

programme successful.

Discussions on the BusShu Jing and Melissa Lamb

The 250 Brixton to Streatham – the road toenlightenment?*

Melissa first met Shu Jing on a basketball court in aChinese teachers’ college 28 hours from anywhereremotely recognisable. Shu Jing (nicknamed ‘the

tiger’ because of her basketball prowess) was trying to explainto Melissa (a newcomer to the game) the principles of para-bolic flight. Thanks to a Chinese-English dictionary theybecame firm friends. Shu Jing then went on to teach in a mid-dle school also in the middle of nowhere, whilst Melissaremained at the college. Their paths crossed two years later,this time in Shanghai where Melissa was working for the thenIH Shanghai, and Shu Jing was working for a Taiwan firmteaching toddlers totally physically and responsively. Melissathen curved up the coastline to Beijing to be with the British

Council, whilst Shu Jing rooted herself in a British-run primaryschool in Shanghai teaching ESL. Melissa (still no MichaelJordon) was delighted when her old friend flew over this/lastsummer to take a Young Learners course. It was Shu Jing’sfirst time abroad and proved to be an experience that threw upa fair few questions.

Shu Jing: It’s my first trip to Britain and I am here for a monthand a half. I came here to brush up on my English and myteaching skills. I’ve been an ELT/ESL teacher for 5 years nowand I was beginning to feel stuck in a rut. While I am here I amstaying with a friend Melissa, who is also a teacher. What fol-lows are some of the conversations we had on the way homefrom school. I think they are an interesting illustration of the dif-ferent perspectives of a Chinese teacher as a student inLondon and an English teacher of Chinese students in London.

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Learners’ Matters IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

WEEK ONE / DAY ONE: One price one Zone one? Shu Jing: You know what, all my classmates are Spanish. I amthe only Chinese person in the class. It’s really hard to under-stand what they’re saying.

Melissa: Can they understand you?

SJ: I don’t think so. They have asked me to repeat myself somany times that I have given up trying to say anything.

M: So, do you ask them to repeat themselves when you don’tunderstand what they are saying?

SJ: I do sometimes, but I think that it is really rude to ask themto repeat and I feel like an idiot doing so. I just try to guesswhat they mean or pretend I understand.

M: Don’t you think it would be better to ask rather than sit thereconfused?

SJ: I don’t want them to think my English is that bad.

WEEK ONE / DAY THREE: Increasing journey times

SJ: Why do the Spanish students keep interrupting the teacherand asking for the meaning of the words they don’t know?Why can’t they look them up in the dictionary after class?

M: Why not ask?

SJ: It’s a waste of the other students’ time because they mayknow the words already.

M: True, but what’s the point of coming to a class, sitting thereand not understanding what the teacher’s trying to say?

SJ: But they can guess and check afterwards.

M: Good point yeah, but if the words are crucial then they haveto ask. That’s what the teacher’s there for. If you don’t ask, youdon’t get. You need to take control of what you’re learning.

SJ: Yes, but I find it really embarrassing to ask. I would rathercheck afterwards.

M: What’s embarrassing?

SJ: I mean, I don’t want them to know I don’t know somewords, especially simple ones. As well as that, I don’t want todraw attention to myself.

WEEK TWO / DAY TWO: Slower through the mighty metropolis?

SJ: Do all your English teachers let their students spend somuch time in class discussing things?

M: Do you mean in an English lesson or a teacher-training les-son?

SJ: Well, both…I mean, I find that in my class we do a lot ofpair work or discussion in groups.

M: Yeah, presumably to gather ideas and to share yourthoughts and teaching experience and gain confidence speak-ing about a subject or to see something from different angles.

SJ: I can understand why you let the students discuss thisway, but it seems like the students control the class and there-fore we don’t need the teacher at all.

M: That’s a good point! What do you need the teacher for?

SJ: I mean the teacher can give us a conclusion of the dis-cussion and share her or his opinion with the class.

M: So, in China is this what happens?

SJ: Yes, the teacher is the centre of the class and they mustknow more than the students. They are supposed to have a lotof knowledge and so we respect their opinion. If the teacherdoesn’t get involved in the discussion then they don’t teachus, we teach each other.

M: You are all teachers and you can teach each other.

SJ: Yes, but we do all the work. What is the teacher doing?

WEEK TWO / DAY FIVE: Terminus??

SJ: I can’t believe we’ve come to the end of the course! I’vefinished the course, but I don’t know what I’ve learnt. I mean Iknow I’ve learnt something, but I have nothing to prove it.

M: What kind of proof do you want?

SJ: Maybe an exam to see what I’ve learnt or to see if myEnglish is better or not.

M: But it wasn’t a language course, it was a training course.How can you examine that? A theory test? Or should we allwatch you teach a lesson? Why do you need proof? You’vegot a file full of stuff and a head full of ideas.

SJ: Yes, there are a lot of handouts but they are on paper. I amnot sure if they are in my mind or not. Anyway, I think I’ve gotused to exams. Even though I am afraid of them I still think itis the best way to know what you have learnt.

M: After the exam does learning stop?

SJ: No, you can get to know what you have achieved andwhat else you need to learn.

M: Ok, but surely, the exam result will only tell you what youmemorised and not whether you can apply the theory or usethe ideas in the classroom. Why is it such a big deal to be test-ed? Why can’t you work out yourself what you’ve learnt?

SJ: No, I don’t mean we should just have a written exam. Imean a practical exam to see how we can adapt the method-ology that we have discussed.

That’s what the teacher’s there for. If you don’t ask,

you don’t get.

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Learners’ Matters

M: Yeah that’s a good point, but when you go back to yourclass in China you could try things out and change things ifnecessary and evaluate or reflect on your own performanceand take things from there.

SJ: But it’s not just for your own benefit that you should takeexams. I also think it is the teacher’s job to know what her/hisstudents have learnt in class as well.

WEEK THREE / DAY TWO: A zone too far?M: You know the special classes for Chinese teachers?

SJ: Yes I met one or two of them today.

M: I think some of the trainers are finding it a bit difficult. Theythink their trainees are rather rude. Talking throughout theclass, reading a paper, or just doing their own thing.

SJ: Really? Mmm, maybe they know each other too well.

M: Maybe, but the point is their behaviour isn’t professional, isit?

SJ: No, I mean, in their own classes I don’t think the studentsare allowed to chat. Actually, I don’t think this is Chinese cul-ture. Our culture is full of respect for our teachers. We would-n’t consciously be rude. Well, having said that, people do chatin meetings if they don’t think it’s important or if it is not seri-ous enough.

M: Yes, that’s what I thought. So what would you do if youwere the trainer of this group?

SJ: I’m not sure – maybe talk to them, let them know my feel-ings and tell them they are being rude.

M: You mean directly? Wouldn’t they lose face or be embar-rassed? Is it ok to talk to your students about your feelings?

SJ: I wouldn’t do it directly at first, but I would try my best tomake them realise they were being rude. If that didn’t work I’dtalk to them as a class directly.

M: So how would you do it indirectly?

SJ: Ask them their opinions on what they would think if theirstudents behaved in this way and how they would deal with it.

M: Sort of give them a big hint then? You think it’s not tooobvious?

SJ: Obvious enough, but it’ll work and it minimises embar-rassment. In China, as long as you don’t mention the name ofthe offender then it won’t be so shaming. So talk about eventsrather than names, even if everyone knows who you are talk-ing about.

WEEK THREE / DAY FOUR: Mind the gap!M: My Chinese students always tell me that London is dirtierthan they thought it would be, that the food is more disgustingthan any other food in the world, that the people are reallyunfriendly and it’s boring here, so boring that all they do over theweekend is sleep! Sometimes, I feel that they are endlesslycomparing Britain to China and Britain always comes off worse.

SJ: I can’t believe they told you that. They must know you verywell or it would be a bit of a rude thing to say, even if it’s true!

M: I can’t decide whether it’s culture shock…you know rejectthe new and everything back home seems rosy…or whetherit’s just acceptable to be so critical in China.

SJ: We do like making comparisons about which is better ...orthis is not good enough. Even if it’s something I really like, I’malways looking for something better. Like with food. This mightwell be really tasty, but to show just how tasty it is I need tomake a comparison.

M: So I shouldn’t be offended, then?

SJ: No, it’s not a personal criticism. They are just telling youtheir opinions. In this way, Chinese people are more direct thanEnglish people. People always point out the spots on my faceand offer advice on how to get rid of them. Or it’s fine to tellsomeone they are fat. …

This is where Shu Jing and Melissa got off the bus but theyare continuing to deepen their knowledge of each other’s cul-tures on the bus and off it.

Editors note: Being aware of and open to other cultures issuch a huge part of being a language teacher that we wouldlike to hear more on this topic: What, as teacher, learner, train-er, visitor or resident, has struck you about the languagebehaviour and customs of the people you are in contact with:What are you now accustomed to, which came as a shock?What adjustments did you need to make to your expectationsand behaviour? What have you learnt from your encounters,which might help others?)

* The number of our bus ‘250’ coincidentally means ‘stupid’ inChinese. So: ‘stupid conversations’ or ‘two stupid peopletalking rubbish on a bus’!

Yes, but we do all the work.

What is the teacher doing?

Melissa is now teaching at IH London after several years in China; Shu Jing, now teaching in Shanghai,after completing her Teacher Training course at IH London in the summer of 2004, returned to continueher work with children. The 250 bus is hoping to complete its course sometime in the near future.

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Language Matters IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

LANGUAGE MATTERS

Is Grammar Innate?Mark Lowe

Mark Lowe studied philosophy at Cambridge University. His career began with the BritishCouncil, first as an EFL lecturer in Iran (which he loved), and then as a Regional Directorin Argentina. He then joined Longman, working on their EFL list. Graded readers were hisspecial area, but he also published examination texts, practice books and ESP texts. Heretrained as an EFL teacher with Liz and John Soars in the 1980s, and has been back inthe classroom ever since. He has been a DoS in Saudi Arabia, Poland, Estonia, China andnow Azerbaijan – mainly with IH schools. He has maintained his interest in philosophysince his university days, and has recently published a number of articles on philosophicalaspects of EFL.

Last year I wrote an article for Modern English Teacherwhich attempted to give an overview of a multi-facetedsubject: the interface between language philosophy and

language teaching. In the present article, I focus on just oneissue – ‘Is grammar innate?’ I consider the contributions to thisdebate of three philosophers: Karl Popper, Wittgenstein andJohn Searle.

Let us start with Chomsky’s innate grammar theory. The factthat all normal children can readily acquire the language of thecommunity in which they grow up, without special instructorsand on the basis of very imperfect and degenerate stimuli, andfurther that children can learn certain sorts of language, such

as are exemplified by natural human languages, but cannotlearn other sorts of logically possible languages, provides over-whelming evidence that each normal child contains in someunknown way in his or her brain a language acquisition device(LAD), and this LAD consists at least in part of a set of deepunconscious grammar rules. (Searle, J. The Rediscovery ofthe Mind, Chapter 10).

This theory of language acquisition has been influential inlanguage teaching circles. It offers a theoretical justification forteaching language-in-use rather than language-as-system,and it has been quoted as a rationale for the so-called ‘NaturalApproach’ and other humanistic methods. It is often quoted as

gospel in CELTA and DELTA teacher training courses. It istaken by many people as part of the received wisdom of ourprofession. ‘If grammar is innate’, it is argued, ‘there is no pointin teaching it. The grammar of a language will develop natural-ly, like a flower producing petals’. Since the theory has thesepractical consequences for teaching methods, it is importantfor us teachers to be sure that it is correct – we need to be cer-tain that our teaching rests on secure foundations. In anyenquiry into the validity or otherwise of the theory, it is salutaryto test Applied Linguistics ideology against the reasoning ofphilosophers.

Philosophers have raised three fundamental objections tothe theory of innate grammar. The first stems from positivistphilosophy: what is true must be verifiable, or capable in prin-ciple of being falsified (in Karl Popper’s modification of positivistdoctrine). The second derives from Wittgenstein’s philosophyof linguistic analysis: what is true must be free of distortionscaused by linguistic muddles. The third is based on JohnSearle’s philosophy: a theory of language must be consistentwith what is known about how the brain works. Let us consid-er these objections in turn.

Karl Popper’s positivist philosophy rejects the innate gram-mar hypothesis because there is no evidence that could eitherverify or falsify it. There is no test that could demonstrate theexistence or non-existence of innate grammar rules in thebrain. Since the theory does not follow the basic criteria for ascientific hypothesis, it is therefore a metaphysical chimera.

In addition, there is abundant evidence to support alternativetheories of language acquisition. For instance, in his study ofchild language development, ‘Learning How to Mean’, Hallidaydoes not need to posit innate grammar to explain what hap-pens. We watch as his young son Nigel develops from one-word utterances (‘Mum’, ‘Cock-a-doodle-do’) to two-wordutterances (‘more jam’, ‘go walk’) to three-word utterancesand beyond (‘I want Bartok’ – Nigel’s enchantingly Hallidayanway of asking for music. The stages of Nigel’s language devel-opment can all be explained by the functional need to com-municate, by imitation and extrapolation from models and bywhat is known of the workings of the human brain. In Halliday’sdetailed study, and in others like it, the innate grammar hypoth-

If Searle is right, Chomsky’stheory is, in his words, a

‘stunning mistake’.

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Language Matters

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esis is redundant. The innate grammar hypothesis also begs the question. In

other words, it rephrases a mystery (How do children acquirelanguages?) as a solution (Children learn languages by meansof a black box called the Language Acquisition Device – theLAD). We do not know how the black box works: we have noinsight into what goes on inside it. Genuine scientific explana-tions explain the unknown in terms of the known. Either whatis large is explained in terms of what is small (for instance, lan-guage in terms of synapses and connections, or matter interms of atoms and molecules), or a mystery is explained interms of a generally accepted theory, such as gravity or evolu-tion. The innate grammar hypothesis does neither. The ‘solu-tion’ is as mysterious as the phenomenon it seeks to explain,and is therefore not a genuine solution.

So much for positivist philosophical arguments against theinnate grammar hypothesis. Let us now examine

Wittgenstein’s thinking on the issues involved. What follows isbased largely on Hacker and Baker’s commentary on the sec-tions of Philosophical Investigations devoted to following arule.

Wittgenstein’s analysis of what it means to follow a rulereveals deep confusions in Chomsky’s theory of language, andalso in much of cognitive psychology today. Both these sys-tems posit hidden rules that are innate and known implicitly,even though no-one knows them explicitly. These rules aresupposed to be encoded in the brain, so people follow rules ofwhich they have never heard and which they could not under-stand.

Wittgenstein demonstrates many problems with this theoryof rule-following. Here are three.

1.The theory is not conclusive. Alternative hypotheses fit thefacts equally well, and there is thus no proof that makes theinnate hypothesis preferable to others. (See above for oneexample)

2.The theory contains confusions and it leaves key questionsunanswered. Do these rules imply two separate domains:mental and physical? If so, how do the domains interact?(This problem is as old as Aristotle, and central to – andunresolved in – the philosophies of Descartes, Locke, Humeand Kant, to mention just a few of the most important). Arethese rules merely part of the description of how languageworks, or are they part of the software of the ‘biologicalcomputer’? How exactly do we have knowledge of theserules, which though innate and tacit are not available to con-scious understanding? Where do these rules come from,anyway? Did God put them there, as it were? If so, how andwhen? Are the rules innate or acquired? What is their onto-logical status? Are they a product of evolution? If so, howdid they develop? And so on… the theory is entangled in anet of unanswered and seemingly unanswerable puzzlesand deep confusions.

