20 Spring 2006 - IH Journal

ih journa lof educat ion and deve lopment

20 Spr ing 2006

The IH Journal – 10 years on

Life Before EFL – How I Became an EFL Teacher

Vocabulary? Stick it in the Tin!

Action Research Projects at IH Cordoba

Running a Young Learner Department

Young Learner DVD Training Course from IH Madrid

Knowledge Management – What Organisations Need to Know

Understanding Expectations – The Client Approach to Teaching In-Company

Songs for Swingin’ Teachers

One Size Doesn’t Fit All – Everything you ever wanted to know about the IHCo (IHC online)

Life After EFL – Out of the Language Training Pan and into the Management Consultancy Fire

Grammar is Dead. Long Live Grammar!

Introducing IH Campus at IH Palermo Centro Storico

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Contents

Editor: Ian Berry [email protected] Board: Steve Brent, Pippa Bumstead, Michael Carrier, Roger Hunt, Jeremy Page, Scott ThornburyAdvertising: Alex Monk [email protected] +44(0) 20 7518 6959Subscriptions: Ania Ciesla [email protected] IH Journal, International House, 106 Piccadilly, W1J 7NL [email protected] +44(0) 20 7518 6975

journal of education and developmentIssue 20 • Spring 2006

Editorial

ArticlesThe IH Journal – 10 years on by Charles Lowe

Life Before EFL - How I Became an EFL Teacher by Bernadette Walker, Micaela Carey, Jon Wrightand Helen Rouse (DOS) IH Malaga, Spain

Vocabulary? Stick it in the Tin! by David Tompkins

Action Research Projects at IH Cordoba by Rebecca Foreman, Hannah Murray - Pepper, WilmaDyer and Susan Mulquiney

Running a Young Learner Department by Jenny McKane

Young Learner DVD Training Course from IH Madrid by Steven McGuire

Knowledge Management - What Organisations Need to Know by Andrew Nye

Understanding Expectations - The Client Approach to Teaching In-Company by ChristopherHolloway and Kate Baade

Songs for Swingin’ Teachers by Mark Lloyd

One Size Doesn’t Fit All - Everything you ever wanted to know about the IHCo (IHC online)by Diane Thurston

Life After EFL - Out of the Language Training Pan and into the Management Consultancy Fireby Susanna Dammann

Grammar is Dead. Long Live Grammar! Roger Hunt interviews Ron Carter and Mike McCarthy,authors of Cambridge Grammar of English

Introducing IH Campus at IH Palermo Centro Storico by Marco Faldetta

IHWO News

Book ReviewsMove Intermediate – reviewed by Simon Gillow, IH BarcelonaMove Upper Intermediate – reviewed by Christopher Cooke, IH Manzoni, RomeGrammar – reviewed by Roger Hunt, IH Barcelona Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development – reviewed by BarryTomalin, IH London

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Editorial IH Journal • Issue 20, Spring 2006

Break open the champagne! Cut the cake! It’s time toPARTY! Alternatively, you can calmly leaf through this, the20th issue of the IH Journal of Education and

Development, and reflect on the fact that we are celebrating 10years of publication or indeed take neither of the above options!

Back in April 1996, the IH Journal first started to fall throughthe letter boxes of IH schools all over the world, the product ofan idea conceived by Charles Lowe, at that time Director of IHLondon. Charles edited Issue 1 himself, and I am very pleasedto say that he has written a retrospective article for this issueto commemorate the Journal’s 10th birthday. In re-reading hisfirst editorial, I was immensely satisfied to discover that whatwe are doing with the Journal today remains true to CharlesLowe’s credo when putting Issue1 together:

“The International House Journal of EducationalDevelopment was conceived as an in-house educationalforum for International House teachers throughout theWorld Organisation, coming out twice a year. It is written byteachers for teachers. Anyone and everyone can have theirsay. It will contain articles on action research (i.e.classroom investigation) projects, conference papers,practical ideas, news items, and work in progress fromleading thinkers within the organisation. We want toencourage debate, give people a platform, create newideas, refloat old ideas, debunk myths and generate a newsense of adventure.”

Action Research was on the agenda in ‘Number 1’, with anarticle written by Martin Parrot and curiously enough one of thefirst proposals I received for Issue 20, was a write up on aseries of Action Research projects conducted by teachers atIH Cordoba, ably guided by their DoS, Simon Armour. Whilstmaybe not exactly ‘refloating’ an old idea (Has AR ever reallygone out of fashion?) it is an excellent example of how hard-working teachers within IHWO can share the fruit of theirresearch with their colleagues worldwide. I have to admit thatfrom my privileged position as editor, I have already tried someof the excellent practical ideas contained in this article with mystudents and I know many others will follow suit.

Back in January, I attended the final day of the IH DoSConference and I took encouragement from the feedback Ireceived on the Journal. Many of those that I spoke toremarked on the ‘eclectic mix’ and ‘balance’ that the Journalhas today, and I am quietly confident that we have achievedthat again in the ‘Birthday Issue’. We have articles on YoungLearners, Business English, Teacher Training Developments,Practical ideas for the Classroom, The use of Songs in CourseBooks and a thought-provoking piece on KnowledgeManagement. I like to think that teachers within the IHWOnetwork, wherever they may be, can pick up the IH Journaland find articles of particular interest to them and furthermore,

that this might inspire them to share their experiences bycontributing themselves.

On one front, at least, it would appear that I have got the‘balance’ all wrong! As I was putting together the contentspage for this issue, it suddenly struck me that this is verymuch a ‘Spanish’ issue, with contributions from IH schools inBarcelona, Cordoba, Madrid and Malaga to the fore. Youmight even be forgiven for thinking that with the editor beingbased in Lisbon, it is an Iberian Peninsula monopoly! Let meassure you this is not the case, but it is merely ‘how the IHcookie crumbled’ (Please keep the articles flooding inwherever you are). I hope however, that on reading theJournal you will agree that if not in geographical terms, at leastI have got the balance right in terms of content!

Whilst on the topic of contributions, Charles Lowe was keenthat “Anyone and everyone” could “have their say”, and I still holdwith this. However, there are practical limitations and it is notalways possible to include all the articles we would like to run. Tothis end, we will be establishing ‘NetArticles’ on the IH Journalsite www.ihjournal.com where we can post articles that, forwhatever reason, have not made it to the pages of the Journal. Irecently received an excellent submission from MargaretHorrigan, a teacher trainer from the IH Rome Manzoni school. Forthe last six years, Margaret has been researching and pioneeringthe use of a colour-coded phonemic chart for use with YoungLearners. Although an excellent article, its content cried out to bereproduced in colour. However, I am pleased to tell you that it willbe one of the first batch of articles to appear on NetArticles. Avisit to the IH Journal site will also enable you to find acomprehensive list of songs that accompanies Mark Lloyds’Songs for Swingin’ Teachers article, an updated version of our‘Author Index’ new additions to our ‘Back Number’ archive,which you can access in PDF, and a ‘Preview’ of the current issuefor those who currently do not subscribe.

It would appear that our Life Before and Life After EFL havealso struck a chord with teachers within the organisation. Inthis issue Helen Rouse, DoS of IH Malaga, and three of herteachers take us on their personal journeys through EFL, whilstformer IH Editor, Susanna Dammann, gives us an insight intothe world of Management Consultancy. I’m still working onprocuring the ultimate Life After EFL scribe, a certain JKR, whowas once a humble EFLer, here in my beloved Portugal, noless, before moving on to, if not fresher, certainly more lucrativepastures. Personally, I think being a multi-millionaire is a bitoverrated. Where’s the challenge? I bet she misses wipingthose runny noses, dealing with under challenged teenagersand their disgruntled parents, not to mention writing reports!

Well, on that slightly tongue-in-cheek note I will sign off. Ihope you enjoy this issue and will continue to do so for thenext 10 years. Happy reading.

Ian Berry - Editor

Alex MonkAdvertising

Ian BerryEditor

Ania CieslaSubscriptions

EDITORIAL

IH Journal • Issue 20, Spring 2006 Articles

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ARTICLES

The IH Journal - 10 years on Charles Lowe

Ihave observed with paternal satisfaction the development ofthe IH Journal over its first 10 years. Unlike many housejournals, it has not only kept going, but it has also gone from

strength to strength.

The original concept was to bring together every teacher andmanager in the IH World Organisation. I wanted it to be morethan a super-newsletter, providing an information board forevents and developments within the organisation. I wanted,firstly, to make each person feel they were not stuck in a remotefort on the edge of the empire, with London slightly ignoringthem and preoccupied with its own parochial concerns, butthat there was one big inclusive organisation and that they werepart of it. Secondly, I wanted to persuade IH staff everywherethat, whatever their interest or background or level ofexperience, they could contribute their ideas for the rest of usto benefit. Third, it was important to create a forum for debatein a range of fields – on practical teaching and training ideas, ontheoretical issues, or on school management matters. And

finally, I hoped to give contributors a place toexercise their writing skills, and to increase

their confidence for further writing.

From my observation, it has done,and continues to do, all those things.

I remember first pitching the idea togroup of eager but sceptical IH School

Directors at the Barcelona Conference inMay 1995. By November, we had

produced our first tentative issue. And at

that point I knew it had legs, because of the sheer energy of theideas and experiences people wanted to share. For that issue,I was ably helped by Matthew Barnard, and I was then very glad,and lucky, to be able fully to pass on the baton to Matthew forthe next period of issues. With his design skills and persuasiveability, he was able to take it to the next level. Subsequently,Paul Roberts took over for a while and, to the very practical feelof the journal, he added a more theoretical dimension. Then,under the joint stewardship of Rachel Clark and SusannaDammann over a number of years, some great pieces werecommissioned and it went forward to a level of real reputationand credibility. And, recently, I have been relieved and delightedthat Ian Berry has taken it on and continues to nurture both theJournal, and perhaps just as importantly, the pulling-togetherrole that it has within the IH World Organisation.

There have been some seminal articles in this Journal overthe years. What is more, I do believe that, as a regularlypublished document, it has achieved considerable weight inthe profession as a whole. Both in breadth and in depth, it isrightly admired as representative of the extraordinary qualitythat is International House throughout the world. I want tocongratulate everyone who has made it what it is, editors andcontributors alike.

The IH Journal of Education and Development really doeswhat it says on the tin. So my best wishesfor a Happy 10th Birthday, and here’s tothe next ten years!

Life Before EFL Bernadette Walker, Micaela Carey, Jon Wright and Helen Rouse (DOS)

Response to the first article in this series (Issue 19) hasbeen very positive, with many teachers keen to sharetheir own personal ‘EFL journeys’ with us. In this, the

second article, three teachers and the DOS of IH Malaga,Spain tell us how they became EFL teachers (Editor).

BernadetteBeing completely commitment phobic, suffering from travellust and finding myself rather broke towards the end of college(aka university if you’re British) I dreaded the question commonto all seniors (final year students) “So, what’s next?” The onlything I knew as I sat down to begin my last semester was thatI really wanted to return to Italy where I’d spent the previousyear studying. But how? Backpacking was not an option -student loans and an empty wallet severely prohibited that.Working? My Italian was decent after a year of study abroad,but I truly doubted that anyone would actually hire me. Thena brilliant friend suggested teaching EFL and I thought “I cando that!” After a bit of research it became clear that justshowing up in Italy with my college degree and very own native

tongue would not be good enough. I did manage to secure asummer job as a roaming English ‘tutor’ and strategicallyplanned to attend a TEFL course during the slow month ofAugust. I even took the opportunity to travel some more anddid my course in Prague. The summer camp work proved tobe a good introduction to teaching - letting me discover someof my own skills and techniques through trial and error. As wellas this, the camps based their curriculum on drama, songsand games, giving us some base material but expecting us toimprovise and create the rest. It was basically like a two anda half month course on making English learning fun and easy.So far the EFL world was doing very well by me.

September didn’t quite go as planned though; I had acouple of weeks of summer camp work to keep me goingback in Italy but still no job options in sight. How was Isupposed to know that a fresh-off-a-course teacher wasn’tlikely to be hired a few weeks short of October? Just as I waslosing hope (and running out of couches to crash on) I got acall from IH Campobasso. It was a Tuesday; “Can you be hereby Friday?” asked the voice on the phone. I couldn’t say “Yes”fast enough! I learned the ropes there in CB within the family-

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Articles IH Journal • Issue 20, Spring 2006

like atmosphere created by the super sister duo, that is Maryand Antonietta Ricciardi. One of the most formative episodeswas actually right at the beginning when the school hosted theYL conference in November of 2003. Within a month ofentering the EFL world I was surrounded by people with yearsof experience from all over Europe and, for the first time,realized that I could actually make a career out of this.

I worked in Campobasso for two fantastic years and thenmy wanderlust started to kick in, leading me here to IH Malaga.After the cold and snowy climate of Campobasso (don’t befooled by its southern positioning - Campobasso gets A LOTof snow between November and March!), I am happilyenjoying the true Mediterranean climate and keeping busyoutside of class learning Spanish. Like many others I’vewondered at times if this is a ‘real’ job - how can it be, when itallows me to travel, meet loads of new interesting people, learndifferent languages, and pretty much live a life not toodissimilar from the one I’d dreamed of while in school? Then Iremember that, yes, I actually do get paid to do this... cool!

MicaelaStudying abroad changed my life. At university, I studiedPsychology and Spanish, and in order to improve my SpanishI went to Madrid for two months during my third year. Afteronly two months, I had fallen in love with everything Spanish -the food, the language, the music, the people, the culture ingeneral... I had no desire to return to the States. My plans forthe future were to continue my Psychology degree, hopefullycompleting a Masters and I even saw a Ph.D waiting for me inthe distant horizon, but after my study-abroad experience Idecided to 'take a year off' upon finishing university. That yearsomehow turned into a number of years, including one yearthat I spent in the States teaching Spanish to middle and high-schoolers in order to save money to come back to Spain. I'venow been in Málaga, a small city on the southern coast, sinceOctober of 2001.

My first real teaching experience was that year I spent backin New York State. I loved it. I had never taught before and hadnever even taken an education course at university, but I felt socomfortable in the classroom. I looked forward to the noveltyof every day and the interaction with my students. I think itwas easy for me to motivate them about Spanish because Iwas so excited about the culture and the language.

When I returned to Spain I took a TEFL course in Madridand immediately started teaching private classes and at alanguage academy. I began teaching EFL because it was mybest option as an ex-pat living in a country where English ishigh in demand, but in the end I find that I enjoy teaching verymuch. I've taught most levels of EFL, from very younglearners to adults, and I find the work challenging butgratifying. Although I did not formally study Education atuniversity, I think that my Psychology degree prepared me inmany ways for teaching EFL, with adults and children.

My upbringing has also played a large role in where I amtoday. My parents are very special people. They are very opento new things: cultures, foods, music, languages… . Aschildren, my brother and I travelled to different places, metpeople from different cultures, tried new foods, and evenlearned some Spanish. My mother is a Spanish professor(which also had an enormous impact on my decision to learnSpanish). I was raised believing that learning and discoveringis not only beneficial but an essential part of life. This conceptof being open to new ideas and to new challenges is reflectedin my daily life as an EFL teacher. I try hard to include this wayof thinking in my classes and encourage it in the students.

At this point it seems I'll be in the EFL field for quite a longtime and I'm looking forward to delving deeper. I've realizedthat the IH world can provide me with the depth I'm looking

for. I've worked at a number of language academies, and thisis the first that has really made me feel challenged and hasmade me realise that developing my skills as a teacher isimportant. I think I've found my niche, at least temporarily,and I'm excited about all the possibilities to learn and grow asa teacher that IH provides.

JonDreams Fulfilled: Do you remember seeing pictures of the fallof the Berlin Wall? And the protests and tanks in TianmenSquare? The vivid images of those extraordinary times,people standing together, united, celebrating their new-foundfreedom, touched, moved and inspired me as a teenager,instilling a desire to reach Eastern Europe and build the BraveNew World that was emerging. The ‘What’ was clear, but the‘How’ took a while longer.

Russian wasn’t available at school so the next best thing wasGerman. After all, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,Lithuania, Hungary, and even Eastern Ukraine had a distantbackground of German as a second language. The greatpreparation was underway. With an A-level grade A, I took a gapyear, working as a greengrocer for 6 months, then 6 months asa campsite courier in Switzerland, in the truly gorgeous BernerOberland. There, I even managed to acquire a Swiss accent(yay!). Next came 3 years at Southampton University.

Being interested in people and what made them tick, Istudied Psychology, spending summer holidays working inSwitzerland and Austria. Following the finals I worked for 2months as an au-pair in Poland, looking after (not that theyneeded it) an 11-year-old boy, who knew all the words to ´Stan´by Eminem, and his 17-year old sister, who didn’t. After that, Idid the backpacker thing, working and travelling in NewZealand and Australia for a year each. One claim to fame is thatI auditioned for Lord Of The Rings, was accepted, and turnedthe part down due to visa constraints! Oh, if only I’d known…

Finally, in the summer of 2000, I saw that getting to Polandwould be easiest through EFL. I did a summer camp, thenthe CELTA, then, in the autumn of 2000, I got my firstteaching job at IH in Bydgoszcz, northern Poland. At last!Every day seemed wonderful and exciting. The tower blocks,the snow, the broken heating, the grey skies, the national´victim´ identity, but there was hope and optimism in the air!Solidarity. In February, I moved to IH Lviv in Ukraine. ThoughI got mugged twice in the first fortnight, it was truly acharacter building experience. I even came within 10 metresof Pope John Paul when he visited. The following year Ireturned to Poland, working in Rybnik (an independentschool where Jerzy Dudek, the Liverpool goalkeeper, hadbeen one of the school’s students). There I had theopportunity to explore southern Poland, Slovakia and theCzech Republic, and Budapest. Gorgeous. After two yearsabroad I came back to London, initially for a summer, thenended up staying 3 years, working in three fantastic centralLondon schools and doing my Diploma. I’ve come abroad formy sixth, and for the foreseeable future, final year in EFL,here at IH Malaga.

Several skills and abilities gained before going into teachinghave proved valuable in the EFL business. Most obviously,studying languages, especially Latin at school, has been usefulin being confident with using grammatical terms andunderstanding the basics of how different languages are puttogether. Also, my interest in Psychology gave me insights intolearning theories and how different people can be motivated(i.e. not everyone is like me!). Learning musical instrumentsand playing in bands gave me confidence in rhythm,pronunciation and intonation, even once playing the guitar andleading a whole class of teenagers in ‘Yellow Submarine’. Infact, more than all of these, having two parents, brothers,


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sisters and cats gifted a lot of practice in social skills. Aschildren, my parents encouraged us to learn new things,whatever took our fancy - I´ve dabbled in archery, shooting,karate, piano, dog-racing, gardening, cooking, banking andmore. That enthusiasm has always been present. Countlesstimes, I´ve encouraged students to ‘Have A Go’. Why not, eh?What´s the worst that can happen? And how often does it...?

It’s been a totally fabulous adventure, every step of the way.Changing career direction next year to charity fundraisingconsulting, I’m excited. I look back on every experience withpleasure and look forward to whatever comes next with anundimmed passion, building a world in which people standtogether, in freedom and peace. It’s better than television!

HelenComing from a long line of primary teachers and headmasters,the one job that I always thought I definitely didn’t want to dowas teaching, especially kids. It just wasn’t for me, I wantedTravel, Excitement and Independence. Although I had alreadytravelled a fair amount by the time I was 18, I got these in largermeasure during my university course, which involved timespent, supposedly studying, in Spain and France, and theresult was that, like so many others before me, I fell completelyunder the spell of southern Spain.

Meanwhile I’d been deciding that work in the still burgeoningTravel industry would probably satisfy my three goals. So inthe summer of my finals, as a taster, I got a seasonal job as aTour Rep for Cosmos in Zarsis, an oasis in the south of Tunisia,and here, once again, I had travel, excitement andindependence in spades, this time even more than I’denvisaged (in fact at times, more than I’d wanted!).

However, before committing to a definite career, Spainbeckoned me back for a year to ‘perfect my Spanish’ as theeuphemism goes, and this had to be funded by me this time,so… I became an English teacher. In those days, the mid 70’s,the CELTA or Prep. Cert. as it was then called, was hardly everrequired for a job, so after an interview in a hotel in Mayfair, Iwas dispatched to an EFL post in Valencia, Spain, where I wasinducted in how to teach the conjugations of the verbs ‘To Be’and ‘To Have’ and how to tape them onto cassettes for thestudents - but only temporarily, of course.