3 ‘Expressibility’. How are these rules ‘realised’ in the brain? Ifa child’s ability to master a language presupposes the childtacitly ‘knowing’ a complex array of grammatical rules, howare these rules represented in the child’s mind? Are the ruleswritten in DNA letters? Can there be rules at all, which havenever been and can never be expressed?

‘These questions’, Hacker and Baker write, ‘are merely con-ceptual confusions dressed up as theoretical problems’. Theyderive from muddles about the status of ‘rules’. Wittgenstein’sanalysis indicates the following principles that should govern aproper understanding of rules.

1.Any rule can be expressed. There is no such thing as a rulethat cannot be formulated. Rules must be available for guid-ance, cited in justification or criticism, used as a benchmarkfor evaluation, etc. The theory of unconscious, innate rules isincoherent.

2. It must be possible not only to follow a rule, but also to vio-late a rule. Rules which cannot in principle be followed orviolated are merely pseudo-rules, like scales on which noth-ing can be weighed, or yardsticks against which nothing canbe measured.

3.Rules are created by human beings. They are not to be con-fused with laws of nature, such as gravity, the second law ofthermodynamics, or the periodic table of chemistry.

4.Rules must, in principle, be transparent in order to partici-pate in a rule-governed activity. One can no more follow anopaque rule than one can see an invisible object.

5.At the heart of the problems over rules is a linguistic confu-sion. In ordinary language, rules are used for games, driving,financial transactions and social etiquette, etc. All these rulesare man-made, accessible to rational understanding, andused for making judgements. The rules of language are inprinciple the same: they are man-made, not innate.

Wittgenstein’s analysis of rules is but one example of a majorpreoccupation of his later philosophy: to disentangle linguisticmuddles that cause conceptual confusions – and thereby toreveal the truth. His analysis of rules leads to the conclusionthat the innate grammar hypothesis is nothing but a linguisticmuddle masquerading as a theory.

John Searle, Professor of Philosophy at Berkeley, California,has made many important contributions to our under-

standing of language and the mind. His first book, SpeechActs (1969), provided a framework of theory for the profoundbut unsystematic insights into language of his Oxford philoso-

We can better understand how language works ... by seeing how it helps us to live than by looking for

imaginary rules.

Language Matters IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

phy teacher, J.L Austin, and of Wittgenstein. Intentionality(1983) explored the relationship between language and theoutside world it sought to understand and mediate. TheConstruction of Social Reality (1991) relates language to man’ssocial life, taking further the social analysis of Intentionality. TheRediscovery of the Mind (1994) both summarises his previouswork and adds insights from neurophysiology into the work-ings of the brain. Searle writes with matchless vigour and clar-ity, and his work is a joy to read. His contributions to ourunderstanding of language and the mind are among the mostimportant of thinkers writing today, and repay careful study.

Searle has discussed Chomsky’s language theories in manybooks and articles. The analysis that follows is based mainlyon the relevant sections of The Rediscovery of the Mind.

Searle writes: ‘Chomsky claims that innate, unconsciousrules cause verbal behaviour. In other words, there is acause/effect relationship between ‘rule’ and language. Butstudies of neurophysiology indicate that language is causednot by ‘deep unconscious rules’, but by neurophysiologicalstructures that have no resemblance to the patterns of lan-guage at all. The brain’s hardware produces patterns, butthese patterns are not causally related to the language pro-duced by humans: they merely delineate the various possibleforms that human languages can take’.

He goes on to argue that such evidence as exists for innategrammar can be explained more simply by a different hypoth-esis. The Language Acquisition Device is not a discrete andisolatable part of the brain. Rather, the Language AcquisitionDevice is the whole brain. Moreover, this brain is a biologicalorgan like any other, except that it is more complex. The phys-ical components and structure of the brain – its synapses andconnections etc – account for the sorts of language that canbe acquired by human beings. There is no need to postulate,in addition, rules of innate grammar. Such a postulation isredundant and incoherent.

Searle also analyses the notion of ‘unconscious’ employedin the theory of ‘unconscious rules of grammar’. The notion isconfused and causes theoretical muddles. The term ‘uncon-scious’, as originally used in Freud’s theory of the structure of

the mind, relates to what is repressed, not to what is in princi-ple unavailable to conscious knowledge. Searle coins the term‘non-conscious’ to denote mental and physical biologicalprocesses that cannot be known consciously, such as the sys-tems of digestion, balance-while-walking, the workings ofsynapses in the brain, and so on. He thus avoids ontologicalconfusions about the status of the ‘mental and linguistic con-straints’ that are caused by the structure of the brain. They arepart of our biological systems.

If Searle is right, Chomsky’s theory is, in his words, a ‘stun-ning mistake’. Where we are unable to find meaningful con-scious processes, we postulate meaningful unconsciousprocesses, even deep unconscious processes. But suchprocesses are a meaningless chimera. They do not exist.

A further powerful argument relevant to the theory of innategrammar is put forward in Searle’s book Intentionality.According to that work, the whole Chomskyan focus on theinner linguistic workings of the brain is back to front. A properunderstanding of language comes, rather, from looking at howlanguage enables us to understand and cope with the outsideworld. We understand language rightly not by peering into theentrails of the brain, but by studying how language helps us topredict, to organise, to make things happen in coherent ways,to handle conflict, to love. We can better understand how lan-guage works, Searle writes, by seeing how it helps us to livethan by looking for imaginary rules in the head.

Some might argue, from the foregoing analysis, that it is pos-sible to salvage at least part of Chomsky’s theory by sub-

stituting ‘neurophysiological features of the brain’ for ‘innategrammar rules’. That is in fact what Searle does in his theory oflanguage and the mind. But if we do this, there are importantconsequences for language teaching methodology. Such a the-ory would provide no support for the so-called ‘NaturalApproach’ or for other humanistic approaches. Such a substi-tution would provide no support for approaches that rely on asupposed natural unfolding of the grammar system – onunconscious language acquisition. Such a theory would,instead, imply a need to teach a cognitive understanding of thesystems of language.

And that is the principal language-teaching consequence ofthis philosophical study of the innate grammar hypothesis.According to the philosophers, grammar is not innate. It islearned, not acquired. A proper approach to language teach-ing starts from this insight.

ReferencesAustin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words (Oxford University

Press).

Ayer, A J: Language (1936). Truth and Logic (Gollancz).

Baker and Hacker: An Analytical Commentary on Wittgenstein’sPhilosophical Investigations.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1975). Learning How to Mean (Edward Arnold).

— (1978). Language as Social Semiotic (Edward Arnold).

— (1989). An Introduction to Functional Grammar, second edition(Cambridge University Press).

Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts (Cambridge University Press).

— (1983). Intentionality.

— (1991). The Construction of Social Reality.

— (1994). The Rediscovery of the Mind (MIT Press).

— (2002). Consciousness and Language (Cambridge UniversityPress).

Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell).

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IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Language Matters

The place of grammar in the modern classroom

Trends and bandwagons come and go but grammarremains a cornerstone of language teaching. Learnersexpect grammar, and teachers who can explain rules

and paradigms clearly and helpfully. Nunan’s assertion back in1988 that most second language syllabuses adhere to gram-mar as an organising principle (Nunan 1988: 28) is probablystill true. On a practical level, as DOS I deal with consistentcomplaints from groups that ‘there is not enough grammar’ inlessons or ‘our teacher can’t explain the grammar’. (In fact, thestatus of grammar is reflected in all aspects of the IH Moscowcurriculum, including the materials we use (plenty of grammarfocus), observation feedback (praise for correcting errors),recruitment policy (teachers with good language awareness)and testing instruments (discrete grammar items).) I don’t seethis just as a Russian phenomenon. For teachers and learnerseverywhere, grammar is here to stay.

This does not solve the question of what grammar we teachand when, i.e. at what level. Here the problems start. Whatshould we teach first, comparative adjectives or the presentcontinuous? What is the earliest context to introduce themodal will: to mark instantaneous decisions (Ok, I’ll do it), or tomake logical connections (That’ll be Bill on the phone)? Whilea syllabus selects and grades grammatical items for learners,the rationale for learning one structure earlier than another,indeed learning it at all, owes more to tradition and intuitionthan empirical evidence (Mindt 1996: 245).

Advanced level grammarThe selection and grading of grammar items for advanced levellearners is particularly problematic because learners who havehad several hundred hours of instruction seem to haveexhausted all that we typically think of as grammar, for exam-ple tense and aspect. There does not seem to be much meatleft when it gets to high levels. Articulating what grammaradvanced learners are expected to know is important for test-ing too because we can’t measure what we can’t describe. Infact, if we turn to test instruments, published descriptors ofwhat constitutes advanced grammar only illustrate the prob-lem. For example, ALTE level four, which equates to theCertificate of Advanced English examination, states that‘…learners are able to use the structures of a language withease and fluency (UCLES 2001: 6).’ This is hardly a robust def-inition and the terminology employed would seem to be aimedat the lay reader rather than someone writing or following anadvanced syllabus.

The IH Core Syllabus, part of the IH Academic Framework,is at least more specific about what learners should study atdifferent levels. For level 7, lower advanced, it lists:

• the tense system of English• verb patterns (e.g. gerund/infinitive)• cleft sentences• modals• use of passive and active voice

• use of prepositions

For level 8, upper advanced:

• new uses of unknown grammatical structures• focus on syntax• indirect questions• grammar used in formal writing

My thoughts:

1.The language points cited are too vague to be useful. It isdifficult to know what to make of the first item ‘the tense sys-tem of English’. Should this be an overview of the tenseslearned at earlier levels or are there new features ofform/semantics to be studied? If the latter, what features?

2. If we look at the grammar menu on offer it is noticeable thatmany of the items appear earlier in the Core Syllabus. Forexample, ‘verb patterns (e.g. gerund/infinitive)’ come up atlevel 5, mid-intermediate, and ‘indirect questions’ at level 4,lower-intermediate. Of course, advanced learners still makegrammar errors and revision of tricky areas like verb patternsis definitely beneficial but it is not very motivating for them (orteachers!) to go over familiar ground once again (Hall andFoley 2004: 45).

3.Where do these lists come from? The introduction to theCore Syllabus states that the list is compiled from course-book syllabuses at advanced levels. It is a fair point that‘most general English courses are coursebook based’ (IHMoscow is no exception) and working on what is taught inadvanced classrooms seems logical. Still, this approachdoes pass the buck by leaning on the validity of the course-book grammar syllabus. So, the buck passed, how doadvanced coursebooks compile their grammar syllabuses?

Coursebook SyllabusesI looked at the teachers’ books of five advanced coursebooks,Cutting Edge (Longman), old Headway (Oxford), Inside Out(Macmillan), Matters (Longman) and Business Class(Longman). Only good old Headway gave any explicit informa-tion about how it selected the grammar included in the stu-dent’s book: ‘It is certainly the time to examine many smallerareas of the language that are not particularly high-frequency,and which before this level are perhaps not worth pointing outto students (teachers’ book p. iii).’ What this seems to imply isthat students will learn the more obscure and idiosyncraticparts of grammar. There are many implications of this which arenot discussed such as how grammatical frequency is deter-mined and whether the rarity value of a particular item is suffi-cient justification for learning it. However, the allusion to gram-matical frequency, brief as it is, is promising and I will touch onit more later. Disappointingly, the new Headway teachers’ bookis mute on the composition of its grammar syllabus.

Grammar for Advanced LearnersWayne Rimmer

Wayne is Director of Studies at IH Moscow BKC.

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Language Matters IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

As for the other advanced books, the common methodseems to be probabilistic. For example, Inside Out Teachers’Book states ‘The course covers the main grammar areas youwould expect in an advanced coursebook, but in a wayappropriate to the needs of advanced learners (p.3)’. If thenotion of ‘main grammar areas’ and expectations is definedand perpetuated by other advanced books we are going roundin circles again.

To be fair, there may be a very sound rationale for the gram-mar syllabus in any of the individual books mentioned; theinformation is just not given in the teachers’ book. Still, I wouldbe cautious about relying on published materials as a sourceof independently researched and validated grammar items.

Towards a corpus-based approach?My intention is not to do a demolition job on the IH CoreSyllabus; in many ways it’s very useful, especially the materialsand activities ideas, but it is symptomatic of the lack of a rig-orous theoretical basis for grammar syllabuses at higher levels.Subjective and vague, they depend for their authority onteachers’ and material-writers’ expectations and experiencesrather than on hard research findings. Is there an alternative? Ifwe look at studies of vocabulary acquisition and teaching thereis a chink of light. There has been a long history of corpus-based studies classifying and ordering vocabulary going backto West’s General Service List in 1953. The basis of suchvocabulary lists is typically frequency, the assumption beingthat low-frequency words should be learned, hence taught,later than more common words. To illustrate, according to myCOBUILD, dog is more common than cat, so the former itemshould appear earlier in a vocabulary syllabus.

Frequency can be applied to grammar too, as old Headwayhints. For example, the Longman Grammar of Written andSpoken English, a corpus-based grammar, informs us thatnouns are usually premodified rather than postmodified. Onepractical conclusion from this snippet of information could bethat adjectives should be introduced in the attributive beforethe predicative position. However, handling the messy datafrom corpora is not easy. As Thornbury notes (1999: 8), it is dif-ficult to translate information on grammatical frequency into asyllabus and ‘syllabus designers still tend to operate byhunch’. Even if we accept frequency as a criterion in selectinggrammatical items there would still need to be considerablejudgement involved as to how to interpret the raw corpus infor-mation.

To muddy the water further, it could be argued that it is mis-leading to isolate grammar in the syllabus. Certainly, with theadvent of the lexical approach, the validity of grammar as aseparate entity is contentious. Hallidayean linguists, for exam-

ple, prefer to think in terms of lexicogrammar, combining thetraditional notions of vocabulary and grammar (Halliday 1994:15). To illustrate the concept of lexicogrammar, we may takethe example of the way certain verbs occur predominantly inthe passive rather than the active. Examples, from the corpus-based COBUILD grammar, are be dazed, be earmarked, bestranded, and be inundated. Do we teach this phenomenonlexically, as each verb comes up, or grammatically, as part ofvoice and transitivity? Lexicogrammar avoids such dilemmasbecause it sees no discontinuity between form, function andsemantics. Once language is analysed as lexicogrammar it isapparent that writing a grammar syllabus cannot be done with-out considering other aspects of language like vocabulary andmorphology. Whatever your personal take on lexicogrammar,the detachability of grammar from lexis is clearly very pertinentto syllabus design.

Anyway, boldly dismissing all theoretical objections andcomplications, imagine we could collect a list of grammaritems based on written and oral corpora, and rank themaccording to frequency. The final items in the list would pre-sumably be worthy of interest to advanced learners. Whatwould such a list look like? To be frank, I’ve no idea, and I sus-pect neither have coursebook writers which is why they tendto stick to structures like inversion and cleft sentences whichare tried and tested in other advanced books. I suspect thattheir conception of what grammar is, changes as learnersbecome more proficient; perhaps a beginner and an advancedlearner understand grammar differently. This may either reflecttheir relative degree of experience with the second language orthe formal characteristics of the new grammar introduced atdifferent stages of development. However, identifying what anadvanced grammar actually is remains elusive.

So, no answers sadly, but a caveat to finish with. A genericsyllabus of advanced grammar items would be a handy refer-ence point for teachers but the decision whether and how toincorporate individual items into a syllabus depends on widerfactors in the curriculum such as learners’ needs and learningstyles. For instance, business English learners may need a dif-ferent grammar from learners studying for their own interest.Another factor is the surrender value of new grammar. Thereare many other items in the syllabus competing with grammarfor attention, for example idiom and reading. Given that anylanguage course is finite and only so much can be covered,new grammar is only worth including if the benefits of knowingit equal or outweigh the learning load. Advice to teachers ofadvanced levels: know your grammar, but even better, knowyour learners.