30 years later and I’m still here, and even teaching kids.Time passed, and I grew with the profession. I got my Prep

Cert, my Diploma, various other qualifications and worked myway up from cowboy academies to the Official LanguageSchool, the British Council and IH, and opened my ownlanguage business. I weathered direct methods and audio-visual methods, and functions and notions and taught fromMangold, English 901 and Kernel, (not forgetting countlessHeadways!) and I taught, translated, wrote, published andtravelled. I moved back down to Granada, where I wasoriginally sent to study, and met my husband. We then movedfurther down to Nerja and Málaga, and I became a DOS. I’vecome to love my job and the people I come into contact with,and particularly the work involved in being a DOS, and Iespecially enjoy my YLs’ enthusiasm and affection.

My upbringing by liberal and open-minded parents combinedwith the contact I have had with other countries and their peopleboth within Europe and other continents, through leisure,exchanges, work and study has widened my horizons andhelped me a lot in my EFL work, which, in the end is aboutdealing with people. In addition, having learnt two modernlanguages (apart from giving me a sound knowledge ofgrammar), I am able to identify with the triumphs and problemsmy students experience in their learning. I feel, in mymonolingual situation, that they appreciate the fact that I’ve beenthrough it too, with their own language. Two other skills from mybackground which I have also noticed come in very useful withYLs are music and sewing! Children respond amazingly tolearning with music and rhythm and love dressing up.

Over the years my goals have changed, but my initialthree: Travel, Excitement and Independence have absolutelybeen fulfilled.

Vocabulary? Stick it in the Tin! David Tompkins

If you ask most language learners at the end of a hard weekin the classroom What vocabulary have we learnt this week?,it is probable that they may look blankly at you and not be

able to recall any of it without referring to their notes. Toomany teachers subconsciously believe that once is enoughwhen teaching new vocabulary. Personally, I am an appallinglanguage learner who needs to hear and say a new word atleast five times before it stays in my brain. Why should mostof my students be any different?

Once is not enough In the language classroom, new vocabulary is often sent ‘out there’only to vanish into thin air after, never to return again. The teachercannot often recall most of the words that have come up in theirlesson (especially after a hectic week!). A simple vocabulary tin canprovide an essential record for you and your students forsuccessful recycling and, ultimately, retention of new words.

Drink more Coffee Get hold of a large tin (one of those large coffee tins with aplastic lid is perfect) and label it if you want. Cut up a few A4sheets into about 24 rectangular slips per page and you’ve gotone of the most powerful vocabulary learning tools a languageclassroom could have. No, seriously! Every time a word orphrase comes up in the lesson and you focus on it, quicklywrite it onto an individual slip (with its part of speech and stressif you want) and throw it in the tin.

Get into the habit of adding to the vocab tin on a daily basisand before long the more conscientious students will bedipping their hands into it at break and testing themselves.Once you’ve built a reasonable stock of vocab slips in the tin,you can do a number of activities. Here is a selection of ideas:

1. Word Games • Make typical word games (e.g. ‘hangman’, ‘back to the

L-R Helen, Micaela, Bernadette, Jon


board’, ‘charades’) based exclusively around vocabularyin the tin. I always find that the students rack their brainsharder if they know the word has already been ‘out there’and feel good when they remember or guess correctly

2. Spelling Activities • You could give a classic spelling test based around the

lexis in the tin. This reminds them of the words as well aschecking their spelling

• To make it more fun, you could divide the students intogroups, give them a number of slips and one person ineach group reads out the first letter of the word or phraseon the slip. If the other team can’t guess the word, theyread a second letter then a third until the other team getsit. You can devise a sliding points scale according to howmany letters they need before they can get the word

• A more kinaesthetic activity is to get students into pairsand have them ‘skywriting’ the vocabulary (this works bestif students are side-by-side to avoid the mirror effect offace-to-face skywriting)

3. Pronunciation Activities • Give each student a few of the slips from the tin and they

have to mouth it silently to another student, moving on ifthey guess correctly. As well as reminding them of thevocabulary, this can improve pronunciation as words haveto be strongly mouthed to enable successfulcomprehension

• Students could group words together according to similarstress-patterns (examples of which you can model on theboard)

4. Vocabulary Lucky Dip • Dead simple but a great warmer or end of lesson activity.

The teacher offers the tin to a student, they pull out a slipand elicit the word to the class (i.e. by giving a synonym orantonym) and the first person to guess it wins the cardand then takes their turn to elicit. The winner is thestudent with the most slips. You could make this a teamgame if you have a lot of students

5. Learner-centred Tasks • About once a month you can get the students to dispose

of words that they feel they ‘know’. You can divide the classinto 2 or more groups (if you can, this works best on the

floor) and share out the contents of the tin so that eachgroup gets a random selection. The students sort throughthe words and then decide which words or phrases they areconfident enough to get rid of or ‘cull’. Each group can thencompare their choices, explain words the other groupsdon’t know and then make a final class decision on whichones to dispose of. This task not only revises all the vocabin the tin, but makes students collude together to revise thewords and the phrases. Like all good learner-centred tasks,students are taking responsibility for their learning andmaking the decisions as to what they need or don’t need tobe reminded of. Rather than bin the words they wantbinned, you can store them for a future surprise test

• Students can also sort the words into groupings of theirchoice. The most basic is parts of speech, but they coulddevise more advanced groupings such as characterdescriptions or physical objects

• Students take a set number of slips and then they have tomake a crossword (with self-written clues) out of them forhomework. They exchange crosswords amongstthemselves at a later lesson. This works particularly wellat higher levels.

6. End of Term Destruction! • You or the students could cut all the words and phrases

exactly in half and students have to piece them alltogether. Sounds easier than it is if you have amassedover 100 slips (even in spite of regular ‘culls’).

The Bigger Picture When someone attends a language classroom, it is notenough that they make progress but that they feel they aremaking progress. Without this feeling, demotivation can set in.Many teachers admirably recycle and revise grammaticalstructures constantly, but forget to do the same withvocabulary. Getting words and phrases permanently fixed intothe head is instantly rewarding for the student and the teacher.It is an essential part of a language teacher’s job not just toassume acquisition of new lexis but to recycle and check theyhave acquired it.

Having something as simple as a vocab tin can help you dothis as it performs the following functions:

• It provides an instant record of vocabulary dwelled on inthe class (for you as well as the students!)

• It is learner-centred in that your students can use it andrevise the words at any time. They could also add wordsof their own that they learnt ‘on the street’.

• It is always at hand for immediate warmers and time-fillersif another activity takes less time than anticipated

• It provides a physical reminder to the class of theimportance of new words and lets students know thatlexis in your lesson is precious - It will not just be thrown‘out there’ once, but returned to at a later time

• Students become confident that their ‘word power’ isincreasing and this builds confidence in you as a teacher!

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It is an essential part of a

language teacher’s job not just to

assume acquisition of new lexis

but to recycle and check they

have acquired it

David Tompkins did the full-time DELTA at IH London in 2003, has been a Director ofStudies for a number of years and a freelance teacher trainer since 2004. He is currentlythe DoS at the Waterloo School of English near the British Museum.


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Action Research Projects at IH Cordoba _

Introduction The following Action Research projects were carried out at IHCordoba between October and December 2005. This was the firsttime we had formally carried out such projects as part of the In-Service Development Programme. There were several aims: forinstance, to test out some theories about EFL practice over alonger period of time, to exchange these ideas, once tried andtested, with all the staff (and the organisation), or to do somethinga little different alongside the typical In-Service DevelopmentProgramme formula of seminars and observations.

While some academics involved in EFL regret not having enoughcontact with real students in the classroom to test out theirtheories, the average EFL teacher often has the opposite problem– too many classes to prepare and teach, hardly any time to reflecton what she/he is doing. For busy EFL teachers, Action Researchcan provide this missing ingredient: it’s almost like using a class asan experimental laboratory.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of Action Research is that it backsup a theory with much more weighty evidence than the usual “Itried that with a class and it worked really well!” It may be true, butso many questions are left begging here. How did you try it? Whatwere the group like? What evidence have you actually got to show‘it worked well’? For this reason, the teacher conducting ActionResearch should ideally present their findings to some degree, likeresearch scientists do. For example, by comparing findings with acontrol group, or by producing results (e.g. comparing students’abilities before and after a teaching sequence) which aremeasurable in some way.

Initially, teachers were asked to do a short (100-150 word) writeup, a lot of which were accompanied by worksheets or resultstables. The four articles that follow, describe the projects andpresent the findings in longer, article form

To what extent do classroom charts aidmemory? (Rebecca Foreman)

Background informationIt is widely acknowledged that the use of visual aids in theclassroom can be highly advantageous. However, in order toexploit the use of visual aids to their full potential, it is necessaryto consider what we are using and why we are using it, as thiswill have a significant bearing on their effectiveness. I wasinterested in exploring the benefits of using a visual aid over along period of time to help students remember language. Forthis reason, I chose to focus my action research on visual aidsin the form of classroom wall charts. My research concentratedon the extent to which classroom charts aid memory.

The benefits of using Wall Charts in the classroomIn which ways can classroom wall charts aid memory?

• Primarily, classroom charts can be incorporated into classroutines. Routines have many benefits, but in this case itis the element of repetition that is crucial. By repeatedlyexposing students to the same language point over a longperiod of time, their chances of retaining it greatlyincrease.

• Secondly, classroom charts can make the languagememorable, which obviously has a positive effect onstudents’ motivation to retain it.

• Finally, classroom charts can encompass a fun element.They can be used for games, competitions, andclassroom reward systems. The advantage of this usageis that students focus on the fun aspect of the activity,while inadvertently absorbing the language at the sametime. In this way, a chart can disguise the language,making it seem more fun.

Research focus In the past, I have noticed that many students have difficultyremembering, retaining, and reproducing ordinal numbers. Oraland written reproduction of ordinal numbers is often challengingfor students. For this reason, I decided to create a classroomchart that could be used to recycle ordinal numbers. My focuswas a collaborative group effort to make a ´class calendar` witha class of 9 year-olds. The calendar could then be used as partof future classroom routines in order to recycle ordinal numbers.

Prior expectations Prior to conducting my research I had an idea as to what myfindings would be. I was aware that using the chart would helpmost students remember ordinal numbers. I also hoped that itwould enhance their pronunciation and accuracy whenreproducing ordinal numbers. What I was unable to foresee wasthe extent to which it would do this. Furthermore, having decidedto use a chart made by the students themselves, I was curiousto see whether or not this would have any effect on their abilityand inclination to remember and reproduce the target language.

Key findings from the target group My findings from the target group were numerous. Primarily,students were extremely motivated when making the chart.They were keen to put their own individual stamp on it and wereextremely proud to have it displayed on the wall. This had apositive effect on subsequent motivation to use the chart.

Secondly, the chart has worked enormously well as part of theclass routine. I now begin every class by eliciting the date, anda different student fills in the chart every lesson. Students wereso keen to be the ´chart monitor` that I had to make a rota forit. Initially, this immense enthusiasm for the chart surprised me.However, I now believe that it is because the students had anactive role in creating it. Furthermore, I have found that the chartworks well as a ‘settling’ activity at the start of every class. Asstudents are so keen to use it, I have also been able toincorporate it into the class reward system.

In terms of written accuracy, the chart has had a great effect.The target group are able to spell ordinal numbers correctly withfew errors. I believe this is because they are repeatedly exposedto the written form of the language every single lesson. Withregards to pronunciation, the results have also been pleasing. Ibelieve that the element of repetition involved in using a chart iskey here. The chart provides an ideal moment to drill the dateeach class, and as the students are repeating the language

L-R Wilma, Hannah, Becky, Susan


over and over, the margin for pronunciation errors diminishes.Finally, the target group are now in no doubt whatsoever thatordinal numbers should be used for dates. The calendar is atangible and real example of this usage.

Findings from contrasting the target group and the control group Conflicting evidence from the target group and the controlgroup highlighted how the use of the chart improves thestudents’ ability to retain ordinal numbers. Compared with thecontrol group, the target group are noticeably better at usingthe target language and have retained it well, as subsequenttest results have actually proven. The control group are able toreproduce ordinal numbers orally, but not written, whereas thetarget group are entirely accurate at both.

Future implications With regards to my initial query, my findings strongly suggest thatclassroom charts undoubtedly aid memory. Furthermore, it isexplicitly clear that individual student input and personalisation cansignificantly enhance motivation to use them. My findings from thisresearch project have also reinforced my belief that repetition andrecycling play a vital role in language acquisition. I am more awarenow of how effective wall charts, and visual aids in general, canbe. The beauty of using a chart in class is that it ensures long-termrevision and recycling of a specific language point. This is not onlyhelpful to students, but to the teacher as well.

The future implications of this research for my own teachingare varied. I plan to exploit charts as much as possible, perhapsnot limiting their use to young learner classrooms but withadults as well.

I also plan to maximise the use of materials that are made bythe students themselves, as this had such a positive effect onmotivation and interest. I plan to extend this to other visual aids,such as flashcards and posters, and I will be interested to seeif the results are the same.

Motivating Teenagers through BackgroundMusic (Hannah Murray-Pepper)

My class of ten thirteen-year-old Pre-Intermediate teenagerspose many challenges, especially with regard to fluencyactivities. When asked to speak, the students tend to mumbleor whisper the bare minimum before fading into anembarrassed silence. When I first started teaching the class Ifound it very difficult to persuade them to try out new languageand to regard speaking as a fun communicative activity ratherthan an arduous task imposed by the teacher. I identified themain causes of the students’ unwillingness to speak as lack ofconfidence due to their low language level, the acute self-consciousness that is natural to many thirteen-year-olds and ageneral lack of interest in the English language.

To address the problem of the students’ motivation I decidedto base my action research project on popular music, which isoften the only contact that teenagers have with the Englishlanguage outside the classroom. I made several CDs featuringEnglish language artists who are generally popular withteenagers, such as Eminem, Britney Spears and Coldplay.During the three months of my action research project I playedthis music every class, keeping the volume low during readingand writing activities and turning it up during speaking activities.

The introduction of background music had an immediateeffect on the students’ motivation. Because this particulargroup of students are quite shy, most classroom activities hadtaken place in virtual silence, which was not conducive to arelaxing or fun classroom dynamic. As soon as I started playingmusic in class, the students visibly relaxed and the atmosphere

became more informal and less uncomfortable. I believe thatthe introduction of background music has also led to anincrease in energy levels among the students. If the musicplayed is upbeat and energetic, the students tend to lose theirgeneral air of lethargy and tiredness and concentrate better. Ihave often noticed their feet unconsciously tapping along to themusic as they complete worksheets or read texts. As well asimproving the classroom atmosphere, the introduction of themusic has also inspired students to take more of an interest inlearning English as popular music is an aspect of the English-speaking culture that they enjoy. When they hear a song inclass that they like they often ask me about the artist. Thisinterest can be exploited to make classes more fun byincorporating the songs on the CDs into listening activities orwarmers such as song bingo.

I also find that the music can be used to provide a structureto the class. When the music is at a reasonable volume thestudents know they are allowed to talk (in English!) and when itis turned off this signals that they must listen to the teacher. Inaddition, it is possible to capitalise on the students’ interest inthis aspect of the English language by encouraging them tobring in their own music. Thus background music can be usedboth for a reward and for discipline. If students are well-behaved they can bring in their own music to make theclassroom a place they want to be in, whereas if they speakSpanish the music is turned off and they have to work insilence, which they dislike.

Increasing teenagers’ motivation to learn English is of coursea very important factor in teaching, as the students showmuch greater willingness to learn in a more relaxed, teen-friendly environment. However, the biggest improvement thatbackground music has made to my classes has been evidentin fluency activities. Whenever I ask students to speak, I turnup the volume of the music so that in order to hear each otherstudents are forced to speak more loudly. This encouragesthem to articulate clearly instead of mumbling, improving theirdelivery. It also addresses the fundamental problem of thestudents’ lack of confidence. A large part of their reluctance tospeak arises from their self-consciousness and fear of lookingstupid in front of their peers. I found that before I introducedbackground music into my classes the students would speakat a level barely above a whisper because they did not wantother students to hear them. In addition to impeding theirdelivery and cutting short fluency activities, this tendencymade it extremely difficult for me to correct their pronunciation,as I was unwilling to further undermine their confidence.

Thus my use of background music has greatly increased thevalue of speaking activities. The students’ delivery hasimproved and they are willing to speak for longer as they nolonger have to worry that other students are listening. Theyhave also proved to be more willing to experiment with newlanguage and ask for help. While formerly students who werestruggling were unwilling to ask for help in front of the others inthe class, they now feel able to ask me for new vocabulary andfor feedback on whether they have said something correctly.The music has also enabled me to do much more errorcorrection. A lot of the students have great problems withpronunciation and I can now spend time correcting them anddrilling individual words as the students, secure in theknowledge that the others cannot hear, are no longer crippledby self-consciousness. Now that they are less embarrassedabout speaking, the students are starting to regard fluencyactivities more as a fun part of the class and less as a potentiallyhumiliating experience.

Now that background music is an established part of theclass routine, I am planning to experiment with lots of follow-upactivities. By capitalising on the students’ interest in the music,I hope to make their classes more interesting and relevant totheir lives through listening activities with songs and also

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through readings, internet projects and writing activitiesinvolving some of the artists whose songs I regularly play. Byinviting my students to bring their own music I am trying toencourage a classroom atmosphere that is based onnegotiation between teacher and students and that provides acomfortable and relaxed learning environment for everyone.

The Phonetic Chart (Wilma Dyer)

The aim of my research project was to ascertain to what extenta knowledge of the phonetic chart could make students moreautonomous in their learning of pronunciation, and to discoverwhether there were other benefits from learning the phoneticchart for the students. I had not taught the phonetic chartsystematically since the 80’s, when it was more fashionable todo so. Meanwhile it had just hung neglected in the cornerexcept when, occasionally, I heard a dreadful rendering of aword, and would triumphantly tap the correct phoneme.Students would gasp admiringly as I gave the pronunciation ofthe alien-looking symbol. They tried to imitate me, and thengenerally sighed with relief when I moved on to something else.

My subjects for the project were a class of twelve 13-14 year-old students beginning Pre-Intermediate level and the projecttook place over a period of six weeks. My reservations were thatsome teenagers might not take pronunciation work seriously,especially the production of single sounds, which might lead togeneral hilarity and discipline problems! I also wonderedwhether I would have time to fit phonetics into a tight schedulepreparing for level exams and KET. It was a two-hour a weekclass and language needed a lot of recycling after the Thursdayto Tuesday interval.

The procedure was as follows. I chose twelve words, whichI felt, would cause problems of pronunciation because, firstly,many English words are not pronounced as they are spelt, andsecondly, students tend to use the five Spanish vowel soundsto attempt to produce the twenty vowel and diphthong soundsin English! The words were as follows:

receipt queue although advisable breath draught

encourage lettuce nautical bargain humour enough

I was fairly sure that the students hadn’t been taught how topronounce the words at this level. Each student was given oneword on a card and asked to look up the meaning in a dictionary.I then recorded each student pronouncing his or her word. Onlyone of the students later claimed to have studied the phoneticchart at school, but his pronunciation of ‘draught’ was wrong, sohe was either not very well taught or not used to checking thepronunciation in the dictionary. The rest of the students alsopronounced the words incorrectly, except for one, ‘queue’. I canonly assume that he had heard a good model of this word.

Over the six weeks I taught the class the consonants,concentrating on those which are pronounced differently inSpanish, the single vowels, and the dipthongs. Initial practiceactivities included production, matching recorded sounds withphonemes, recalling the example word on the chart when shownthe ’phoneme-only’ side, finding more examples of words withthe same phoneme, and odd-one-out exercises. I used severalwarmers for reinforcement, for example, mouthing sounds forstudents to guess, which really focused the students’ attention atthe beginning of the class. Another one they enjoyed consistedof tapping out a word by indicating phonemes on the chart. Youincrease speed as students become more proficient and the beststudents can take over the tapping. The following is a ‘goldenoldie’ to practise minimal pairs, such as ‘hat’ and ‘hut’. Draw apicture of each item on either side of a large piece of card. Writethe words on two very small pieces of card. Student A secretlychooses one of the words and pronounces it. B shows the

picture which he thinks corresponds to the word. He thenpasses the picture card to C and takes the word cards to chooseone, and so on round the class.

Some of the twelve recorded words came up in classwork, butI took care not to pronounce them. At the end of the project periodI gave each student his or her word card and asked them to lookup the word again with a view to pronunciation. I then recordedthe students again, and later compared the two recordings. Nineout of the eleven students who had previously pronounced wronglynow produced correct pronunciation. The other two pronouncedthe sounds correctly, but stumbled over the stress - I had notclearly pointed out the dictionary’s symbol before the stressedsyllable. However, students were generally able to discover andcorrectly produce the pronunciation of words for which they hadhad no model, just by looking at the phonetic transcription.Hopefully they would begin to feel more independent of the teacherand encouraged to try out new vocabulary.