ReferencesHall, D. and Foley, M. (2004). ‘Advancing the advanced’, in A.Pulverness (ed.), IATEFL 2003 Brighton Conference Selections(Canterbury: IATEFL).

Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An introduction to Functional Grammar, sec-ond edition (London: Edward Arnold).

Mindt, D. (1996). ‘English corpus linguistics and the foreign language’,in J. Thomas and M. Short (eds.), Using Corpora for LanguageResearch (New York: Longman): 232-247.

Nunan, D. (1988). Syllabus Design (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Thornbury, S. (1999). How to teach grammar (Essex: Longman).

UCLES. (2001). Cambridge Advanced English Handbook (Cambridge:University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate).

Advice to teachers of advanced levels: know yourgrammar, but even better,

know your learners.

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Teaching Younger Learners

TEACHING YOUNGER LEARNERS

Revisiting Old RoutinesAbbie Carpenter

Routines are a vital tool in classroom management foryoung learners. However it is often a mysterious area,rarely discussed after the start of the teaching year.

Teachers have their own different favourite routines whichreflect their teaching preferences and personality. Differentteachers use different amounts of routine, for different reasons.I started teaching kids without routines, and it was doing theIHCYL that made me appreciate their importance.

Having taught young learners from 3 to 16, I have come tobelieve that it is important to plan the routines we use careful-ly, making sure we are clear about what we hope to achievewith them, and that they help students maximise their learningrather than simply keeping them under control.

Different types of routine serve different purposes, and openup different kinds of learning opportunities. We need to look atour classes carefully, think about how old the learners are, whatkind of people they are, how big the class is and how cohesiveit is. Then we can choose and create routines that will enhancetheir learning, rather than just sticking to our old routines.

What is routine?Routine is a handy label for the activities we do on a regularbasis in the class. They usually fall into one of four cate-gories: lesson structuring at the planning stage; marking newlesson stages during the class; regular ‘spots’ in the class; andinteraction routines, how the teacher and learners treat andspeak to each other. They may also include language recy-cling activities, testing, language focus spots and creative writ-ing activities.

Very Young LearnersVery young learners need routine the most. They need guid-ance on how to behave, to be shown what to do, and to hearand repeat things many times to retain them. A standard les-son plan is useful for students and teacher. Hour lessonsmight go something like this: 5 minutes – hello and register, 10minutes – songs, 10 minutes – games, 10 minutes – storytime, 10 minutes – story time follow up activities and move-ment, 10 minutes – craft/colouring, 5 minutes – closing rou-tine/goodbye. With rhymes and chants to signal the start andend of each stage, the kids can be kept on track. It’s alwaysclear what they should be doing if they’ve wandered and needto be brought back in. It also makes sure that the lessons arebalanced, incorporating plenty of exposure with the chance tojoin in and produce when they are ready.

Young learnersYoung learners of 7 and 8 attending school, are more aware ofwhat is going on around them and able to make important dis-tinctions like work and play, and good and bad behaviour.

However they are still learning about these things, and the widerange of routines that teachers use with the 7 to 10 age groupreflect the complexity of learning experiences at this age.

It is common to use routines to mark the stages of a lesson,such as the open and close, for example, everyone taking outwhat they need at the start of the class and saying goodbye atthe end. It is also common to set up listening to the cassette,pair work, tests and so on, in the same way each time, solearners learn how to do these things. Teachers usually estab-lish routines for interaction between teacher and learners suchas putting hands up to answer questions and making requestslike ‘Can I give out the paper please?’ in English. This oftenextends to a clear set of guidelines or rules for acceptableclassroom behaviour and consequences for when these aretransgressed. Routines also serve as an attention-managementtool. An agreed ‘time out’ or ‘settle down’ signal means theteacher can rein the kids in when things are getting out of hand.

These routines are all helping kids learn how to behave in alanguage classroom. Maximizing the use of classroom rou-tines should also help kids learn language. Establishing Englishas the language of choice in the classroom comes from regu-lar insistence on English in the classroom, and we shouldincorporate natural English in classroom routine and interac-tion wherever possible. One of my favourite routines withbeginner students is miming the classroom language for fiveminutes at the beginning of each class. Useful phrases like ‘Sitdown’ and ‘Be quiet’ can all be mimed, as well as things like‘He’s crazy!’ and ‘What happened?’. I add and mime a newphrase for the students to guess every lesson, trying to makeit something the students wanted to say the previous class butcouldn’t. Eventually the students can mime for each other andthey have a good body of language they can use during theclass in authentic interaction.

Repetition of activities is particularly important for beginners –the need for it is connected to level as much as age. It givesnew students the opportunity to practise and cement the basiclanguage they need to function in English in the class, and topractise basic structures like question forms which they canthen manipulate to their own ends. In mixed ability classes,regular activities like ‘mime the word’ or ‘ask your partner 20questions’ give weaker students the chance to show what theyknow and to build up confidence within their comfort zone.

An area I am interested in, but which I have not exploredextensively, is using the ‘focus on form’ approach with youngerlearners. Drawing their attention to language forms, but with-out necessarily drilling them or completing numerous manipu-lation exercises may be an effective way to help students toacquire language over time. In terms of routine, this mayinvolve recording the language point of theday in a special language book each les-

Abbie Carpenter is currently adjusting to the clean and well-dressed world of teachingBusiness English in Milan, after two and a half years of working with small children andteenagers in Portugal and Spain. See issue 16 of the IHJ for her previous article onencouraging Young Learners to use English in the classroom

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Teaching Younger Learners IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

son, or getting students to recall what they have studied inclass before they go home. Creating picture dictionaries over acourse gives the kids a clear grasp on what they know. Helpingyoung learners perceive their own learning is important in mak-ing them more aware of their knowledge, perhaps more ableto recall what they know and in encouraging them with a clearsense of progress.

Once kids have the language basics they need to interactwithin the world of the classroom, it is time to wean them offteacher-led routine activities and train them to be creative andautonomous in their language use.

TeenagersDoing the same activities every class with kids over the age of10 is unlikely to make teaching them easy. However, regularactivities which give them the chance to personalise and/or becreative with language and which train them to be more effi-cient (usually better organised) learners are all valuable.

Regularly helping students to organise their work, gettingthem to put grammar, vocabulary and skills in different parts oftheir notebooks and teaching them how to record class workwell is useful training for them, and makes it easier for them toreview work. Having regular feedback systems for written and

spoken work and time in class for comparing and asking ques-tions about errors all help to focus on their areas of weaknessand to become more responsible for their own learning andreview what they find difficult.

Other routines that students respond well to are: journal writ-ing; weekly mind mapping a topic for a short discussion or dia-logue; poster making; and project work. They can focus oncontent rather than accuracy and, as a result, possibly bondbetter with the teacher and classmates.

As students usually need a mixture of these things, weshould make sure that regular activities bring a balance ofthese things into the classroom. Different needs can be metthrough using different routines.

Routines and our long-term aims in the classroomI have noticed that the routines we use reflect the aims of thecourse we are teaching and the way we see language. Wherethe ultimate goal of a course is to get students through a test,perhaps the best way to prepare them is to routinely practiceexam tasks, drill correct forms and test the students. Teacherswho value accuracy highly tend to use these kinds of activitiesa lot. When the objective is to give young learners a positiveexperience learning and using a foreign language, regularactivities are more likely to be examples such as show and tell,talk to your partner about your favourite food and then tell the

class about it, and singing. Usually we end up with a combi-nation of these things, but should be careful that we are get-ting the right balance.

PDIs (professional development interviews) often raise thequestion of your ‘teaching personality’. Looking back over theroutines I have been trying, and analysing what they have incommon and their aims and results, has been a good way intothinking about what my teaching personality is. We often intro-duce routines instinctively, because they feel right or we thinkthe results will be good, and they give a good picture of whathappens for most of the time in the classroom and what ourapproach to language teaching is.

Can you have too much of a good thing?I have experimented with using more or less routine in theclass. From a teacher’s point of view perhaps, the more rou-tine the better, as it’s the most effective way to cut planningtime. However, as far as students are concerned, routine doesnot always work as well as you might expect.

Too much routine can make students (and the teacher)switch off, and disengage from their learning. It’s all too easyfor them to go on autopilot repeating well-practised phrases infamiliar activities rather than pushing themselves to manipulatethe language they have in order to express new ideas. Thisalso creates the danger of de-personalising the language stu-dents produce – it can turn into rote production of teacher-ledinput, without any personal investment from the students.Routines break up classes into clear stages or language intochunks and skills. This gives the learners clear direction andlanguage chunks to focus on, but can move away from learn-ing holistically or seeing language as a communicative tool.

Students brought up on routine can also become veryteacher-dependent, unable to produce language without arecognisable clue or prompt from the teacher, or struggling toimprovise when words fail them. This doesn’t make the mostof kids’ enthusiasm and natural tendency to speak and inter-act with the world around them and can stop them becomingnatural, creative communicators.

Overuse of routine can also create discipline problems ratherthan solve them if a class is high-spirited or small or linguisti-cally competent. Elaborate reward systems for behaviour foryoung learners can take over the class, as the tally of rewardpoints becomes the main focus rather than language. If a classis consistently very routine-based, because students alwaysknow what is coming next they can take control out of theteacher’s hands to a greater or lesser extent, which is some-times positive, sometimes negative. Very predictable classescan leave kids thinking of their own ways to entertain them-selves and sometimes even angelic students feeling a bit list-less. Also by always putting the routine first and avoiding doinganything out of the ordinary, teachers can deny themselves amajor opportunity for challenge in the classroom.

It’s all in the mixI have learnt that it’s never too late to introduce routines, andit’s not a crisis if you forget them sometimes. Routines shouldevolve with a class, appearing when you identify a need theycan meet and disappearing when they’re redundant. Routinesshould always have a reason for being in the class, beyondthat of ‘It’s the routine we do’. As we try to meet our students’needs as effectively as possible, it’s important to create rou-tines which suit our students rather than just creating studentswho suit our routines.

Once kids have the language basics ... it is time to wean them off

teacher-led routine activities.

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Teaching Younger Learners

Carrots Can Help You See in the Dark!Carrick Cameron

Carrick currently holds the post of Assistant Studies Co-ordinator at IH Huelva, in thesouth of Spain, where he has worked for 6 happy years. This article is the follow-up to aseminar he gave at the IH Young Learners Conference in Campobasso last year on thesubject of motivation in Young Learners.

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Adult CarrotsAdults sign up for English courses for many, well-documentedreasons. These reasons I shall henceforth refer to as theirCarrots. These Carrots help learners see through The Dark (themurky world of English language learning). Here are some ofthe more common adult Carrots.

An English course is included as a work perk (theschool is contracted by a company to teach itsemployees). This may often include the additionalCarrot of time off work for 2 or 3 hours a week.

The adult suddenly needs English for his/her work,perhaps due to promotion or a change in companypolicy.

Jobseekers, who need English in the ever-moredemanding world of business, realise that they doneed English after all, having done everything possi-ble to get out of learning it properly as adolescents.

Secondary English teachers, who are rightfullyashamed of their English, sign up for a course toavoid further embarrassment (such as being correct-ed by their own students).

Prospective English teachers, who want to avoid anypotential embarrassment or feelings of inadequacy,decide to grasp the nettle now, and sign up.

The prospect of travel to a country where English iswidely spoken (either for personal or professional rea-sons) often prompts adults to either learn or brush upon their English.

After disastrous attempts at salsa dancing and fla-menco guitar classes, the next natural hobby formany adults is a language, and this tends to beEnglish nowadays...

Certain adults have an unnatural obsession withlearning the English language (highly disturbing, Iknow, but they do exist).

And how do we know which Carrots help adults see in TheDark? We ask them. We give them questionnaires or set themactivities in which they state why they are there and what expe-rience they have of learning the language so far. Even adoles-cents, who begrudgingly stomp in and out of the classroomscowling twice a week, know why they are there really – theyjust don’t want to be there (perhaps this is a case of stickrather than carrot).

Children’s CarrotsBut what about children? They need Carrots too! Do they real-ly know why they are there? Do they really have any conceptof what language is? At what age do they begin to know whatit is to speak another language? Have they had the whole ‘lan-guage-in-a-socio-cultural-context’ thing explained properly tothem over tea? It is quite possible that Mummy and Daddyhave sat their children down and explained the importance oflearning another language, especially English, more often thannot relating it to their future careers, or perhaps to their ability

to communicate with people from lots of other countries.However, the whole thing is really quite alien to them, at leastuntil they reach the age of 8, which seems to be somewhat ofa watershed. The question here is not why they want to studyEnglish, as with adult students, nor even why English is impor-tant to them. The important thing with YL’s and their motivationis surely finding out what will encourage them to stay there andtake an interest in the subject, from both a business and a lin-guistic point of view. Fortunately everything is a new experi-ence for children, especially young ones. Otherwise, the ordealof being confronted with a situation where a bizarre-lookingperson clutching a teddy bear begins making odd noises toyou and a classroom full of equally confused-looking childrencould be (and sometimes is) quite traumatic. So, how do weknow what children’s Carrots are?

While preparing for the seminar I gave at the IH YLConference in Campobasso last November, a section in JayneMoon’s book, Children Learning English, caught my eye,

Certain adults have an unnatural obsession

with learning the English language.

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Teaching Younger Learners IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

where there were quotes from children saying why they did ordidn’t enjoy learning English. This gave me the idea of settingup a simple questionnaire in IH Huelva to get our kids to do thesame. I asked all teachers of YLs up to the age of 12 to givetheir students the questionnaire, from which I then turned theresults into graphs and the resulting seminar in Campobasso.The questionnaire simply asks the question, ‘Do you likeEnglish?’ with a line pointing either to ‘Yes, because...’ or ‘No,because...’ with space for students to write whatever they like.

The responses were then sub-divided into age groups, inorder to try and get a typical profile of what does and doesn’tmotivate young learners of every age, from 4 years oldupwards. I then extended the survey to give any school in theIHWO the opportunity to do the same, and to send me theresults. Many schools have participated, from all geographicalareas of the Organisation, and the responses have been veryinsightful and, I believe, extremely useful for learning howchildren’s minds works when it comes to language learning.

Now that I have nearly all the information I’ve been waitingfor, the next stage is to collate all the results, put them intomore graphs and prepare a presentation on what they mayshow us regarding YL teaching. This, of course, will be readyby the next IH Young Learners Conference, to be held inHuelva in November this year. Meanwhile, here are some of themore telling and more curious comments that have come outof my research so far...

I like English because...‘… of the songs.’ (Seville, Spain, aged 9)‘… we play my favourite game (bingo).’ (Malaga, Spain,aged 5). The bingo answer is one of the most popular foryoung learners aged 8 and below. What is it about bingo?Answers on a postcard...‘… of the homework.’ (Rome, Italy, aged 8). What on earthdo you give them as homework?!‘… unfortunately sometimes it’s boring, but I like it like that.’(Rome, aged 10). Weirdo!‘…. I want to be a gospel singer, and I travel around theworld.’ (Campobasso, Italy, aged 11).‘… I learn.’ (Valladolid, Spain, aged 8). This is a very popularanswer for Spanish children around the age of 8, 9 or 10. ‘… I need it to surf the Internet.’ (Valladolid, aged 12).‘… I found new friends.’ (Vilnius, Lithuania). A very commonreason for liking it.‘… I want to read Harry Potter in English before the others,so I have to learn English.’ (Mataro, Spain, aged 11).‘… I like open the door and the windows.’ (Barcelona, Spain,aged 11). A popular theme peculiar to Barcelona. What’sgoing on in Barcelona??!‘… My parents they said it was important.’ (Barcelona, aged12). Well, at least he’s honest...‘… I don’t like Chinese.’ (Qingdao, China, aged 11).‘… I can teach my classmates English.’ (Qingdao, aged 13).‘… My teacher is handsome. My teacher is very kind. Myteacher is very nice. My teacher is good at English.’(Qingdao, aged 13). What more could you want in an Englishteacher?! There have been hundreds of comments on hownice teachers are as a reason for liking English.