As a follow-up students listened to the recordings,appreciating the improvement, and were asked to find out howthe dictionary could help them to produce the correct stress.With dictionaries closed they pointed to the phonemes on thechart which corresponded to their words. In subsequentclasses I recycled other vocabulary by writing the phonetictranscription on the board, or when asked the pronunciation ofa word. If necessary, I wrote transcriptions for new vocabulary.

I found that there were many subsequent benefits for thestudents. Confidence in speaking grew, as their first attempt atproducing a word was generally correct after consulting adictionary or from my indication of the correct phonemes. Therewas less TTT, which teenagers appreciate as they don’t likebeing ‘modelled at’ too often . The phonetic chart or cards withphonemes and pictures for distinction games provided achange of focus, and the teaching or recycling of items couldbe integrated with pronunciation work. Intensive listening alsoimproved with the new awareness of sounds. They were ableto record the pronunciation of new items. Although at first thestudents found the sounds amusing, this only served as a littlelight relief. They were genuinely interested in learning the soundsystem (perhaps because this age-group finds codesfascinating), and they found it a change from the input of theusual language items. I felt that the students paid specialattention as they felt that they were learning something thatcould not be taught in the same way elsewhere.

Monolingual classes often feel that pronunciation ‘doesn’tmatter’, or are not even aware that they are pronouncingincorrectly. After a short time, a native English teacher beginsto understand and overlook the mispronunciation, which maycause communication problems with an outsider. Whileappreciating the current trend to accept a ‘just understandable’level of pronunciation, especially between non-Englishspeaking nationalities (students can’t be expected to acquire anative-speaker accent), I feel that an imbalance exists. Withknowledge and teaching of the phonetic chart, however,students become more autonomous, and both the studentsand the teacher see pronunciation as being just as important asachieving a high level of proficiency in the four skills or acquiringa large number of language items. I shall certainly continue tomake use of this helpful tool hanging in the corner!

Homework in Company Classes (Susan Mulquiney)This can be an area of frustration for teachers and a stone aroundstudents’ necks, which then develops into a vicious circle of guilt.Many company students truly have difficulty finding time to dohomework, especially in companies where they are working until10pm (very frequent in Spain), before going home to young families.

This Action Research Project is based on the theory thatadult students will do reading homework (as opposed to


written) if it is based on work or personal interests, i.e. if seenas a source of information relevant to their company, or simplythought provoking, rather than as ‘homework’ or languagepractice. Students tend to shy away from the word‘homework’ (‘flinch’ is probably a better word) and respondmore readily to any euphemism, such as “Have a look at this ifyou’ve got time: it’s quite interesting”.

Various steps were followed: Step 1: Students filled in a CourseObjectives sheet (See Appendix 1 below) in which they wereasked to prioritise various components of the course. Homeworkwas, in fact, given very low priority by the three students in twodifferent classes. Step 2: Students then answered a Class Survey(See Appendix 2 below) in which question 6 asked them to ranktypical homework activities in order of usefulness. Results were: 1.Workbook exercises. 2. Newspaper articles. 3. Other (Speak Up,DVDs, CD ROMs, novels, exam practice etc). 4. Internetactivities. However, when discussing question 7 (Which of thesehomework activities is the most reasonably do-able in terms oftime and motivation?), students made the point that articles andphotocopies were easier to carry around and whip out at anydead moment. They don’t have to be in front of a computer, orcarry around cumbersome books.

Two of the students are in the habit of surfing Englishwebsites (especially BBC, CNN and Academy website links) for15-20 minutes each morning, especially before class but thiswas not considered ‘homework’! One student, who has youngchildren, likes watching Disney films, satellite TV etc. in Englishwith them, but, again, would never consider this as homework.All three regularly read business management manuals andarticles by business gurus (e.g. Peter Drucker, Jack Welch)translated into Spanish: giving them the original English to read(downloaded from the internet) has been extremely motivating.Step 3: A list was kept of all homework given during the 3months, and whether or not it was actually done.

Findings Despite the high priority given to exercises in the initial survey,these were very rarely done. Reading of newspaper articles wasalways carried out, but not if the task was grammar/lexisbased. Typical instructions that seemed to work best were:

Read and think about - how you would answer the questionsin the article

• whether or not you agree

• your recommendations.

• how this affects your company.

Their favourites were anything in the form of a questionnaire orbullet points (e.g. excerpts from ‘Winning’ by Jack Welch ).Surprisingly, the one time an Internet activity was set ashomework was the one day two of the students decided not toindulge in their usual morning routine. This is possibly becausetheir perception of the activity had changed and it was now‘homework’, i.e. to be avoided at all cost.

What next? There is a need to follow up the idea of student perception ofwhat constitutes ‘homework’: something they will never findtime to do because they are too busy reading Englishproperty/construction/business magazines, leafing through‘Hello’, surfing the Internet, watching ‘Shrek’ in English for the210th time with their kids and dipping into the latest best-sellingmanagement book with a dictionary!

This research could perhaps be extended to other companyclasses/ IH schools, in order to compare findings, as my targetgroup was extremely small.

N.B. Some of the newspaper articles have been consideredso useful that students have taken them to the company lounge

to be left as coffee table reading for non-class colleagues.English classes (and homework) can have a wider impact onthe company as a whole.

All reading homework was the basis for a minimum 10 minutes(sometimes extended to 20, depending on student interest,questions and ideas generated) of language analysis and practiceat the beginning of the class. A lot of preparation is involved.

‘Winning’ by Jack Welch (ex-president of General Electric)was an excellent source of reading material

Appendix 1.Course Objectives What are your priorities?

Put numbers 1-5: 1=very important

2=important

3=not very important

4=not important at all

5=not sure

■■■■ Base classes on topics rather than grammar

■■■■ Become more fluent in speaking

■■■■ Practise business vocabulary

■■■■ Improve listening skills

■■■■ Reach an English-only situation in class

■■■■ An emphasis on grammar in class

■■■■ Continue with intensive newspaper article reading practice

■■■■ More systematic monitoring of homework activities

■■■■ Greater use of the internet in class

■■■■ Focus on writing practice in class

Appendix 2. Class Survey

1. When was the last time you:

spoke in English

read in English outside class?

wrote in English

listened to something in English

2. What motivates you most?

3. Are there any class activities that you consider useless orde-motivating?

4. Can you remember any class where you came out feelingyou had really achieved or learnt something?

5. What do you find the most difficult?

6. Tick the activity that you consider the most useful as homework:

■■■■ Exercises from the class textbook

■■■■ Exercises from the internet

■■■■ Reading and listening on the internet (e.g. BBC English)

■■■■ Reading newspaper articles related to your work and/or interests

■■■■ Other? (e.g. Speak Up magazine and CD, DVDs etc.)

7. Which of these homework activities is the most reasonablydo-able in terms of time and motivation?

8. What do you think you do well in English?

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Running a Young Learner Department Jenny McKane

Prior to becoming Children’s Co-ordinator (my job title) atIH Córdoba, I was a full-time teacher and had noexperience in Teacher Training or Academic

Management. After a year of being Children’s Co-ordinator, Ithen attended a couple of courses in Hastings both of whichwere to help me enormously in the running of the YLDepartment..

As I see it, the job of a Young Learner Co-ordinator can bedivided into five clearly defined areas:

1. School Management

2. Class Organisation

3. Teacher Care and Development

4. Student Care and Development

5. Self-Care and Development

1. School Management This involves a wide variety of activities which are vital for boththe daily-running of the school as well as achieving the long-termgoals of any academic year. In any YL Department, at any timein the year, there are always a number of issues that need to beseen to on a daily basis. I like to start the day by talking to thesecretaries so that they can fill me in on any appointments I havewith parents. I have a diary, which is kept in the main office, andthe secretaries are in charge of giving appointments to thoseparents who wish to consult me or who I would like to speak to

about their child’s progress, behaviour, performance etc. I findthat it is very important to always be available at certain times ofthe day so that the parents, who are our clients, can come andtalk to me about any aspect in the process of their child’slearning of English. Experience has taught me that, when weexplain what we do and how we teach in the classroom, thenwe have to make it very clear to parents that we know exactlywhat we are doing and make them see that learning English withus is a worthwhile investment.

This leads me onto the subject of a Study Plan. One of themost frequent questions asked by parents at IH Córdoba is “Mychild has been here for X number of years. How much longerdoes he have to be here before he gets any kind of diploma?”This is where the Study Plan is very effective and shows thatthere is coherence as well as continuity in what we teach. It isas if it were “the backbone” of the entire YL Department and

we run an IHCYL Course for new

teachers recruited for the following

year and they gain a lot of practical

help and ‘know how’ from the

course before the term starts.


without it, neither the daily running nor the long term planningof my YL Department would run so smoothly. Other areas ofSchool Management which need careful planning andpreparation are:

Enrolment: Choosing the right time in the academic year toenrol children allows for a more organised form of enrolment andhelps me get a clear picture of students who are re-enrolling aswell as reminding those who forget or re-allocating those whoneed a change of time or day. Once all of these students havebeen assigned their groups, then new students can doplacement tests in order to be allocated a place in the alreadyestablished ones. We do enrolment in the month of May for thosestudents who are continuing from one year to the next, as well asfor any of their brothers and sisters who are enrolling for the firsttime. As from the beginning of June, enrolment is open to anyonewho has never previously studied at our school.

Reports and Report Cards: As YL Co-ordinator you needto think about how often you want to send out reports toparents, what information you would like to pass on to themand how you intend to express that information. Report cardsare an important link between the teacher and the parents.However, in the case of a weak student or one who is notprogressing for a wide variety of reasons, I feel then, that it ismy duty as YL Co-ordinator to contact the parents as soon asa teacher expresses his concern for that student. I always tryto be one step ahead of parents and prefer to be able to tellthem about any difficulty which has been detected. Parentsdon’t appreciate nasty surprises being sprung on them in theform of a report card at the end of a term. They like to be toldstraight away about their child’s difficulty, misbehaviour etc, arewilling to co-operate with the school and take a great interestin the follow-up of their child’s conduct, attitude, learning etc.Monthly meetings with teachers are a good way to keep intouch with what is going on in the classroom, as well as fortalking about students, their progress or lack of it, and classtargets and objectives.

ESOL Exams: One of the objectives of the YL Department isto prepare the children for ESOL YL exams. Course books arechosen accordingly and exam preparation takes place duringnormal class time. For the YL Co-ordinator, this means decidingwhich levels and / or age groups are eligible for the year inquestion, informing parents of all the exam informationincluding enrolment and preparing the children for both thewritten and oral exams.

Statistics: One area of my job, which is most revealing, is thatof working out statistics within the YL Department. It’s veryimportant to be able to know if and why your YL Departmenthas grown or not. This enables you to think about whatdirection the department is going in and what you need to doabout it. If you want a YL Department to be a success, youneed to know if children return every year, if they bring theirbrothers and sisters, how they found out about your school etc,and if a child doesn’t come back, or drops out during theschool year, it’s vital that you know the reasons why. All thisinformation can help a YL Co-ordinator give a better quality ofservice to his/her clients.

2. Class Organisation

Course Books: Choosing the ‘right’ course book is always adifficult task but if you are aware of your students’ needs andtake into account the books available on the market, then youcan make firm decisions about which books to use with thechildren. Teachers can also be of invaluable help because they

can inform you of how the children cope with the course books.At the end of the academic year a detailed feedback form, filledin by the teachers, will help you to decide if the book was asuccess or not and therefore allow you to decide whether or notit should continue to be used the following year.

Timetables: Once the enrolment procedure is well under way,I have to set up the teachers’ timetables for the following year.Students usually continue in the same groups, at the sametimes, unless they specifically request something different. Bythe end of June I have got a very clear picture of the timetablefor the following year and so the next step is to allocate teachersand groups. Every teacher has got a minimum of three to fourclasses of children between the ages of four and twelve.Children can come either two or three hours a week dependingon their ages and preferences. On receiving their timetables forthe coming year, at the end of September, teachers also receivetheir course books along with the course objectives and targetsfor the levels they have been assigned. They are also informed ifthe class is eligible to do an ESOL exam so that exam trainingcan commence at the beginning of the year.

3. Teacher Care and Development Before the new academic year begins, we run an IHCYLCourse for those new teachers who have been recruited for thefollowing year. This course replaces any other form of Inductionfor teaching both children and adolescents because as ourteachers have such a high percentage of these classes andthey gain a lot of practical help and ‘know how’ from the coursebefore the term starts. Throughout the year we have follow-upseminars every fortnight which help to reinforce and put intopractice what was learnt on the IHCYL. There are also a seriesof observation rounds throughout the year, which are based onseminars or input sessions given previously. We also encourageteachers to give seminars, do action research and go toseminars as well as doing peer observation.

4. Student Care and Development The role of the YL Co-ordinator for a child is a very significantone. I feel that the children need to see him or her as a friendlyfigure who can be approached for help and guidance in thesame way that any parents can. Sometimes students needextra help in the form of explanations in the mother tongue,back-up classes or to talk to someone in authority who theycan share their problem with. (Problems can range from nothaving an excuse note to bullying). It’s vital for a YL Co-ordinator to be ‘seen around the school’ and to be available atthe time when the children are having classes. Parents andchildren alike enjoy being asked about how the classes aregoing and appreciate a smile or a ‘sympathetic ear’ at times.On the other hand, a YL Co-ordinator also has to be preparedto show the serious side to their character and deal withchildren who are misbehaving or are causing havoc in theclassroom. We have to remember that parents are paying fortheir children to learn English and this is what we advertise wedo, so, if a child is not responding correctly, we need to dosomething about it. The child may need a talking to, and theparents informing, so that everyone involved can help put thechild ‘on the right track’ by deciding on the action to be taken.The YL Co-ordinator then needs to ensure that everythingdiscussed is carried out and follow-up meetings scheduled, tohelp keep parents in touch with how their child is responding tothe action taken.

5. Self-Care and Development It would be very hard to run a YL Department without the help andsupport of others. A YL Co-ordinator is only one member of the

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human resources team, all of whom are essential in the smoothrunning of the YL Department. It would be impossible for a YL Co-ordinator to do all of the things all of the time, so he/ she needs toorganise everything on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis inco-ordination with the rest of the team. Learning to prioritise yourwork is probably one of the hardest things to learn to do. Timemanagement is crucial, especially when you only have a certainnumber of hours within your timetable to deal with the entirerunning of the YL Department. What’s to do? Be prepared todelegate, learn to listen to people, prioritise, organise and try outdifferent coping strategies. One of the most important things to dois to ‘think’. Thinking time is reflective time and allows you to reflecton what’s been done, what’s being done and what’s yet to be

done. Without this reflection it would be almost impossible tomake an honest appraisal of the Department. It also helps you tolearn from your mistakes as well as to evaluate your successesand therefore motivates you to make plans for the future.

To sum up then, I would say that a YL Co-ordinator needs towork closely with office staff, teachers, students and parents inorder to run a YL Department successfully. All of these peopleplay a vital role in the daily running of the school as well as inthe long term goals set by the DoS team. Without the help andcooperation of all these people, the work of a YL Co-ordinatorwould be much more chaotic, difficult and stressful.

Jenny started working with International House in 1979 in Sabadell where she worked fortwo years. She then taught for a year in IH Gerona. In 1982 she moved to Andalusia andstarted teaching in IH Córdoba where she has been working ever since. She has beenChildren´s Co-Ordinator in Córdoba since October 1995.

Young Learner DVD Training Course from IHMadrid

Steven McGuire

The YL DVD Training Course came about after a need toprovide example classes on film to show parents atschool presentations. In 2002, I was asked to prepare a

short film of typical classes for the parents of potential studentsin private schools in the Madrid area. We felt that although theusual PowerPoint presentation of the facts was useful, whatthe parents really wanted to know was what happened in theclassroom. I set about filming a range of levels and differentclassroom activities which aimed to show the parents, and theschool authorities, that our classes were communicative,dynamic and fun!

Shortly after the presentations, and with about 4 hours of filmingstill in my digital camera, it occurred to me that this footage couldbe put to another good use - that of teacher training. One of theissues for teachers embarking on teaching young learners for thefirst time is knowing what to expect and how the children behaveand react in the classroom. Unlike observing adult classes, childrenoften act very differently when other adults, apart from theirteacher, are in the room. As our young learners’ department wasrapidly growing it was clear that the possibility of organisingobservations for a vast number of teachers was simply not viable.We needed a way to allow a large number of our teachers to watcha range of classes - from infants to teenagers - without disruptingour day-to-day teaching schedule. This is how the ‘Video Project’,as it was then called, was born.

I thought about my own experience on CELTA and DELTAcourses, watching filmed classes as part of the observationcomponent of the course. I remembered that the trainers set a seriesof tasks for the trainees to work through while viewing the videos. Ialso remember not doing as well as my colleagues, perhapsbecause I wasn’t watching out for the right things or maybe I wasfocusing on something else. It occurred to me that it would havebeen helpful to have had an experienced teacher sitting right besideme, guiding me through the lesson plan and prompting me to watchout for the ‘important bits’. This made me think about an on-screencommentary that would highlight key teaching techniques, as andwhen they were happening. This would allow teachers to focus onessential elements of a good young learners’ lesson: classroommanagement, giving instructions, clarifying meaning, correcting andrewarding children. I was convinced a film of this kind would helpunderscore the main differences between teaching English as a

foreign language to adultsand children.

I made a pilot film called‘Revision Games’ whichfeatured Neil Armstrong,Director of the IH MadridYoung Learners department,organising a game which wasset up to revise one use of thepresent perfect - but it

showed much more. Neil demonstrated how a group of children canbe encouraged to work together negotiating, guessing, andpractising the target language before offering an answer to theteacher in order to win a point for their team. The film alsodemonstrated good examples of eliciting, nominating, checkingmeaning, and effective classroom management.

From there, I set about filming a range of levels and lesson types.The first films were made on VHS and a year later we had six titlesunder our belt. The most useful for me, as a teacher and trainer,were the infant sessions. I had a number of years of teachingprimary children but my CELTA, DELTA and seven years’experience of teaching kids at International House Madrid neverreally prepared me for three to five year-olds. These modules,‘Essential Planning’ and ‘Using Toys and Realia’, really broadenedmy understanding of how to manage classes of very younglearners. Having had the opportunity to teach a group of three-year-olds the following year, I can confidently say that theapproaches and techniques that I saw Neil demonstrate in thesefilms really work. My own personal favourite from the course is‘Children’s Stories’, where Kate Pickering shows how to fullyexploit a story and make it into a complete lesson. After watchingthis module, teachers should be able to apply the model to anumber of other classic stories.

I continued to film and expand the range. ‘Reading andListening’ shows Steve Ward, one of the best YL teachers I haveever observed, lifting a reading lesson from the coursebook andmaking it into a very hands-on, communicative class. ‘Pairworkand Groupwork’ shows older primary children preparing their owndialogues for a fun celebrity interview. ‘Movement and Dance’, withthe abounding energy of Lucy Brown, clearly highlights the degree

Knowledge Management - What OrganisationsNeed to Know

Andrew Nye


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The last few years have seen a rapidly growinginterest in the topic of knowledge management.Today many large organisations have some form ofknowledge management initiative - some havecreated knowledge teams and a few have appointedCKOs (Chief Knowledge Officers). Knowledge isfirmly on the strategic agenda, but what isknowledge management all about?

Many years ago, when I was living in Brazil, the eccentric owner ofthe school where I was working insisted on taking me for a game ofgolf one weekend. The young Brazilian at the club who offered tocarry my bag round the course did far more for me that afternoonthan save some of my energy and track my wayward balls; he gaveme accurate advice for the best strategy in playing the course,which club to choose and where the flag was located. Withoutknowing it as such at the time, I had benefited from someknowledge management, and this knowledge was of far more useto me than the basic information contained on the card of thecourse would have been. Knowledge management is one of themost talked about business developments of recent years. Does ithave anything relevant to say or should it be dismissed as justanother management fad?

Knowledge and the new knowledge economy Knowledge, and the systematic transferring of knowledge, hasarguably always had, in varying degrees, some part to play inhuman economic and productive endeavour. All management is,and was, about managing knowledge, and all firms are (andwere) in essence knowledge organisations. The concept of‘knowledge workers’ is also not a new one, however thedifference today is that the principles of management takeaccount of the critical role of knowledge, and also that a greaterstock of knowledge supports a higher level of productivity. Thereis now a greater amount of knowledge in any organisation whichpeople at all levels have accumulated about what customerswant, about how best to design products and processes, aboutwhat has worked in the past and what has not. In an eracharacterised by rapid change and uncertainty, it is claimed that

successful companies are those that know where knowledgeresides, disseminate this knowledge through the organisation,and embody it in services, ensuring continuous innovation andimproved customer service. Knowledge is therefore widelyrecognised as a critical organisational resource irrespective ofeconomic sector or type of organisation.