I don’t like English because...‘… on the last day of class we weren’t allowed to bring insweets, and the other classes were allowed to.’ (Valladolid,aged 9). A child with his/her priorities totally sorted out.‘… sometimes it’s tiring and hard, but on the other handhaving such a good teacher every day, it’s becoming moreand more interesting.’ (Vilnius) .‘… irregular verbs.’ (Mataro,aged 11). Verbs seem to be aperennial problem.‘… there isn’t a girls.’ (Barcelona, aged 11). ‘… the timetable is in a time I didn’t want to come.’(Barcelona, aged 12).‘… It’s scary.’ (Qingdao, aged 11). Ain’t that the truth...‘… Homework.’ (Everyone, Everywhere, aged over 8).

Finally, I would like to thank all those teachers and schools whohave sent me completed questionnaires, and I apologise forany disruption they may have caused to classes – it’ll all beworth it in the end!

Editors’ note: This is an ‘interim report’ on the work Carrick hasbeen doing on motivation in Young Learners of English. A moredetailed analysis will be presented at the YL Conference at IHHuelva this autumn and the Journal hopes to publish a reporton that in the next issue; in the meantime, if you have for somereason missed out on using the questionnaire in your school,go ahead – and send the results to Carrick! The next stage willbe applying what has been learnt to classroom practice.

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IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Career Development Matters

CAREER DEVELOPMENT MATTERS

Mastering ItWill Hutton

Why am I here?

Struggling to complete my last essay in the high, highheat of summer, I suddenly remembered I had agreedto write something about my experience of doing a

Master’s. Sweat pouring into my eyes as I grappled with thebibliography, one eye on the impending five o’clock deadline,some remarkably unoccupied nook of my brain pondered onwhat I would write. My first instinct was for a very stern pieceon the importance of discipline and databases for references.Then my fevered thoughts flitted to the notion of a diatribe onthe inequity of the essay in the British education system. Then,realising I was dallying with precious moments, I put suchthoughts to one side and began to wonder how I would get thecompleted essay South of the river in the meagre minutesremaining.

There have been several such moments of high-wire tensionduring the last fifteen months or so, coinciding unsurprisinglywith essay deadlines. As you curse the computer, youinevitably have fragmentary musings on your motives forputting yourself through so much stress. I had been aware ofKing’s College London’s MA in English Language Teaching andELT for a number of years – indeed I had sent off for the appli-cation form on at least one prior occasion. Returning to TEFLafter the bruising, sobering experience of doing a PGCE in2001-2002, I decided it really was time I did that Master’s. Ibegan the course with my fellow fast trackers in April 2003. Itquickly became apparent that what appealed mightily to manyof us was this fast track option, which allows experiencedDiploma-qualified teachers to follow a shortened programme,thereby also saving some cash. Equally important to me, andmany, was the excellent central London location, a timetablethat enabled part-time students to work full time and anintriguing course programme at an established university.

There are certainly abundant possibilities when it comes todoing a Master’s in Applied Linguistics and/or ELT these days.Potential students weigh up numerous considerations whenmaking a choice and the course content is often subservientto more prosaic factors such as course schedule and campuslocation. I do not want to give the impression, however, that wewere prompted merely by these practicalities. You do not signaway innumerable evenings and a significant amount of moneywithout thinking it through very clearly, no matter how handy itis for the tube. My cohort tended to be over thirty rather thanunder it. It is interesting that a number of us had recentlyreturned to TEFL after toying with something else and, with

new vigour, were eager to differentiate ourselves. It was alsoclear that virtually everyone saw doing this Master’s as a posi-tioning exercise, either in terms of securing his or her currentjob or manoeuvring into something better. Though most of uswere involved in English language teaching, no one person’sjob was identical. Those working in private language schoolswere certainly in a minority. Overall, first day introductionsserved to highlight the wide diversity of EFL and ESL relatedjobs in London and subsequent, more candid, conversationsrevealed very significant salary differentials.

In terms of our academic expectations, as a group we werelooking for something that would stimulate and invigorate.More than one person told me they hoped to recapture theenthusiasm they had last experienced when doing theDiploma. This did not necessarily mean we wanted thisMaster’s to be diploma-like. Indeed, when our ten-week bridg-ing course threatened to become some sort of barely souped-up Diploma, our hackles rose. Personally, I was seeking some-thing unashamedly academic to provide my teaching with thetheoretical underpinning that I felt it rather lacked. As I beganmy second decade of teaching, I realised that a diet of practi-cal workshops and pedagogical recipe books was not going tobe enough to sustain me. I wanted to understand languageand language learning in greater depth and in fact the furthercontent moved away from explicitly pedagogical considera-tions, the more I found I liked it.

Will has been involved in teaching EFL since 1993. He has some faded memories of workingin Portugal, Australia, the Czech Republic and Poland, but for most of the last decade hehas been working in London. He currently works at International House, London.

As I began my second decade of teaching, I realised that a diet of practical workshops

and pedagogical recipe bookswas not going to be

enough to sustain me.

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Career Development Matters IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

On track

The routes through the King’s MA in ELT and AppliedLinguistics and ELT varied significantly depending on

whether students were studying part-time or full-time and alsowhether students had the Diploma or not. However, all routeswere centred on doing a combination of core and optionalcourses, followed by the completion of a dissertation duringtheir final summer. The first core course was made up ofProfessional Foundation, which in turn was divided intoPrinciples and Practice and Linguistic Analysis. Principles andPractice, from which diploma-qualified teachers were exempt,dealt with the key skills of language teaching – touching onissues such as classroom management and teaching skills.Linguistic Analysis examined, in detail, lexis, morphology, syn-tax, discourse analysis and phonology. As many of us hadbeen out of higher education for some time, this course helpedus to gradually reacquaint ourselves with the academy. Manycommented that we were surprised how different theapproach was in comparison with our undergraduate degrees.From my perspective, the virtual absence of extensive note-taking in favour of very widespread use of handouts came asa surprise. In addition, as we had sessions with quite a num-ber of lecturers, it served to introduce us to the diversity, andendearing idiosyncrasy, of the department.

With the arrival of July came the end of our ten-week bridgingcourse. Somewhat to our surprise, we were able to look at eachother and say: ‘That’s wasn’t too bad.’ Once we had handed inour one essay for the course, we had rather a long, university-style summer for all our good intentions about doing enormousamounts of pre-reading for the autumn to drain away. InSeptember, our systems reeled as the reality of now studyingtwo evenings a week on top of a full day’s work dawned. Equally,there was an initially jarring shift away from the familiar ground.A further change was a significant increase in our numbers aswe were joined by non-fast-track students who were enteringthe second year of their course as well as a number of otherswhose provenance is far too involved to go into here. This influxof new faces, combined with, for me at least, much more inter-esting content, served to bring the course alive. Our secondcore course, Language Acquisition and Use, ranged widely. We

covered, at breakneck speed, Sociolinguistics, SecondLanguage Acquisition and Psycholinguistics and Social-psycho-logical aspects of second language learning. In an attempt toencourage us to start thinking about our seemingly so-distantdissertation, we also had a course on Research methods for lan-guage acquisition and use. Only now that it is all over and I tryto reconstruct what I did, do the pieces start to fall into place.The course was a thrilling rollercoaster, all the more so for itswaywardness. Many of our sessions were excellent and we fre-quently headed home with our thoughts thoroughly provoked. Ido not want to say it was all plain sailing, and some sessions didleave us baffled and resentful. However, on the whole, we cov-ered much that was both important and intriguing.

The key problem remained lack of time. Undoubtedly work-ing full time takes its toll on your studies, particularly if you arejuggling other commitments. The good study skills you instil inyour students fall by the wayside as your notes become ajagged mound at the foot of your bed and good intentionsabout background reading remain just that. Most of us werejust about able to attend the sessions regularly, but exception-al burdens would quickly see us strain and creak. But just asthings seemed untenable, the weather and our excellent groupdynamics would act as an ally. So in April, with longerevenings, we began our option course, the end in sight. Ichose English for Academic Purposes with Dr. Chris Tribble,which proved to be an excellent course and absolutely invalu-able for my job.

Final musingsAs I write this at the beginning of August, my Master’s expe-rience is just about over, with the sizeable and hereafterunmentionable exception of the (as yet) barely considered dis-sertation. It has been, for me, a highly rewarding experience,opening up numerous possibilities. Obviously, there weretimes when it seemed as if I was wading through clay, but onbalance it has been wonderful. In particular, the experience ofstudying with an incredible group of people has been thehighlight for me. Doing a course is inherently dramatic, and itis the regular contact with fellow teachers as students,unshackled by the politics and caution of the workplace, thatI will miss most.

Only now that it is all over and I try to reconstruct what I did, do the pieces start to fall into

place. The course was a thrilling rollercoaster, all the more so for its waywardness.

The good study skills you instil in your students fall

by the wayside as your notesbecome a jagged mound at

the foot of your bed and good intentions aboutbackground reading

remain just that.

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Teacher Training

TEACHER TRAINING

Professional TrainingRob Williams

Rob started out teaching English in France because he loved the country so much as a student.He then came back to England to get the requisite bits of paper and spent time in Spain and atWestminster College in London, where he ‘trained’ to be a teacher trainer. Freelance traininghas taken him to New York, Romania, Germany and Sweden. He now appears to be moresettled in Westminster University, where he runs an MA in Applied Language Studies as well askeeping in touch with teacher training and the language classroom.

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Trainers’ blues

Has this ever happened to you? You are running aCELTA course and the trainee has just given what inyour mind is an awful lesson. The aims were woolly,

there was no staging to speak of, the language was nowherenear appropriately graded and the trainee talked most of thetime. At feedback, the trainee is convinced they have done agood lesson. In fact, they go as far as to say they have donewhat you suggested to them in preparation and get quiteangry when you suggest that all might not be well.

Or how about this? In the middle of a trainee’s lesson, itstarts to unravel. Students start asking questions that thetrainee can’t answer. The more the trainee tries the more itgoes wrong and the students are clearly losing patience. Assoon as their slot is finished, they sit in the corner and burstinto tears.

I’m sure as a trainer you have come across examples of thissort of thing. We all want CELTA courses to run smoothly andyet little ‘emotional explosions’ do seem to occur. One col-league I had described a situation where during feedback onetrainee thought he knew all the answers and an almighty rowensued between the members of the group. One of thetrainees slammed the door on their way out, vowing never towork with that TP group again.

Conversations with colleagues often revolve around anec-dotes of memorable trainee lessons (both good and bad)and/or the reactions at feedback. ‘I tried every way I couldthink of, but they just didn’t get it’ and ‘They seemed to under-stand but the next lesson was just as bad as the last one’ arefrequent claims by trainers.

Trainees’ miseriesDescriptions of what goes on in CELTA courses are no lessvivid from the trainee’s perspective. Here is a sample:

1.A trainee is giving a lesson to the best of their ability and thetrainer falls asleep at the back. The trainee questions thetrainer’s attitude and receives the reply, ‘Well, if you want tokeep people’s attention you should make it more interesting.’

2.During a lesson the trainer interrupts you with correctionsand comments and tells you where you should be on yourlesson plan.

3. In feedback one trainee is so upset about what they did thatthey are sitting in tears at a slight distance from the rest ofthe group. The trainer carries on the feedback sessionaround them almost as if they weren’t there.

4.The feedback session is spent with the trainer encouragingyou to see if you can say what was wrong with the lesson.You know the trainer is attempting to demonstrate elicitingtechnique. They have been banging on in input sessionsabout giving the student the space to discover the errorsthey make, about empowering the student by allowing themto self-correct. You have been told how this way of dealingwith error will help the student to memorise correct usage.But it’s getting late, you’ve been up since six preparing thelesson you just gave and you’ve arranged to interview yourcase study student after this. Could the trainer just for oncetell you what was wrong so that you could leave?

Both sides of the fenceYou could almost give the sessions titles: The one when some-one died; the one when the trainees walked out; the one withthe overbearing authoritarian trainer… I could go on. But whatis interesting is that whatever side of the training fence the storyis told from, the vast majority seem to involve the feedback ses-sions. From the trainer’s side it seems to be the trainee’s inabil-ity to realise what was required and from the trainee side it hasmuch to do with trainer insensitivity or trainer inflexibility.

And feedback can be a delicate situation. Just how do youcope with the trainee who bursts into tears? Is an arm roundthe shoulder the best way, or would that be seen as too per-sonal? As an attack? As a sexual advance? Should you dealwith it as a whole group or should you give some one-to-onecounselling after the feedback or at some later date, wheneveryone has calmed down? How do you cope with the angrytrainee, who is unable to take the criticism you give and whofeels that you have some kind of personal vendetta againstthem? Do you become ever more explicit in the hope that theyget it? Do you sit down with them and work through the CELTAcriteria in detail so that they know it’s not you that has it in forthem: it’s just the framework of the course?

With experience, I’m sure we all have solutions. We haveevolved them over time and they seem to work for us. And yet,how much support were we given as fledgling trainers at theoutset? How well prepared were we for the unusual? If it hasnever even crossed your mind that someone could breakdown, get angry, be obstructive, how easy is it to deal withsuch situations with sufficient integrity and sensitivity?

It could well be that the majority of CELTA courses runsmoothly with no real clashes or emotional crises. There maybe some justification for the colleague who says, ‘I’m not hereto psychoanalyse them. My job is to train them to teachEnglish.’ After all, the aim of CELTA is to produce teachers. Itis an intensive course. There is a lot to cover in the time, and

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Teacher Training IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

this is often compounded by the fact that trainees do notalways have good language awareness when they start. Thereis the danger of being so involved with the ‘problems’ thatcome up that the overall aim is sacrificed or jeopardised. If oneindividual is going through a small crisis of confidence there areothers in the group who aren’t and we have to teach for themajority. And CELTA is vocational training, not, overtly anyway,a personal development course.

But talk to many people who have completed a CELTA andthey’ll tell you that is was one of the toughest training coursesthey have ever done. They especially talk of how stressful itwas, and go on about the amount of time they spent preparingtheir twenty-minute lesson, just to get it right. From day one ortwo, a CELTA course puts people in a position where they canfail publicly, far more so than a teacher ‘fails’ if they give a ‘bad’lesson. The teacher is behind a closed door with their class.The trainee can mess up in front of the students, his/her peersand the tutor, quite apart from the fact that in the interest oftransparency each lesson is graded. Given this scenario it isperhaps comforting that so many courses do indeed runsmoothly. Also given this scenario, would it not be fair that train-ers should be adequately prepared for what could happen?

Training the TrainerSo how do you become a trainer? Is a mentor programme(akin to an apprenticeship, with written comments from some-one who you may know well as a colleague) enough to ensureparity of standards across different institutions? Is completinga DELTA or an MA TESOL a guarantee of one’s ability toembark on teacher training? Do any of the above programmesnecessarily include modules or sessions or chats about theprocess of feedback, of how to read body language in atrainee, of how to notice voice, use of language etc – clues thatmay indicate the trainee’s emotional state? Are we trained inhow to deal with this or do we just pick it up and hope for thebest?