Knowledge management Definitions of the complex, multilayered, multifaceted concept ofknowledge management abound. Broadly, it is an approach toadding or creating value by more actively leveraging the know-how, experience, ideas and judgement that resides within anorganisation, in order to improve its performance. Most large firmsonly capture and act on a fraction of the knowledge containedwithin their organisation. Sometimes this knowledge is hiddenwithin dozens of databases, reports and information systems. Inother cases, knowledge is locked inside someone’s head, and islost to the organisation when that person leaves the business. Avast amount of resource is wasted in corporations by unwittinglyrepeating the same mistakes or failing to repeat useful discoveries.Knowledge management describes a range of strategies andtools that try to capture this valuable knowledge, to deliver it toother people who can benefit from it, and to ensure thatinformation can be acted on swiftly to the firm’s advantage.

What kind of knowledge? An odd paradox is that many organisations are drowning in dataand information, but lacking in useful, actionable knowledge. Withtechnology plunging in price and soaring in capability, it is all tooeasy to be persuaded that what is required are elaborate andcomplex databases to try to capture, store and codify knowledge.This perspective of ‘explicit’ knowledge views it as independent ofhuman action, and that which can be appropriated byorganisations or exchanged as any other commodity. As thisperspective presumes that knowledge can be separated from theminds of individuals, this goal of knowledge management istherefore to convert the knowledge residing in the minds of peopleinto structural assets owned by the firm and stored in the firm’sknowledge management system. Once codified, the knowledgecan then be transferred, shared, built upon and retained.

to which children, with a very low level of English, can understandand respond to the language and it underlines the benefit of onlyspeaking English to our young students.

As more schools moved over to DVD, we decided to do thesame with the training films. The obvious advantages are thequality of the film and the ability to skip forward and back throughthe film to re-view key scenes. It also means that we can packagethe whole course on two DVDs and ship it in one box.

The films can be used as a stand alone training package butthey work best when viewed by a group of teachers who can sharetheir own experiences, no matter how limited, with theircolleagues. Each module comes with a worksheet of tasks forteachers to tackle before, during and after the film. Each film hasan on-screen commentary which picks out the key elements and

teaching techniques of the lesson and includes answers for thepost-watching activities. If Directors of Studies or teacher trainersuse the modules as in-service training, the full course constitutesabout 8 hours of YL seminars. Many International House Schoolsuse the DVD training films as a supplement on the IH CYL courseand they are an invaluable component in our own training of infant,primary and secondary state school teachers here in Madrid.

If you would like to know more about this training package thenyou can view a trailer which shows a small clip of the 8 titlescurrently available at our sister web sitewww.languagetoolbox.com You can also contact us atInternational House Madrid for more information. I hope you get asmuch enjoyment out of the modules as I havehad filming them.

Steven McGuire is Director of English Teacher Training at IH Madrid.As well as CELTA and the IH Madrid YL Certificate Course, he also trainsprimary and secondary state school teachers in Madrid. www.ihmadrid.com


Such explicit knowledge is likely to be ‘knowing-what’,whereas the often more valuable, but harder to transfer, ‘tacitknowledge' (‘knowing-how’) is neglected. Know-how embracesthe ability to put know-what into practice. The importance ofpeople as creators and carriers of knowledge has forcedorganisations to realise that this inimitable, ‘tacit’ knowledge thatprovides competitive advantage is not stored in its databases(nor can it be) but in its people. It is widely believed that for thegreat majority of companies, know-how rather than know-whatis the more important productive resource.

This organisational, or social process, perspective is onewhich views knowledge as being embedded in the interactionsbetween stakeholders, influenced by organisational structuresand cultures, and in which knowledge is continually being re-created through interaction and social networking. Experience atwork creates its own knowledge, and as most work is acollective, cooperative venture, so most knowledge is less heldby individuals than shared by work groups, and embodied in theorganisation’s personnel and in the routines that govern theirworking relationships with colleagues and customers. People donot learn how to do their work from impersonal sources ofinformation, but through interactions with others, therefore thegoal of this perspective is to connect experts with knowledgeseekers through discussion, mutual engagement and exchange.

The challenge companies face Realising the vast potential of this tacit knowledge companieshold, but often are unable to harness, requires certain strategiesand conditions, without which there is a danger of organisationalamnesia. It is often hard for employees to get the informationthey need because of internal divisions: valuable information istrapped in silos in organisations, and cannot therefore beshared. The costs of non-cooperating organisational fiefdomsand silos are immense. Real knowledge that people can act oncomes from the generative, dynamic aspect of collaboratingemployees who choose when to invest their knowledge, andhow much knowledge to invest in their company. Anorganisation’s knowledge can only be enhanced by catalyststhat encourage these decisions. Simply employing an individualis not a guarantee that the investment will be made, so insteadthe organisation’s task is to stimulate this investment by creatingthe appropriate conditions. ‘Managing knowledge’ thereforemeans managing the owners of that knowledge effectively andcreating the organisational, enabling conditions for employees toengage in the sharing and creating of valuable, tacit knowledgewhich is unlikely to be found in a database. A supportiveorganisational culture is therefore a key prerequisite forknowledge sharing.

Organisational culture Even if all knowledge was codifiable, (which it is not), and evenif perfect IT systems existed, (which they do not), employeeswould still have to be willing to contribute their knowledge to thesystems to make them work.

The assumption is often that the introduction of a new toolthat provides the ability to diffuse knowledge, automaticallyproduces an incentive to do so. Technology is an importantelement in getting results from investing in knowledge but issubsidiary to that of an organisational culture which allows it toflow freely. The ability to generate a culture which emphasisescommitment, trust, collaboration, appropriate rewards andresponsible autonomy is key to the task of knowledge sharing,as is the constant attempt to break down barriers andhierarchies, and communicate better. This culture ofcollaboration will only work if the right incentives are in place topersuade people to work in unconventional ways. Employeescan only volunteer knowledge – it cannot be forced out of them.However, they will be more likely to share their knowledge if they

feel committed to their organisation, are kept well informed andinvolved in decision-making, and believe its leaders are worthsupporting. Where the processes of people management areneglected, and there is a misunderstanding of what knowledgeis and how it is created and shared, the practice of knowledgemanagement is dogged with difficult and persistent problems.

Leadership and senior management support Knowledge management of course takes place in everyorganisation, even if it is not recognised as such, norsystematically applied. Any time and place where people meetand share ideas and experiences knowledge is being enriched,but to share and synthesize ideas for making informed decisionsthat will serve customers and stakeholders better, then seniormanagement’s ongoing support is essential.

Little will be achieved unless (senior) management buys intothe importance of knowledge management and into aformalised knowledge management programme, grounded inthe company’s strategy and linked to its strategic goals so thatknowledge-sharing activities evolve in a coherent way andwhose impact on organisational performance can be assessed.Employees often complain that they do not have the time toshare and that the organisational structure does not reallysupport effective knowledge sharing. Clearly articulating the linkbetween knowledge and organisational benefits and thenembedding it in the practices and processes of the organisation,as a sustained process not a quick fix, will ensure that staff havethe time to participate.

How can infrastructure and knowledge processeshelp to make information and knowledge available? In a culture that supports connection, forums, tools andopportunities for informal networking can be provided toencourage and support the active sharing of knowledge. Manycollaborative tools may already exist in an organisation, such asdiscussion forums, mailing lists, internet chat, but how muchparticipation is there in discussion forums? Are the experiencesgained from face-to-face meetings well captured? Could they beshared with a wider audience? Is data, information andknowledge available from past projects?

Changes in culture are recognised as being difficult toachieve, and even then are likely to take considerable time. Fororganisations that want to leverage more quickly the collectiveknowledge of their workers, the building and nurturing ofCommunities of Practice may offer a faster route.

Communities of Practice Communities of Practice are groups of people informally boundtogether by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise.They are different from teams and functional units as they are self-organising systems allowing members to decide what matters to

Knowledge management describes

a range of strategies and tools that

try to capture valuable knowledge

deliver it to other people who can

benefit from it, and ensure that

information can be acted on swiftly

to the firm’s advantage— 15 —

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them, what to hold each other accountable to, and what theirlifespan should be. Their purpose is to develop knowledge, notbased on business or functional units, but instead acrossbusiness units or other forms of organisational boundary.

Research has shown that people most freely shareexperiences in such informal and self-organising networks, andsuch socially constructed communities are the true mechanismsthrough which people learn, and work gets done. Although theywork outside formal structures it becomes necessary fororganisations to create and promote these environments; theyneed to be supported by managers so that the learninggenerated by them can be effectively utilized. Their potentialfragility suggests that a nurturing and cultivating, rather thanmanaging, leadership style is needed to make the best use ofthem. Over-managing them will just produce anotherhierarchical reporting structure.

Recent studies have suggested an association between moralobligation to the community and levels of knowledge sharing.The development of a strong network of like-minded individualswho share a common understanding is conducive to thedevelopment of an environment typified by high levels of trust,shared behavioural norms, mutual respect and reciprocity. Suchan environment has been identified as being high in socialcapital, and has been linked directly with the processes of thecreation and sharing of knowledge. Indeed, it is suggested thata Community of Practice functions as an engine for thedevelopment of social capital, which in turn createsorganisational value. Specifically, four broad areas thatCommunities of Practice benefit have been noted:

• decreasing the learning curve of new employees byhelping them locate experts and foster relationships, andby helping them understand the larger context in whichthey perform their day-to-day tasks and how these impactother individuals and processes.

• responding more rapidly to needs and enquiries,particularly the case when expertise is separated byorganisational boundaries.

• reducing rework and preventing ‘reinvention of the wheel’by reusing existing knowledge assets.

• spawning new ideas for products and services by thesharing of a variety of perspectives and bringing in newand divergent points of view.