If you are a teacher there are two elements that, like it or not,form part of the job. Teaching inevitably involves performanceand leadership. We have to manage groups, we have todemonstrate knowledge and impart it and we have to inspireothers to use that knowledge. The form that the performanceor the leadership takes will vary from individual to individual. Itwould clearly be wrong to impose one teaching style for all.Similarly, like it or not, a trainer delivering vocational training ofthis nature will be giving feedback to people who are sufferingdiffering degrees of stress. As such, teacher training inevitablyinvolves counselling skills. The way each trainer uses theseskills will vary. You cannot ask everyone to counsel in the sameway as everyone else. But if counselling is not addressed in thesystem designed to train trainers, then both the trainer and thetrainee are being sold short. There will be no guarantee that

the trainer is sufficiently equipped to deal with emotionallycharged situations and the trainee may then be justified inmaking claims of insensitive and brutal feedback.

Developing a professional systemThere is a need to ensure that certain elements that are key toteacher training are covered in the preparation of new trainers.Administration and classroom delivery of input sessions couldreasonably be thought of as skills transferred from the lan-guage classroom. Interviewing applicants and providing effec-tive feedback, however, are new skills. They are not the sameas dealing with a student’s language learning difficulties. Suchissues need formalised training. A novice trainer would clearlybenefit from greater awareness of body language, a widerrange of feedback techniques etc. Indeed, it would makesense for novice trainers to experience a course in much thesame way as novice teachers, and for the quality of thosecourses to be monitored by Cambridge.

But the issue is not just with novice trainers. If there is nosystem of on-going support for trainers who may well be suf-fering from trainer fatigue (doing back-to-back CELTA coursesfor months on end) and have become inured to the stress thattrainees are under, then once more trainees are being soldshort, and claims made by trainees may well be justified.

Perhaps a way of mitigating this might be a requirement forgroup tutor meetings, where trainers check in with each otheron a daily basis (I worked in one institution where this was pos-itively frowned upon as an idea), or where there is a post thatoversees the quality of delivery and a facility above the tutorswhere trainees can voice concerns. But I feel this would belargely cosmetic. It may be better for Cambridge to keep tabson how many courses a trainer is doing and to insist on timeaway from the training classroom so that the trainer does notsuccumb to ‘CELTA fatigue’. Trainers could be obliged toundergo periodic training and in-service development. We allknow that there is little worse than a stale teacher; the samemust be true of a stale trainer.

There is also the question of time. In many timetables I haveseen, 30 minutes is given over to feedback. If one or twolessons overrun and then there is a break for cigarettes and thegathering of thoughts, this time can be reduced. It is arguablethat some of the greatest learning comes from analysinglessons and building on them for the next time. If this time isreduced, then is it any wonder that feedback can be seen ascursory and comments made by trainers seen as dismissive?In some institutions this comes down to money and how muchthe school is prepared to pay the trainer. Of course trainersand trainees invariably work for longer than the timetablestates, but would not a directive on the amount of time expect-ed in feedback be helpful? That way there would at least beacknowledgement of the importance of feedback and the timeit can take.

CELTA courses and their equivalents are, primarily, vocationaltraining courses. There is, nonetheless, a strong element of per-sonal development on such courses and undeniably, traineesare put under stress. Clearly, there needs to be a professionaldistance in order to function professionally. Trainers can’t rea-sonably empathise with every minor emotion of every traineewho embarks on a CELTA course. But if ELT is to call itself a pro-fession and to encourage those embarking on it to behave in aprofessional manner, then isn’t it fair to ask for a professionalsystem of training and support for those who train as well?

There may be some justificationfor the colleague who says,

‘I’m not here to psychoanalysethem. My job is to train them to teach English.’

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Teacher Training

Exploring the Principle of Reciprocity inTeacher Learning

Tessa Woodward

This is a report on a session given by Tessa at the InternationalHouse Teacher Education Conference, March 2003 and theIATEFL SIG TT/T Ed Conference, University of East London,September 2003. The text is reproduced with kind permissionof the Teacher Training Journal, where it first appeared inVolume 18.

MenuI wrote a ‘menu’ on the board in the lecture hall. It read:

• Entry• Introduction• Talk, definition and ideas• Carousel work• Handing over the stick

EntryThe music playing was by Ravi Shankar and David Glass whomade an album by working together in an interesting way.They each wrote some music and sent it to the other who thenplayed it in his own way. Thus we have music on the recordcomposed by Ravi Shankar and played by David Glass andvice versa. The music seemed to me (the presenter) to be agood metaphor for a session on reciprocity.

So the ‘Entry’ was the music and people coming in. Also, Iasked some of the participants if they would be willing to helpa little. If they said yes, they were given a pink slip with areminder of their role on it. One slip said ‘Numbers person’because I needed to know the rough number of peopleattending so I could work out the group numbers later on.Other slips said ‘Music person’, ‘Chair person’, ‘Meet andgreet person’.

IntroductionI started by reminding people of the title of the conferencewhich involved the words ‘Making connections’ in one caseand ‘Interaction’ in the other. I referred to my work as a lan-guage teacher, teacher trainer and Professional DevelopmentCo-ordinator and discussed some of the things that I andmembers of the audience thought were important for connec-tions and interactions of a positive, fruitful kind in this sort ofwork. We mentioned things like humour, fun, honesty, trans-parency.

DefinitionsI then explained that, recently, I had been thinking that the prin-ciple of reciprocity was very important for healthy interaction inteacher learning relationships. I wrote up the word RECI-

PROCITY on the board and we discussed what defining words

would fit it like in a scrabble game or crossword. We fitted in‘Two way ‘ like this:and also fitted in words like ‘give and take’, ‘mutual’, ‘rolereversal’, and ‘accommodation’, words which helped to definethe spirit of reciprocity.

IdeasI then explained that I had been trying, in my work over the lastfew years, to implement the flavour, the tone, the mood of rec-iprocity in the following professional areas: names and defini-tions, materials, activities, duties and privileges, assessmentand ‘other’(!). To explain what I meant by each of these areas,I gave an example of an idea that would foster reciprocity ineach of them. Each idea was written on a large sheet of A3paper under its title. Thus, one sheet of paper read:

MaterialsSome materials, by design, are more reciprocal in nature thanothers. An example here is the interactive dialogue journal. Thisis a notebook that is passed between two people in a teacherlearning relationship. In the note book, which is confidential tothem, they each write letters back and forth to each other aboutelements of the teacher learning they are encountering.

The six areas mentioned were thus glossed to participants byway of an example and by holding up a piece of A3 paper toshow that each one was stored and would be seen by themlater.Carousel workWith help from the ‘Numbers person’, I then divided people upinto six groups. Each group was given one of the A3 pieces ofpaper and was encouraged to discuss the area written on itand to add practical ideas onto it. People were advised to lis-ten carefully to the ideas produced in their group as, afterabout ten minutes, one of them would be chosen by the groupto be the group’s ambassador and to take the big sheet ofpaper to the next group and explain the new ideas on it tothem. And so the carousel work went. About every ten minutesone person (a different person each time) would leave eachgroup taking a sheet of paper with new ideas written on it to

Tessa Woodward is the editor of Teacher Trainer. She also works as a teacher, teachertrainer and the Professional Development Co-ordinator at Hilderstone College, Broadstairs,Kent, UK. She is the in-coming Vice president of IATEFL. Her latest book is Ways of Workingwith Teachers 2004.

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R E C I P R O C I T YWOWAY

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Teacher Training IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

the next group where they would start discussion on that sub-ject. Thus topics slowly travelled, with their attendant piece ofpaper and an ambassador, around the room until as manygroups had discussed and added ideas to as many topics aswe had time for. As the pieces of paper travelled from group togroup they gathered more and more ideas on them so a littlemore reading and explaining time was necessary each timebefore groups got going thinking up their own ideas.

Handing over the stick.Once the carousel work was over, I briefly summarised whatwe had done so far. I also made sure that people knew that theideas for involving participants at the start of the session, thecarousel work and the handing over the stick had all comefrom R. Chambers Participatory workshops (Earthscan: 2002.ISBN 1 85 383 863 2).

People were then invited to comment on:• The processes used in the session e.g. the carousel work

and how they would want to adapt or improve it, includingwhat might happen to the group-produced posters

• The ideas that came up in the group discussion• The principle of reciprocity itself and what had been

learned • The idea of taking a theme of great personal importance

to us individually, be it ‘Providing challenge’ or ‘Humandignity’, and chasing it through a number of professionalareas to see how we can make it live and breathe in thecourses we do.

• Anything else.

People wanted to have a copy of all the ideas produced at theseminar and so these are reproduced below in the appendix incases where I could read the writing and understand the ideas!The session finished with music, the handing back of sheets ofpaper and thanks all round.

The A3 sheets reproducedComments that were on the papers at the start of the sessionand written by me are in italics. Comments added by groupmembers in the carousel work are in Times New Roman. CP’s= Course Participants on a Teacher Training Course.

1. Names and definitions

We do generally need to make distinctions between, say, acourse tutor and a course participant, or between an inputsession (done by a tutor) and teaching practice (done by atrainee. But it can be very useful to put those separate namesaside for a while and consider the basic similarity i.e. that we areall involved in learning and trying to get better at our work. Thusin input sessions we are really practicing our training and inteaching practice trainees do have responsibility for students. Sorenaming slots ‘Teaching Practice’ and ‘Training Practice’potentially increases feelings of mutual understanding andempathy.

• CP’s come up with own definitions of key terms …put up onwall.

• CP’s given very difficult names so experience what it is like forlanguage students.

• Trainees renamed teachers, TP renamed ‘Teaching’, Feedbackrenamed ‘Reflection, discussion and discovery’.

• Avoid distinction between NNS and NS by referring to Englishspeakers.

• Change the names of the different levels of competence.

2. Materials

Some materials, by design, are more reciprocal in nature thanothers. An example here is the interactive dialogue journal. Thisis a notebook that is passed between two people in a teacherlearning relationship. In the note book, which is confidential tothem, they each write letters back and forth to each other aboutelements of the teacher learning they are encountering.

• Set up open/shared access files on computer for adding to andusing and include tutor’s files.

• Session on ‘Something that influenced me..’ all bring in story orbook or saying etc.

• Materials bank eg picture library, tapes, extracts

• Articles and texts ranked and discussed (for details emailkeith.hardy@lilianbishop.com)

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Teacher Training

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3. Activities

Some activities tend to work against reciprocity. An examplemight be the traditional lecture done in an authoritarian mannerand with little time for questions. This lecture could be veryinteresting, could be absolutely okay, but it would notconcentrate on the principle of reciprocity which is what we areinterested in at the moment. Other activities are set up preciselyso that everyone learns from every one else. The carousel we arenow doing is one such activity.

• Stickers on CP’s backs. All go round and write something nice oneach back.

• Session on ‘If I could steal one thing from you, it would be…’

• Opener… ‘The worst moment of my week was….’

• Always disclose first before asking others to.

• P’s write certificates for others and award them.

5. Assessment

Course participants can assess the value, interest, clarity etc ofcourse leaders’ sessions whether by ticking scales on slips ofpaper or writing remarks on an exit poll poster on their way outof class. Teacher learners when in, and thus observing, a tutor’ssession can use the same observation checklists that are usedon them when their classes are observed.

• CP’s put up feedback on ‘post-its’ as they leave the session.

• Exact words used in feedback put up on OHT.

• CP’s consider feedback they have had in other fields e.g hanggliding and consider relevance to ELT.

• Get feedback on a session in terms of senses, colours etc andscales thus:

hot ——————————————–––––––––––coldwhite ——————————————–––––––– blackrough ——————————————–––––– smoothbright ———————————————–––––––dullloud ——————————————–––––––––– soft

• Give blank sheet of paper to each participant and to tutors. Allwrite comments. All are read by all. Discussion follows.

4. Duties and privileges

I wonder to what extent it is possible to share duties and privilegesreciprocally? A group leader can do homework, participant can beresponsible for preparing review questions for a group, teacherscan look things up in dictionaries in class, students can call theregister. Can course participants use the staff room?

• All can use the board whenever they want.

• CP’s organise the grouping, furniture, course contents.

• Non-native speakers give language lessons to NS.

• Peer observation… setting own goals and feedback agendas.• CP’s plan session, tutor teaches it.

• P’s with special languages teach them to the group.

• Roles rotated.

• Last in takes the register.

• Trainers teach.

• Choose a representative to be responsible for giving an oralsummary of the lesson at the end of the class.

6. Other

Teacher trainers/mentors/educators can make it clear that we arelearning and have learned a lot from others by always creditingthe names and books etc of those we have learned from.

Those who are generally considered to know less about thefield can be asked to teach others the things that they DOhappen to know more about. Thus host families and canteenstaff can state the sort of language and concepts they wishlanguage students were being taught in class. Chinese studentsaway from home can teach hosts the difference between thestudy culture back home and in the host country.

• Teachers ask students how they would like them to behave.

• Student charters

• Present CP’s phone up a past CP to have a conversation about thecourse

• Hold an event or session on a rota basis in a different CP or tutorhome and do the event in the personal or national culture of thehost.

• Have a notice board showing where previous trainees are nowworking and what they are doing, with letters, post cards, photosetc.

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Cutting Edge IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

The new editions of Cutting Edge are due out early next yearso we took the opportunity to talk to Sarah Cunningham, oneof the authors, about the creation of the series right from thestart.

Why did you decide to write a coursebook witha TBL slant?When we first started thinking about writing a coursebook inthe mid-nineties, we felt that although many aspects of lan-guage learning were very well catered for by coursebooks ofthe time, both TBL and the lexical approach offered genuinelynew and important insights into what learners needed to knowand how they might best learn.

What we felt TBL offers through its philosophy of ‘learningthrough doing’ is the opportunity for the student to set theagenda and take greater responsibility, because they start fromthe premise of needing to say something and then worktowards the language they need in order to say it. It thereforeoffers the opportunity for the student to use language in amuch more natural and motivating way. We felt that this tied innaturally with the lexical approach, since in our experiencewhat students most often need and ask for during the perfor-mance of tasks are ready-made chunks of language andphrases

Of course these are not the only things they need, which iswhy we did not go for a purely task-based approach – we feltit was quite possible to integrate these ideas alongside a moretraditional grammar, functional and skills syllabus. We felt any-way that it would be impossible to write a totally task-basedcoursebook since the content would by definition be toounpredictable! It would also be harder to give students anysense of ‘orderly progression’ if tasks were the only organisingprinciple in their learning.

How easy was it to pioneer a coursebook withsuch a different approach?It’s quite interesting that almost everywhere and immediately,people have been open to the lexical elements in CuttingEdge. Most people who use the book are also very enthusi-astic about the tasks – we’ve recently carried out a bigresearch project with users of the course and these come outas probably the most popular feature, but in certain teachingenvironments and cultures people have perhaps been morewary initially about them. I think their worries stem from eitherthe fear that in handing over more control to the students theymight lose control of the class, or in a sense the opposite thatthere might be a whole lesson focused around speaking buteveryone would be sitting there with nothing to say!

We were very aware of both these concerns in writing thetasks, and this was why we developed such a structured task-cycle with preparation through a listening/reading model andvery step-by-step staging through towards the final product.Our aim was to make the tasks workable even for teachers

who did not know anything about the theory behind TBL. Thefeedback we’ve received seems to show that this has gener-ally worked, although of course some individual tasks needimprovement, which is one of the things we have aimed toaddress in the new editions coming out in spring 2005.

What makes this book so very different fromothers?We don’t see Cutting Edge as being so very different, but asbuilding on and developing what has been achieved in othercourses. By providing structured speaking tasks alongside themore traditional elements, we hope to provide teachers with awider range of materials and tools from which to select thebest way to teach in their own individual circumstances.

Do you feel you have succeeded/ has the bookturned out as you imagined it would?Yes, I think so.

How will the new editions of Cutting Edge bedifferent from the current ones?We are currently writing new editions of the Elementary, Pre-intermediate, Intermediate and Upper Intermediate levels,which are coming out in early 2005. We have based the re-writes on several hundred user’s diaries which teachers fromall over the world filled in for us as they were using the books.From this we have been able to identify very precisely bothwhat people liked in Cutting Edge and where the problemscome; and adjust level, balance of input, topics etc according-ly. So that has been one of the main sources of input into thenew editions. We have replaced a lot of texts, topics and tasksanyway, to update them where necessary to give teachers a bitof a change. We have also tried to make the outlook as inter-national as possible, as the original users we wrote for weremuch more Eurocentric than now, and the design and labelinghas been streamlined and improved. We also have a couple ofnew features up our sleeves. Having said all that, the basicapproach is more or less the same, as the users seemed pret-ty happy with it.

Where do you get your writing inspiration from?When we are planning we normally start by brainstorming thetopic and thinking of all the possible things people talk about/you read about in connection with that topic. It’s never beenour aim to find completely new original topics, as, apart frombeing pretty impossible after all the coursebooks that havebeen written, this would probably lead us to pretty obscuresubject matter rather than the typical, high-frequency languagewe want to focus on. So what we try to look for are fresh, mod-ern angles, and subjects of discussion that very different typesof people will have something to say about.

The tasks are probably the hardest thing to come up with;we often only come up with them after a lot of pacing up and

Interview with Sarah Cunningham

BOOKS SPECIAL: CUTTING EDGE

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Cutting Edge

down, hair-tearing and endless redrafting!

What do you feel proudest of in all the books?There are two things I personally feel proud of. The first is thatI think we have helped to make structured speaking tasks,which we feel to be so crucial to successful language learning,a standard part of the modern ELT course. The other thing isto see Cutting Edge used in so many very different places,from military academies in Abu Dhabi to schools in Mongoliaand Vietnam – places we never dreamed that it would end upbeing used.

What do you find most difficult?By far the most difficult thing is to balance the different expec-tations of all the different people using the book. As we travelaround we get constant input from teachers and Longmanreps around the world, which is great, but so much of it is con-flicting!

In some places students (or at least teachers) love long dif-ficult texts with loads of challenging new vocabulary, in othersthey want an easier life. In some places people have a sophis-ticated knowledge of the world, in others they’ve no idea who

Tom Cruise or indeed their own prime minister is. Some lovetalking about their own lives and experiences, others haven’thad much life to talk about yet, etc etc., so trying to bear allthis is mind does provide a constant challenge.

Do you have any advice to someone who wouldlike to write a coursebook?I think the issue above is probably the most important one foranyone aiming to write for a global market. I guess a lot ofteachers feel they could write the ideal course for the kind ofplace where they teach, but modern market pressures meanthat you generally have to write for people with extremely dif-ferent outlooks and teaching circumstances from your own,while at the same time trying to get across the essence of whatyou believe in as a teacher.

Most people these days seem to start writing through read-ing for publishers and then perhaps working on teacher’s booksand workbooks, which gives you a good insight into the reali-ties of coursebook-writing. Publishers are always on the look-out for practical-minded, experienced teachers as readers, soit’s well worth approaching them if you are interested.

Task-based Lessons – MethodologyFrances Eales

This article originally appeared in The Edge (the magazine thatgoes with Cutting Edge) in June 2004.

I’ve been using the tasks in Cutting Edge for some time nowwith different groups and levels and want to share somethoughts about the value of task based lessons (in relation tolanguage-based lessons), how tasks are structured and howto make tasks work.

Language-based vs. Task-based lessonsIn classroom A, the teacher is asking her learners, ‘Think of fivemistakes you made when you were a teenager. Tell your part-ner, using should have or shouldn’t have.’ In classroom B, theteacher instructs his class: ‘Get into pairs and find five thingsin common about when you were at school.’

In both classes personalised speaking practice is happen-ing. However, in classroom A, the focus is firmly on languagepractice, and is the production stage of a PPP lesson, wherethe teacher hopes that her learners will produce more freelyand in a personalised way, language that she has presentedand practised in a controlled way. In classroom B, the focusis on more extended speaking practice; learners are aiming foran end result and will use different language forms to reach it,including a variety of verb forms and lexical phrases. For me,both lesson types are perfectly valid but different in their aimsand scope.One useful definition of a task is ‘…an extended oral activity inwhich the primary goal is to achieve a particular outcome or

rather than just ‘practising the language’ (Cunningham andMoor, 1999).

Many people have written about ‘task-based learning’ andthe idea has evolved steadily, from Prahbu in Bangalore gettingstudents to do a series of tasks with absolutely no work on lan-guage before or after (Prahbu, 1987), to Jane and David Willismaking a huge contribution with analyses of different tasktypes and suggesting some language work is done after thetask (Willis, 1996).

Peter Skehan’s on-going research has suggested that tasksoffer students an opportunity for greater accuracy, fluency andcomplexity in their speaking and has gone some way towardsidentifying which task-types encourage each feature (Skehan,2002). Certainly, I’ve found that a well-structured task canencourage learners to ‘raise their game’; to use more complexphrases in a more confident, fluent and sometimes more accu-rate way (the latter often depending on the particular learnertype).

How the Tasks are structuredOne of the main challenges in task-based lessons lies in thetension between learners’ desire to achieve the end productand their desire to improve their English. If a task is motivatingand learners are struggling to communicate their ideas, theyoften don’t have much attention left for using accurate or com-plex language and they can tend to relapse into a lower levelof English than they are capable of.

For example, a student from Dubai has

Frances Eales is a teacher and teacher-trainer at International House Londonwhere she is currently course co-ordinator on the Distance DELTA programme.She is co-author of Cutting Edge Elementary and Cutting Edge Intermediate andUpper Intermediate workbooks.

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Cutting Edge IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

us gripped with his anecdote about a childhood memory whilstusing not a single past form! This kind of strategic compe-tence (using the minimum amount of language to get yourmessage across) is something you find with native speakers.But let’s not be disingenuous – we are language teachers – weare not so much interested in them achieving the task, we arethere to help them improve their language. Somehow we needto focus students on better use of language, on a focus onform:

‘Focusing on Form has to be contrived, insinuated, or sup-ported in some way – and this becomes the central peda-gogic challenge.’ (Skehan 2002)

In Cutting Edge each task is carefully designed to supportlearners to a successful outcome, and provide opportunitiesfor a focus on form as well as getting your ideas across. Atypical task-based lesson looks like this:

How to exploit the preparation stagesA major part of the success of a task-based lesson dependson spending enough time on the preparation stages, whichoften involves students listening to a model of the teacher or atape of people doing the same task, then having time to planwhat they want to say. This phase can be scary… silence inclass… some students looking bored and wanting to get start-ed talking immediately... other students scripting every wordthey want to say. But persevere! This is a prime opportunityfor students to ask you how to express ideas which are uniqueto them:

S: How do you say there are good things and bad things?T: Oh you mean there are pros and cons.S: What do you call it when this [draws a bee] does this[mime]?T: It stings you.

It is also their opportunity to pay closer attention to languageform, so that they produce the best they are capable of.

So what about the Useful Language boxes? To take ananalogy, imagine you are in a restaurant in a country whoselanguage you don’t speak very much of. The UL box is likehaving a phrase book next to you (What exactly is this dish?Has it got meat in it?). The phrases have been chosen asready-made chunks of language and sentence starters to helplearners get their message across more successfully. Somelearners may rely on them greatly. Others ignore them com-pletely. This is ultimately their choice.

However, our job is to draw learners’ attention to the phras-es, and to do this we need to get them off the page! It reallydoesn’t matter how! Here’s a task for you: Think of 12 thingsto do with the phrases in the Useful Language box. For exam-ple, you can write them on an Overhead Transparency, drilleach one for pronunciation, then cover them up and see if stu-dents can remember them.

To see my favourite 12 ideas, see the box with this article.For these, and more ideas, please visit the special page on theCutting Edge website: www.longman.com/cuttingedge

Finally, I don’t do task-based lessons all the time and Iwouldn’t advocate doing so at all. I think they have a very valu-able place alongside language and skills-based lessons. Andwhen it comes down to it, students don’t care about labels,they only care about lessons being interesting or not. So myadvice is: try out the tasks, give them the time that theydeserve, adapt them, and start to experiment with making upyour own.

ReferencesCunningham, S. and Moor, P. (1999). Cutting Edge Upper Intermediate

Teacher’s Book (Longman).

Prahbu, N. (1987). Second Language Pedagogy (Oxford UniversityPress).

Skehan, P. (2002). ‘A non-marginal role for tasks’, in ELT Journal 56/3(July 2002).

Willis, J. (1996). A Framework for Task Based Learning (Longman).

• Write phrases on an OHT

• Disappearing whiteboard (write up the useful language, studentsread it in pairs from top to bottom, mean-while you start rubbing out words andreplacing them with dashes; the learnerstry and remember the phrases; you contin-ue rubbing out; eventually the learners are‘reading’ from a board full of dashes!)

• Re-order jumbled sentences

• Match halves of sentences(perhaps on cards; green is this year’scolour!)

• Categorising (often the UL is grouped in the box underdifferent categories; learners can have thephrases and categorise them)

• Multiple choice – choose correct form (e.g. In my country it’s rude pointing / point/ to point at people)

• Fill the gaps (e.g. On ____ whole, people are friendly)

• Expand to full sentences (e.g. Not / be / surprised / people / bow /when / meet / you)

• Personalised drills (e.g. ‘Most British people are on time formeetings,’ what about in Italy? ‘MostItalian people are ….’ and Saudi Arabia?‘Most Saudi people are ….’)

• Dictation (pure and simple)

• Remove extra word (e.g. You should never to show the bottomof your feet)

• 5 mins to learn: elicit to whiteboard (or you can ask the learners to select 5phrases that are new to them or they thinkare particularly useful and memorise them)

12 Things to do with the Useful Language box

Examples are taken from the Task in Module 7 of Cutting Edge Intermediate: Making a list of tips for visitors to your country. See www.longman.com/cuttingedge

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 IHWO News

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IHWO NEWS

This year has been very eventful in IHWO. After the mul-tiple celebrations of the 50th Anniversary in 2003, 2004has been focused on looking to the future and develop-

ing new and innovative solutions for language learning andteaching in IH worldwide.

The IHworld.com website was re-designed in the summer,and is still undergoing re-engineering behind the scenes, tomake it much more database-driven. What this means is thatmore people will be able to have access more easily to differ-ent parts of the website, and schools will be able to updatetheir own information – school contacts, school profiles, jobvacancies etc – without having to wait for us to catch up withthe many requests.

IHworld.com will soon also link to IH Online, the new IHinteractive online learning system that is being designed for allIH schools to use. This new VLE (Virtual Learning Environment– like WebCT in universities) will enable all IH schools to offerteacher training or student courses online to their clients.

This sort of flexibility and innovation is a must in today’s mar-ket, and will enable us also to offer a wide range of TeacherDevelopment courses to IH staff worldwide.

Writers Needed!We are therefore actively looking for teachers and trainers wholike to write TD material for IHWO, to be used online. We arealso always interested in new ideas for student-oriented mate-rial, especially English for Specific Purposes. Anyone interest-ed should contact me at the email below.

New MaterialsThis year we have published a 25-hour course on English forMarketing, available free from head office. More ESP materialsare in the pipeline and more needed from talented writers.

New SchoolsSeveral new schools have joined International House this year,including:

IH Cuba • IH Dubai • IH Paris • IH PamplonaIH Toronto • IH Riviera Maya • IH Jeddah • IH Al-Jouf

and quite a few new countries are in the pipeline. You can findout more on the website.

Study AbroadIn order to better promote our IH Study Abroad schools, wehave created an IHWO CD-ROM which introduces theschools, courses and cities in which they run. If you’d like acopy, contact Anna Ingram, our new AdministrativeCoordinator, or visit the www.ihstudyabroad.com websitewhere you can see the same material.

Michael CarrierExecutive Director, IHWO Ltdmichael.carrier@ihworld.co.uk

Michael CarrierExecutive Director, IHWO

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IHWO News IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

IHWO DIRECTORS’ CONFERENCE, NEWCASTLE 2004

I joined the International House network of language schoolbecause of the charismatic and persuasive personality of JohnHaycraft: his contagious passion for education, teaching lan-guages, teacher training and international cultural exchangeand human interest.as well as his intelligence and wit and hisideas of a world wide group of language schools with com-mon goals: high quality language teaching, thorough and con-trolled teacher training, interest in international culturalexchange and social activities.

Being invited to several directors`conferences before I joined Iappreciated the devotion of many directors to education andthe pedagogical side of ELT. I got to know excellent teachertrainers and most of the directors were lively language teach-ers rather than dry and bureaurocratic administrators..

All this and several personal talks with John and Brita Haycraftconvinced me to join IHWO.

How we have profited by joining

Joining IH has widened our outlook and educational perspec-tives through the exchange of ideas worldwide educationallyand businesswise through the engagement and the know-howof the IHWO office in London and many other IH schools, com-mon sales-promoting activities at exhibitions and workshops,and in magazines etc.

Teacher Training has become more and more important, andat the end of the eighties some of our teacher trainers fromFreiburg went to London for many weeks to transform theIHTTprogramme there into an IHTT programme for teachers ofGerman. Since then we have been running this programmesuccessfully every year.

Many personal relationships between directors have beendeveloped with mutual benefit. We also appreciate the visitsand the visitors from London to our school. Very often they havehelped us with hints, new ideas and constructive criticism.

Dreams for the future of IHWO

That it should grow to become the best language teachingorganisation in the world and achieve that growth withoutdiminishing quality, and maintaining management control. Thatall the qualities that made us join might not get lost along theway. That we can streamline our common interests even moreefficiently in the future to the benefit of the organisation andeach individual school.

Why I Joined IHWO in 1983Dieter Loeffner, IH Freiburg, Germany

Find your director!

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 IHWO News

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As promised in Issue 14, Charles’ articles are now available inpdf form on the IH Journal website; in case you haven’t visitedthe site recently, here is the contents list to whet your appetitefor stimulating and inspirational writing about the nature of lan-guage and teaching it.

1. An Appraisal of Modern Currents in ELT: Ten Articles

2. The Prologue

3. Do language teachers and applied linguists understandeach other?

4. Integration not eclecticism: a brief history of languageteaching, 1853 – 2003

5. Noticing: a re-appraisal of its implications for methodolo-gy

6. Authentic participation: integrating task-based and lan-guage-focus methodologies

7. ‘Good teaching’ – a reappraisal

8. Lexical approaches now: the role of syntax and grammar

9. The ‘Music of English’ – a New Model of CommunicativeIntonation and Rhythm

10. The present perfect – chimera or pussy cat?

To quote from Charles’ introduction to the series:

‘The message through-out the articles is this:the more that new ideasshed light on what wedo, the more we shouldremember our roots,keep our feet on theground and integratethe old with the new.We should not allowfads to get a footholdand we should try not tobe categorical aboutanything. We shouldremember that the relation between the teacher and their stu-dents is as old as human history. And the humanity of that rela-tionship will always continue unchanged.’

Charles’ ideas, while firmly grounded in the ‘humanity of therelationship’ between teacher and student and soundly basedin experience and research, also offer sometimes provocativeand even revolutionary suggestions for the way we look at lan-guage and teaching language. So if you feel the need to keepyour feet on the ground while engaging with the heady newnotions you will find in this and other Journals, have a look!

In previous issues we mentioned Neill Anderson and JennyDavey, winners of an award presented by Cambridge ESOL tothe best candidates for the DELTA in any one year. This year,Thom Kiddle, a candidate on the joint British Council and IHLondon Distance DELTA Course, has been awarded theDELTA prize for the best grades among all candidates world-wide for the Dec 2003 and June 2004 sessions. He achieveda distinction in all three parts of the course. Very many con-gratulations from all of us for this fantastic achievement; belowis his account of his experience.

I am currently in my third year in Thailand, two of those with theBritish Council in Bangkok. Prior to coming here I taught inSydney, Lisbon and Manchester, as well as doing SummerSchools in Torbay, Devon. I really joined the British Council herefor the support – financial and pedagogical – they offer to DELTAcandidates. I had wanted to do the DELTA for a couple of years,though when I started I was glad I hadn’t embarked on it anyearlier! Various senior teachers had encouraged me to do thecourse and I was well aware that it makes a huge difference toany EFL teacher’s abilities, knowledge, (and CV of course). Ireally felt I was benefiting at every stage of the course particu-larly after an excellent Orientation Course here in Bangkok – andalthough the workload was heavy, there were three of us who

started together,which helped a lot. Bythe end of the course,my teaching haddeveloped in all sortsof ways, not least thedepth of awareness Ihad in the classroom,and knowing muchmore ‘why’ I wasdoing activities –though not always!

Since passing theDELTA, I havebecome involved inall sorts of teachertraining – to future DELTA candidates, Thai English teachers,on TEFL introduction courses and in BC INSETTs. I have alsostarted work with the Dreams and Teams project – a BC initia-tive which forges links between Thai and English schools – forwhich I am writing Learner-centred projects and task-basedlesson plans. And naturally, I’m still teaching here in Bangkok;a range of courses to adults and teens throughout the week.

More IH prizes: Thom Kiddle

Charles Lowe’s Articles

Book Reviews IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

BOOK REVIEWS

Vocabulary (second edition)John Morgan and Mario Rinvolucri

Oxford University Press, 2004.

Anew addition to OUP’s fineResource Books for Teachers

series, this is the revised and updat-ed version of the original book pub-lished in 1986. Since that date, theauthors observe, there have been anumber of significant changes in theapproach to language teaching andthe acquisition of vocabulary and thesecond edition reflects this. Theauthors, firstly, have acknowledgedthe findings of corpus linguists – that

language is largely phrasal and that it is essential to draw stu-dents’ attention to collocation and the chunking of language. Iam particularly appreciative of this aspect of the book.Secondly, they have considered ways in which the mothertongue can help students learn vocabulary through bilingualassociations. Finally, they have taken into account learner dif-ferences, a relatively recent field that embraces learning styles,multiple intelligences and neurolinguistic programming.

The second edition has been expanded to eleven chaptersfrom the original seven and incorporates a range of activitiesbased on the three areas above as well as updated ‘oldfavourites’ from the earlier edition. The authors also providesome interesting authentic texts with accompanying activities.The chapters fall under these headings (with examples):

1. Pre-text activities (prediction tasks through – selected lex-ical items, word association, connotation, topic, etc.)

2. Working with texts (substituting words in a text, deletingunnecessary words, linking new vocabulary to personalmemories, etc.)

3. Writing activities (adding words to a story, expanding sen-tences, etc.)

4. Bilingual texts and activities (L1 and L2 word association,translation into L1)

5. Using corpora and concordances (sorting collocations bymeaning, a sample concordance and how to use it, etc.)

6. Words and the senses (‘activities that range across thesensory spectrum’ – visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and log-ical exercises)

7. Word sets (lexical sets, collocation, etc.)

8. Personal (related to students’ thoughts, feelings, experi-ences)

For all language teaching professionals

TTHHEE IIHH PPRROOFFEESSSSIIOONNAALL DDEEVVEELLOOPPMMEENNTT CCEENNTTRREEInternational House, 106 Piccadilly, London, W1J 7NL

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��Free attendance at Evening seminars • Saturday seminars • Mini-courses • Conferences

The International House Professional Development Centre provides training and development seminars and workshops to teachers, teacher trainers and educators and ELT managers.

Details of programmes can be found at our website (www.ihlondon.com/pdc). In addition, members receive the International House Journal of Education and Development for free.

Evening events from 19.00 to 20.30(free to members and £5.00 to non-members incl. refreshments)

Saturday workshops (£20 to members incl. lunch, £30 to non-members incl. lunch)

Institutional membership £75.00Individual Membership £30.00

To find out more about the IH Professional Development Centre, please contact

George Pickering at: georgeuk32@aol.com

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IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Book Reviews

— 35 —

9. Word games (storyboard, word chains, crosswords, etc.)

10. Dictionary exercises and word history

11. Revision exercises.

Reflecting the age of the computer, the authors have createdInternet-related activities, with addresses supplied for softwaresources, dictionaries, corpora and so on. Corpus-based activ-ities require considerable preparation on the part of theteacher, who must be able to guide students efficiently throughonline-based or CD-ROM-based corpora. If the students workon paper-based material in class, the teacher must pre-sortentries which feature the target language and select anappropriate number and range of items for presentation. Thereis guidance on how to do this.

Morgan and Rinvolucri maintain that surprise and freshnessare essential to the creation and maintenance of student inter-est. At the same time, vocabulary acquisition is associative,personal (related to past and present ‘felt’ experience), social(interchanging and sharing understanding), and experiential(hands-on). The book has successfully integrated new trendsand ideas with more traditional approaches, and original –sometimes unusual – activities with more practical ones. Asbefore, the authors challenge teachers to expand their viewsand methods. Altogether, this is a very useful and stimulatingresource book.

Leslie Anne Hendra

In English: StarterPeter Viney and Kevin Viney

Oxford University Press, 2004.

This books looks unusual: the A5format makes a change from the

usual A4 sizing and it should make iteasier to carry to and from schooland consult at every spare moment,as we know all students do all thetime. It may also be easier to lose ...

A full-sized course book in apocket-sized format is a novelty; thedivision of the ‘workbooks’ intovocabulary practice and grammarpractice is another, and the gimmick

of the red plastic square to ‘hide’ the answers printed in pink,another. Novelty does not always add up to effective quality,but in this case it does.

Once inside the rather oddly designed cover (it’s a tricky titleto make graphic and the publishers have fallen back on a che-querboard pattern of a fairly standard selection of ‘communi-cating’ faces in not very inviting shades of green and blue) thecontent is rapidly seen to be rather less revolutionary than theformat might lead one to expect. The page layout is the usualmix of print, photos and drawings which looks neither morenor less attractive than many other coursebooks. The wellchosen and thoughtfully ordered ‘bite-size’ chunks of lan-guage are presented with good, reasonably multicultural illus-trations from an eclectic range of sources – from the ‘DrawingHands’ by MC Escher on p. 67 to the delightful period adsfrom the Robert Opie collection on p. 118 – as well as somelively commissioned work, which provide a welcome varietyfrom page to page.

There is of course a limit to how adventurous one can be ina Beginner level book and the Vineys have wisely not attempt-ed to push the envelope too far out. The ‘getting to know you’conversations include some nice little twists however (I likedthe caller who gets the baby’s sex wrong on p. 9) and althoughthe content is necessarily fairly familiar, they have done a goodjob ringing as many changes as possible on topics such asShopping, Families, Life Events and Asking Directions.

The philosophy behind the series appears to be an encour-agement to students to work as much on their own as possi-ble and the workbooks (with free Audio CD) are self-correctingand closely linked to the coursebook, offering a usefulresource to teachers who believe in learner independence andlearner training. Especially at Starter level, students (and theirteachers) need as wide a variety of resources as possible andthis is a helpful addition to the range already available.

Elena Rose

Longman Active Study DictionaryLongman, 2004.

The first thing I noticed about the Longman AS Dictionarywas its colour. Whether you’re flicking through it, or look-

ing for something in particular, the attention to colour and itsuse of pictures and diagrams makes this edition more appeal-ing to the learner. This is evident from the outset in the Guideto the Dictionary. Key word entries are in blue and active words(‘the more important words to know’) are in red. Furthermore,grammar boxes and thesaurus boxes, which are aimed atdeveloping learners’ vocabulary, provide additional useful infor-mation.

The LASD is an intermediate level dictionary and uses the2000-word Longman defining vocabulary in order to make thedefinitions more accessible to learners. (This would also be auseful reference for the inexperienced teacher looking for sim-ple, but effective definitions.) There are many more additionsto the dictionary, such as, an attention to common grammat-ical patterns and prepositions before examples as well as theinclusion of useful synonyms, collocations and idioms andfixed phrases. Meanings of each word are listed in order offrequency and one feature I recently found useful (whilst work-ing in Canada) is the comprehensive coverage of both Britishand American English. (I now know that a zucchini is simply acourgette!)

Furthermore, the centre of the book boasts a picture dictio-nary (in colour, of course) of popular lexical sets such as, ani-mals, food, etc … but also of kitchen verbs, verbs of move-ment (hands & body) and sounds. The ‘learner’s handbook’comprises a workbook and answer key in order to promotesome autonomy in the learner. This focuses on basic dictionaryskills, word stress, vocabulary and grammar, and each sectionconsists of its own language note, once again in colour & usingsimple explanations.

The final addition is the CD Rom. Features include: a fullcolour photo dictionary with sounds and videos in order toclearly illustrate meaning, a ‘pop-up’ dictionary and an exten-sive exercise bank, including IELTS and FCE. Learners are alsoable to listen to thousands of example sentences and also ableto record and check their own pronunciation.

A useful resource to any intermediate learner as well as forany staff room.

Julian L’Enfant

Book Reviews IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

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Gilroy’s Grammar CubesTim Gilroy

www.gramarama.com

‘The word cube game for all language lovers’125 cubes with 6 words on each cube making a

lexicon of 750 words. The words on any given cube have a grammatical relationship.

Having a grammatical relationship – conjures an intriguingpicture doesn’t it? Seriously though, why hasn’t any one

thought of this before? it would have saved hours of cutting uppieces of paper. Or would it? So gimmick or godsend? Weput this polished beechwood and laser engraved ELT resourceto the test with guinea pigs (sorry students) from pre-int to pre-advanced.

Thankfully, the kit includes a sound introduction to using thecubes and a variety of games and activities to get you going.Having introduced the students to the cubes it was on togrammar poker, grammar dice or countdown. Basically, theyare all variations on grab a few cubes and see what sense youcan make out of them when you put them together.

What the Guinea Pigs Squeaked

On the whole students were extremely positive about thecubes. In particular, upper-int and pre-advanced thought theywere a great alternative to the usual routine.

We like it because…

Very dynamic

It’s great to hold them and turn them around. You cancontrol the language

It really made us think about how we use words and whyand in what situation we would say things

A refreshing change, it’s a nice approach to grammar in adifferent way after all these years.

Better than doing exercises in a coursebook

They feel good

We didn’t like it because…

The games take a long time

There aren’t enough different kinds of words

It’s very difficult to make sentences that mean something

What the men in white coats reported

A varied response and again the feeling that the moreadvanced the level the more flexible the cube usage. Certainlymost thought the idea of the cubes was very attractive, but feltthe preparation involved to be off-putting.

Just what I needed because…

Very kinaesthetic

Students responded positively

It prompted questions about form and function

Very adaptable, easy to make up more games

A good alternative, like rods with words on

Made a great change to the usual

I’d use them again

Not my cup of tea because…

Somewhat restrictive, you definitely need more words

Very time consuming in class

You need to prepare really well if you want to use this withlower levels

You have to cherry pick the bricks even for mid-int and thatkind of defeats the point

It’s difficult to relate these to the topic of the day

Quite dry as totally uncontextualised

This would make a valuable addition to any teaching resourcecentre. However, you do need to persist with it and playaround with it before you get the hang of how to use them.Also, teachers may be a bit reluctant to use them at first andso a workshop may be in order.

Melissa Lamb

The History of English Language Teaching (second edition)

A. P. R. HowattOxford University Press, 2004.

The History of English LanguageTeaching was first published in

1984. By this date theCommunicative Approach was wellenough established, certainly in theUK, and in the best centres. It is truethat there was a triumphal zeal asso-ciated with the CA. We enjoyed mak-ing fun of prior methodologies. Wederided lockstep procedures, behav-iourism, the grammatical syllabus,transmission-modes of language

instruction (all, incidentally, fine by me). Methodologically thefeeling was that we had reached a kind of ‘end of history’, anincontestable methodological ne plus ultra.

But the CA has not, thankfully, eclipsed and replaced ear-lier methodologies. Indeed ‘principled eclecticism’ meansthat the CA has cast a nostalgic glance at what it had sup-posedly left behind and reincorporated older methods, redis-covering drilling (as if in deed it had ever been lost), grammarrules, even translation. But in fact for language teachingworldwide such approaches have never even gone away. Theyflourish, unabashed. If we needed any proof that the CA hasnot swept all before it, we could simply note the crowds of stu-dents on the pavement in somewhere near Tottenham CourtRoad in London, massing to enter the school whose publicityhas, on its first page, this maxim: ‘Do not think. Repeat,repeat.’ And this in the year 2005!

The current edition of the History of English LanguageTeaching returns twenty years on to the CA in its more matureguise. In the 1984 edition, Task Based Learning was in itsearly stages and received only the briefest of mentions. In thisnew edition, it earns two full pages and a handsome full pageportrait of Prabhu. But was there not room for a fuller accountof recent ideas?

True this is not a book about English teaching in the UK. Wemust not expect to find local tendencies and controversies.Still in this updated (2004) version of the earlier text one

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expects to find more evidence of the issues that have come tomaturity in the intervening 20 years. One hoped to find arecord of the further development of TBL, of its application(albeit in lightweight form) in current course books etc. But nothere is but a largely theoretical gloss on it. And this in a bookthat in its earlier chapters finds space for references to (andfacsimiles of) language teaching materials such as ComeniusOrbis Sensualium Pictus, a collection of visual aids dated1659.

So what else might we look for in book of this title and thisdate? A mention at least of the Lexical Approach surely?There is none. A reference (perhaps dismissive) to Dogme?No. CALL? Ten lines of a very general nature. Video? A dozenlines whose only mention of actual materials is to films from1964.

Of course this book is an excellent one. It always has been.But if it is to be brought up to date again perhaps it can bedone so with these thoughts in mind.

Rodney Blakeston

IdentityJoseph Shaules, Hiroko Tsujioka and Miyuki Lida

Oxford University Press, 2004 (CD included).

Identity Teacher’s BookCharles Vilina, Joseph Shaules, Hiroko Tsujioka and

Miyuki LidaOxford University Press, 2004.

This book is a skills course designed for ‘higher beginner andintermediate students’. The student’s book is very nicely

and colourfully presented, it looks very interesting and the con-tents are designed for intercultural communication. It has agood list of topics relevant to this area including culture shock,body language, gender and culture, stereotypes and polite-ness. At the back it includes the tape-scripts plus glossaries foreach Unit and further activities referred to as ‘wrap-up’.

The book is people oriented, focussing on students of dif-ferent nationalities and famous people (from varied and differ-ent cultures) such as Margaret Mead, Ghandi and NelsonMandela. It spreads itself across cultures successfully andoffers interesting information about our global village which willbe very useful for teachers wherever they may be teachingEnglish.

The emphasis is on cultural knowledge and skills work andthe book does this well. However, there is no recognisablemethodology in terms of attention to form or understanding ofmeaning (except through use of the English-English glossary atthe back) or the grading and procedures of skills practice.

Some of the English is quite strange e.g. ‘I just went to Italyand Spain for the first time last year’ seems to fall between dif-ferent structures? This is not an effort to avoid the PresentPerfect which is included without explanation (‘What newthings have you done in your life?’) and also seems to imply anodd understanding of the use of this difficult tense. In fact onefinds a mixture of structures on the same page and the diffi-culties this may cause are resolved by the students readingexamples out loud to each other, with spoon fed languageexamples on the page for students to read and say to each

other. The authors’ assumptions are clearly that students learnby reading aloud from the board or the book.

The vocabulary, as one might expect when the book ismaterials-based, varies in level and within one text one findsphrasal verbs and formal nouns highlighted and explained inthe glossary at the back. In fact the selected vocabulary isvery useful and, if the students use it in practice, could be veryhelpful in a cultural setting.

Conclusion: a very useful book for cultural lessons with goodvocabulary, but not a book from which to ‘present’ new lan-guage – which means that the teacher might be well-servedto adapt the materials using the conventional procedures inorder to exploit it to greater advantage.

Benita Cruickshank

Fast ClassThe skill-based FCE/B2 course for exam success

Kathy GudeOxford University Press, 2004.

Anyone who has taught an FCE/B2examination class will appreciate thevalue of being able to find suitablematerial to match a student’s or agroup of students’ examinationneeds. All too often, searching forsomething which deals well with Useof English Part 3, for example, meansscouring through module after mod-ule of a book, trying to find some-thing appropriate which you haven’talready used.

This new book by Kathy Gude is extremely well laid out inresponse to those needs and can be used as a coursebook, asupplementary book or as a revision book for students in needof a re-take. There are 5 modules, each split into parts A andB, and within each part there is a clear focus on one Part ofeach of the five FCE papers. So, for example, module 1alooks at Reading Part 1 (matching headings), Writing Part 1(informal transactional letters), Use of English Part 1 (multiplechoice cloze), Listening Part 1 (multiple choice) and SpeakingPart 1 (personal information). Module 1b repeats this patternto give extra practice, with Reading Part 1 (matching summa-ry sentences) and Writing Part 1 (formal transactional letters)having a slightly different focus. All writing sections contain achecklist appropriate for the text type being examined. So themodules continue, dealing with all parts of the examination,some parts receiving more attention than others. Every ‘A’part of the module has an exam know-how box with soundadvice, which is then recycled in the corresponding part B.The use of the advice is encouraged by the tasks set.

Although the book remains focused on examination skills,the material is well exploited; for example, in the reading sec-tions, interest is generated and/or some prediction takes placebefore skimming and/or scanning tasks are set. The exami-nation task is then dealt with, with appropriate reference to theknow-how box, before students are encouraged to respond tothe text in a personal way. Content dealt with, the text is thenused for the language it contains.

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Book Reviews IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

No matter which Paper is being focused on, language is notignored. Each module uses the text or the topic to examinefeatures of the language used. In module 1, for example, neg-ative prefixes, phrasal verbs with ‘pick’ and ‘take’ (multi-wordverbs are a constant theme), expressions with ‘way’ and ‘take’(collocations also receive regular focus), linking words, modals,the future, homophones, and expressing dislikes and prefer-ences are all covered and then revised and extended in an endof module double page suitable for self-study. The accompa-nying Workbook is designed to complement each module,focusing on topic vocabulary, Use of English, Grammar andListening, with every exercise explicitly linked back to a pageand exercise in the coursebook. Phrasal verbs again receive alot of attention and there is an alphabetical index of some com-mon ones with a focus on meaning and form. The grammarreference at the back of the coursebook is also clearly linkedto the appropriate section of each module; it is clearly written,without excessive information, although in some cases, moreexamples might be useful.

The book is colourful with either photographs or illustrationson every page. Most of the topics are current; some may datein a year or so (those on films, for example), but interest levelsshould be well maintained.

The Teacher’s Book is simply written for ease of use andthere are clearly marked optional extra activities, useful if thebook is being used for an extensive course or if students needextra focus in a specific area. Tapescripts are included, withkey areas for question answers highlighted. Tests to accom-pany each half-module and progress tests for the end of eachcomplete module are downloadable from the Internet, as arekey word transformations. Sample answer sheets for theReading, Use of English and Listening papers are at the backof the book.

Apart from the coursebook, Teacher’s Book and Workbook(with or without key), there is a class cassette or CD and a com-plimentary workbook CD which contains four examination tasks.

The book can be used with flexibility according to needs.Overall, it looks particularly well suited as a supplementaryresource, for a revision / re-take course or for an intensive orextensive class with a good language level who need specificfocus on exam skills and techniques while revising language atthe same time.

Mike Cattlin

Creative Poetry Writing Resource Book for Teachers

Jane SprioOxford University Press, 2004.

Istarted with a sceptical raised eyebrow and ended with awide-eyed enthusiasm for this book. It is divided into 10 sec-

tions starting with individual ‘sounds’, then ‘wordplay’ (focus-ing on the ‘building blocks of words’: prefixes, suffixes, etc)‘word mixing’ (idioms, collocations and the effects of ‘mixing’words) ‘sentence pattern’ (how sentences are formed) ‘time’(tenses expressed in verb forms) ‘modal verbs’, ‘languagefunction’ (everyday situations) ‘genre’ (to match purpose andaudience) ‘games’ (as if this wasn’t enough fun already) andfinally ‘poems as stories’ (to practise narratives). It’s great:though the author may be appalled by this, I say forget the

poetry and think of the language and practice the students aregetting. Ever had trouble getting students’ heads round thecomparatives as… as, (never mind the pronunciation)? Worryno more. See page 53. Want to practise giving advice in a newand refreshing way? See page 120. Phonemes, pages 17-29.and there’s vocabulary galore! You get the idea…

It’s not a book to be pooh-poohed because the word poet-ry is in the title. One could ask how useful ‘alliteration’ is forstudents but then only today my students told me what it wasand gave me contemporary global examples without my elici-tation. Those that didn’t know loved doing the exercise findingidiomatic expressions from the sound and rhythm of them, e.g.as good as gold. You could ask the same question aboutmetaphors, but the book itself adequately answers these andother questions in the introduction. My overall experience withthis book has been that the students love it. Of course I don’tbandy the word poetry about in the classroom before we doan activity, but once the ideas and vocabulary have fired theirimagination they get right into it and have thus far never ques-tioned its validity, and if I did at the beginning I don’t anymore.

Some of the advantages of this book are: you don’t needany materials bar a board and pens; you’ll introduce somevocabulary that your students would otherwise never havelearnt; it’s playful and creative (which is a nice change); theactivities are short and punchy and are nicely laid out and buildup smoothly; there’s really very little work for the teacher, otherthan expanding (if one wants to) the vocabulary being used;you can use the activities to support the syllabus you’re doingor they stand alone; the index covers topics while the contentscover the aims and functions, making it easy to dip into andsearch for supplementary course material. But finally and, forme, most importantly the repetition, of words, collocations,etc., as well as form, is a fantastic memory aid for students.And they’re doing it for the sake of the poem and not for thesake of learning the language, which is why I think they love it.Try it: you’ll love it too.

Andy Cox

Business FocusDavid Grant and Robert McCarty

Business Focus Teacher’s BookJohn Hughes

Oxford University Press, 2004.

Available at pre-Intermediatelevel, this is a comprehensive

course book which is best suited topre-experience students. It featuresa student book, workbook andteacher’s book.

What is unique and a real bonus inthis series is the supply of a freevideo phrasebook on CD-ROMwhich features video clips of usefulworkplace language in action, withthe text displayed if the student

chooses. The workbook also features a free audio CD whichgives the student the opportunity to practice listening and do

IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004 Book Reviews

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related workbook exercises in his own time.The self-study material is user friendly and gives further

practice of the course book units. It can also be used by theteacher in the classroom as supplementary material.

The language focus is on expressions for real work situationsand vocabulary relevant to the workplace and can be describedas taking a functional approach. Language practice is based onrole-plays which are task based using an information exchangeapproach and also with tasks which focus on communicationand discussion of business issues to develop fluency.

The role plays are particularly useful because they give stu-dents opportunities to ‘realistically’ practice using the languagestudied but give opportunity for freer use of language, thusmaking it suitable for use with students of different levels. Thelanguage practice is task based and uses informationexchange activities for pairs, but also, for example, groups offour to discuss and reach agreement on a business matter.

The course book is well organised and easy to use with aclear index ranging from customer service to restaurant lan-guage to getting information on the telephone to differenttypes of meeting.

For students (and teachers) with a grammar focus, thecourse book provides a useful section at the back of the bookto explain and give further practice of grammar points, but witha business context and vocabulary.

There is a useful dictionary of terms used in the units at the

back of the book and transcripts of the many dialogues fea-tured in each unit. The teacher’s book gives a lead in ideas,answers to exercises, follow up and extra activities and shouldenable a teacher with limited knowledge of business to run thecourse.

My only reservations are firstly that the book has a ‘focus ongrammar’ section in each unit. However, each of these is con-textualised, business related with written and oral practice ofeach structure. Secondly, I would prefer more photographs ofbusiness situations and fewer, or better no cartoon images.

The target of the book is, however, younger learners of busi-ness English, typically at university, who want to learn Englishfor Business to improve their work prospects.

Overall, it provides sufficient material, particularly becausethe information exchange files provide a balance of input andpractice, with good, realistic audio recordings.

Business Focus can thus be described as a user friendlyseries which balances opportunity for free discussion, taskbased practice, a functional approach to language and con-textualised vocabulary together with a grammatical approachwhich should satisfy students’ need for structure. It’s not mycup of tea, but then I only deal with groups of experienced pro-fessionals. Give it a go, it could be the best series for pre-expe-rience learners I have encountered.

Alan Cargyl

The Back Page: Guessing the QuestionWhat does a library do in an ELT school?In 2004, Vicky Rayner took over as Librarian at IH London fromNigel Beanland (of IHJ fame) who left IH London for a worldoutside ELT. It seemed a good moment for the IH Journal toreflect on the nature and functions of a library in a large privatelanguage school which is also a major Teacher Training estab-lishment. So we interviewed Vicky to get her ideas about andinsight into a job which is much more than the buying, cata-loguing, shelving and endless tidying it has been in the past,though it still involves all those tasks – especially the latter!These days, a library is an information centre, and a librarian’smain function is to guide people towards the information theyneed: Vicky spends most of her time answering questions andshe needs to be able to give the right answer to someone whomay not know the right question to ask, a skill which involvesa good deal of intuitive psychology as well as an ency-clopaedic knowledge of the materials at her disposal. She feelsthe greatest satisfaction of the job comes from meeting peo-ple’s needs.

Vicky inherited a well-organised and extensive library, fulfill-ing several functions: it has to provide a place for students todo their home-work in relative peace (some of IH London’s stu-dents prefer to leave school with all their work done at the endof the day so that they can concentrate on a demanding sociallife), or read the newspaper; but also and very importantly, ithouses facilities for the trainees who form such an importantpart of the population at IH London, including a photocopierand teaching aids like packs of pictures, games packs, clocksand cuisenaire rods, as well as a wide selection of books andjournals on methodology available either for borrowing or con-sulting on the spot.

Answering the right questionA trainee might sidle up to the enquiry desk, with a questionlike ‘Umm … have you got anything on conditionals?’ Vickyfeels it is important to get them to focus by asking the essen-tial questions: ‘Is it for you, or to use with students?’ ‘Whatlevel are you thinking of? What coursebook are you using?What aspect of the conditional were you thinking of?’ beforepointing them in the direction of a choice of options. She feelsit is her function, not to provide answers, but to suggest placeswhere they might find answers for themselves.

Conversations might follow this pattern:

‘I want a grammar book’‘Oh yes, which one?’‘Umm, the yellow one, I think.’

The Librarian has to help the trainee to realise that ‘grammarbooks’ come in several different guises, as well as to see that

Vicky: Guessing the Question

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The Back Page IH Journal • Issue 17, Autumn 2004

an explanation designed for a native speaker (often with thelevel of grammar knowledge common to most people whocompleted their education in the UK any time in the last twen-ty-five years) will be quite different from that designed for a pre-intermediate language student. Vicky finds that organisation isthe key: if books are clearly catalogued and arranged on theshelves in categories which immediately make sense andrelate to the queries the trainees have, they can begin to findtheir own way and clarify their own ideas, so that towards theend of a course a trainee is more likely to come in with a querylike ‘Have you got anything that would help me to explain thethird conditional to a Late Intermediate class who are usingCutting Edge?’

Making the most of the spaceA large part of encouraging people toexplore the shelves is to make surethat they look inviting. If the books areleaning untidily against each other ortheir covers are worn and dog-eared,they are less likely to be used.Paperback books must be covered orlaminated to protect them from inevitable mistreat-ment, they must be stacked in an orderly fashion so theycan be very easily found and the whole room kept look-ing smart and attractive. Both trainees and languagestudents expect a high level of service these days, andpart of the service they expect is a good-looking andinviting study centre, equipped with everything theyneed to complete their course.

Since she arrived, Vicky has installed a cornerwith easy chairs where students can sit andread and new display stands for graded read-ers, as well as pot plants to counteract the dryatmosphere (both literal and figurative) of a library.This is all designed to encourage the students tomake as full a use as possible of the library and its facilities.She feels the presence of language students in the library isimportant. The students themselves need to feel that the facil-ity is available as an extension of their studies in the classroom,the self-access room and language labs; and also, having stu-dents reading, browsing or studying near them as they plantheir lessons or research their assignments, helps traineesremember what their training is for – the course should notexist in a little ‘CELTA-vacuum’ – but be seen in the context ofthe needs of the ‘end-users’, the sort of people with whomthey will ultimately be working.

She would like to integrate the Library’s facilities more close-ly with those of the Self Access Centre, and to install a com-puterised cataloguing system transferring the contents of thecurrent card index system onto a database programme likeAccess; this would enable the trainee who wants ‘somethingon grammar’, to refine his or her search and become morequickly independent of the Librarian and her staff.

IH School LibrariesOf course IH London is a very large school, training around600 trainees a year and with an average student population of220 in any one month. Facilities and expectations which areappropriate there are not necessarily relevant to a school run-ning perhaps two or three CELTA courses a year. However,

some of the ideas helpful in running an efficient and friendlylibrary and information service for a large Study Abroad schoolcan also be applied to the service a smaller school could offerto a local market.

For students, it is essential that the reading or study booksoffered to them are arranged in clearly graded sections andwith topic areas indicated so that they can browse easily tofind exactly what they want. In a school where it is not possi-ble to have a dedicated member of staff to help all the time, itis especially important that the system is self-explanatory andeasy to follow. Trainees also, need to be able to find what theywant without the frustrating experience of having picked upwhat you thought you needed to complete your assignment,

only to open it and look at it properly when you gethome and discover that actually youneeded something else. The answer tothis can be found in a fully descriptive cat-

alogue, whether computerised orpaper based, which everyone can betrained to consult before going near

the shelves.In a school where students are keento get home after class, the reading

corner is probably unnecessary, but a display of read-ers near the way out might encourage people to pickup something as they leave, do a quick flick through itand perhaps leave with it, having signed the register orcompleted whatever simple record keeping system the

school uses at the reception desk by the door. Where trainees are more likely to be away

from home and possibly staying in accommo-dation where study conditions are not ideal,

they are the ones who will want somewherequiet to work after the official day is over. If the

school can offer them a well-arranged training andmethodology library in calm space with tables and chairs(which looks and feels well-thought out and not just an ad hoccorner scrabbled together for the duration of the course)where they can look things up, take notes and even puttogether their assignments, they will repay the trouble withgood feedback at the end of the course and recommendationsto friends.

Every IH school will have its own solution to the problem ofwhat ‘extra’ study opportunities to offer its clients, whether lan-guage students or trainee teachers; each school will have aslightly different set of answers and ideas, suitable for its ownmarket and its own clients. But every school can learn fromother people’s ideas: wherever your school is, and whatever itsclientele, the Journal would like to hear from you about yourexperiences (both good and bad!) in setting up, running orusing, an information centre in your school. And so wouldVicky!

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