As one of the important influences on the formation of aCommunity of Practice is not the proximity of its members, or ashared culture, but the trust relationships operating betweengroups and individuals, communities can also exist virtually.Although lacking the richness of face-to-face dialogue, thebenefit of online discussion forums is that the conversationbecomes accessible to the whole of the community and can bearchived and accessed by other members. Similarly, a singlerequest may generate many responses and points of view. Inglobally dispersed companies, (that disrupt the social nature ofthe workplace community where tacit knowledge lives andthrives), virtual Communities of Practice supported by Internettechnologies are among the few viable alternatives to liveinteractions and knowledge exchange.

One approach to knowledge management is to create asystem where all information goes to everyone, which is hugelyinefficient. Another tells people what others think they need toknow, which may not match their real needs. The third enablesthem to find out for themselves whatever they want to know andCommunities of Practice represent this ‘pull’ strategy whereusers access knowledge when they need it, as opposed to the‘push’ strategy of the first two approaches, where information iswidely disseminated, irrespective of users’ immediate needs. To

be asked if one knows something in the context of a need ismore likely to elicit a response, than to be asked to try and codifyknowledge in the absence of that context.

Blogs Information in context is the driving idea behind weblogs,described by Fortune magazine as the number one businesstechnology trend for 2005 and included in the Harvard BusinessReview list of breakthrough ideas for 2005. Blogs encouragepeople to share their context with their particular community inorder to communicate experience and transfer learning.

Post project reviews / learning histories Knowledge sharing becomes embedded when members of(project) teams regularly take time to reflect on their performance(e.g. through after action reviews, post project reviews) and distilthem into processes (i.e. lessons learned) that will help others bymaking tacit knowledge implicit. The processes which wereundertaken are written up, and the list of lessons learned is thenavailable to be instrumental in improving future performance.Learning from mistakes and failure can also be addressed in thisway, so that staff record the equally valuable learning from‘failed’ or unsuccessful projects and from the logic andassumptions which underlay decisions. Learning from good andbad experience, and then sharing that learning, aims to avoidwasting resources by unwittingly repeating the same mistakes,or failing to repeat useful discoveries.

Conclusion Tacit knowledge is the real gold in knowledge management andunlocking, and leveraging, this hidden treasure will improveknowledge flows and often provide the catalysts to begin theprocess of cultural change. However, just because knowledgecan be collected does not mean it will be; employees must bemotivated to do so by the organisation’s culture, measurementand reward system, and the statements and role modelling ofsenior management. The old paradigm was knowledge ispower, but today it needs to be explicitly understood thatsharing knowledge is power. I have no idea how the systemworked at the Brazilian golf club but if caddies are willing toshare what they know with other caddies then they may all earnbigger tips from satisfied golfers. The golfers play better becausethey benefit from the collective experience of the caddies, andthe golf club secures more repeat business from these satisfiedgolfers posting better scores and more new business as wordgets round about the club. The end result of a well-designedknowledge management programme is that everyone wins.

References Ardichvili, A, Page, V. and Wentling, T. (2003) ‘Motivation andbarriers to participation in virtual knowledge-sharingcommunities of practice’, Journal of Knowledge Management,Vol. 7, Issue 1, pp.64-77.

Beaumont, P. and Hunter, L. (2002) Managing KnowledgeWorkers. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel andDevelopment.

Boddy, D., Boonstra, A., and Kennedy, G. (2002) ManagingInformation Systems. Harlow: Pearson.

Brown, J. and Duguid, P. (2000) The Social Life of Information.Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Economist Intelligence Unit (2005) Know how. Managingknowledge for competitive advantage. London: The Economist.

Grant, R. (2000) ‘Shifts in the World Economy: The Drivers ofKnowledge Management’. In Despres, C. and Chauvel, D. (eds.)Knowledge Horizons. Woburn: Butterworth-Heinemann. pp.27-53.


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Hansen, M., Nohria, N., and Tierney, T. (1999) ‘What’s YourStrategy for Managing Knowledge?’ Harvard Business Review,Vol. 77, Issue 2, pp.106-116.

Kelloway, E. and Barling, J. (2000) ‘Knowledge work asorganizational behaviour’, International Journal of ManagementReviews, Vol. 2, Issue 3, pp.287-304.

Lesser, E. and Storck, J. (2001) ‘Communities of Practice andOrganisational Performance’, IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 40,Issue 4, pp.831-842.

Nahapiet, J. and Ghoshal, S. (1998) ‘Social Capital, IntellectualCapital, and the Organizational Advantage’, Academy ofManagement Review, Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp.242-266.

Sharatt, M., and Usoro, A. (2003) ‘Understanding Knowledge-Sharing in Online Communities of Practice’, Electronic Journal ofKnowledge Management, Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp.187-196.

Snowden, D. (2003) ‘The Knowledge You Need, Right WhenYou Need It’, Knowledge Management Review, Vol. 5, Issue 6,pp.24-28.

Stewart, T. (1997) Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth ofOrganizations. London: Nicholas Brealey.

Storey, J. and Barnett, E. (2000) ‘Knowledge managementinitiatives: learning from failure’, Journal of KnowledgeManagement, Vol. 4, Issue 2, pp.145-156.

Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning,and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wenger, E. and Snyder, W. (2000) ‘Communities of practice:the organizational frontier’, Harvard Business Review, Vol.78,Issue 1, pp.139-146.

Witzel, M. (2005) ‘Lifeblood must keepflowing’, Financial Times, 23 August, p.10.

After teaching at a variety of language schools in Greece, France, Brazil, Australia, SaudiArabia and the UK, Andrew Nye became DoS at IH Porto. Between 1998 - 2003 he was ADoSand DoS at IH Lisbon where he completed the IH Diploma in Educational Management. Hestudied for an MBA last year and is currently working at Cambridge Assessment.

Understanding Expectations - The ClientApproach to Teaching In-Company

Christopher Holloway and Kate Baade

To a great extent the ‘client’ approach can be seen as ajuxtaposition of the ‘student’ approach. In other words,the language class has to be seen in the context of a

circular process, which begins and ends with a client.

Students, of course, are always clients paying for ourservices, but the crucial difference is the point of view. Whenwe begin to see students as clients, they fit into (admittedlytrite) expressions such as “the customer is always right” whichunderline the fundamental cause of educative discomfort forTEFL teachers: this is a business. The business is a school,yes. But this is a business.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on how we, as clients of otherservice providers, expect to be treated. As a client you don’texpect to be told what to do, told who to do it with andwarned 1 minute before you have to stop doing it.

No, you expect politeness, respect, well-trained andinformed staff. Do our clients expect any less? Are wedelivering according to their expectations?

The short answer is “yes and no”. Yes, reputable schoolsusually provide qualified teachers with appropriateinfrastructure (materials and pedagogical supervision etc),quality lessons prepared within a wider syllabus framework.And…no, by ignoring the student’s role as a client, we are notonly neglecting to ask why they come to our school asopposed to our competitor’s down the street but also whythey should stay with us in the future.

In General English (GE), probably the best way to retain andraise student numbers is by ensuring the consistent quality ofthe teaching. Easier said than done, I know, but a student whois happy will be a client who is happy. In Business English (BE)on the other hand, the waters are muddied by the interventionof a remote “client”, a mythical, demanding and arguably

clueless figure (at least as far as language training isconcerned). As we have argued elsewhere (Baade &Holloway, 2005), the client needs educating in appropriatemethodology for language learning. How often have youheard: “you’re the experts” and “no, we only want 2 groups,can’t the beginners and intermediates go together” in thesame breath?

Furthermore, when dealing with executives they may notonly be our immediate client (i.e. our one-to-one students) butmay be responsible for the purchasing of our colleagues’services as well. In some cases the approach to teaching oneexecutive could make or break a key contract for the school.

Although it can be rather intangible, there are certainfeatures of the client approach which are useful for us asteachers and course providers to understand. In this article,we will give an overview of: the sales process; differentiationand value-added; results (product) oriented teaching; andfinally the role of the teacher within this.

(Understanding) The Sales Process The sales process begins with an initial contact betweensupplier and client. This may take one of many forms, forexample, cold call, mailshot, client approaches supplierfollowing recommendation (word of mouth), tender oradvertising of some sort.

After the initial contact, some sort of presentation is madeto the client. This could be (a) a written offer or (b) an oralpresentation, detailing the services, prices, value-addedproducts, testimonials from satisfied customers etc.

Usually, the offer is negotiated, the supplier will try to get thehighest possible price and the most interesting timetable for

“This business would be fine if it weren’t for the clients” The manager’s lament

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him; the client will try to get the lowest possible price and themost interesting timetable for him. For the supplier, the besttimetable will probably be outside peak hours of demand, forthe client within peak hours (e.g. breakfast, lunchtime).Inevitably, there is an immediate conflict between supplier andclient. Hopefully, a compromise is reached, the client unableto ‘give’ on the timetable, ‘gives’ on price, the supplier facedwith more classes at peak times and therefore more pressureon staff at key moments of the day will unlikely give on price(preferring to maximise earnings at peak times).

The supplier will also try to negotiate ‘block’ hours, i.e.classes back to back in order to maximise the efficiency of theteacher’s time. Unfortunately, this is not always possible andthe supplier may give on price in order to get a more attractivetimetable.

Sometimes a demonstration lesson is given. This is ouropportunity to educate our clients in communicativemethodology and broaden their expectations beyondgrammar-translation or audio-lingual based classes. In fact, itis fundamental that we seize this chance to prove that ourmethodology works. Too often complaints are based onconflicting expectations of what sound methodology is. Ourbasis is recent research and proven applied linguistic theory,their basis is previous learning experience.

Once the offer is accepted, the details are passed from thesales department to (what we can call) the operations teamwho organise the students, level testing, grouping,timetabling, syllabus and delivery. At this stage the teacherbecomes involved. The class is attributed to the teacher whothen becomes responsible for the delivery.

But the sales process doesn’t end there. Don’t forgetyou’ve got a client in your classroom. And clients as we allknow are fickle. Every lesson you give is loaded with thepotential to lose a client!

We try to retain students and increase student/client loyaltyby showing how we are better than the others. Essentially it’scorporate boasting but we like to call it ‘differentiation’.

Differentiation As I have just mentioned, differentiation (in business)1 is simplycreating a clear difference between us and our competitors. Weachieve this in many ways, perhaps the most blatant means ofdifferentiation is branding.

How many of you have Levis jeans? How many of you drinkCoca-Cola? Why Levis and Coca-Cola as opposed to lesserknown brands?

A brand is reinforced by the famous four Ps of marketing(Product, Price, Place and Promotion). Let’s look at how weas teachers (product) can support the value of the brand.

Presentation “The world more often rewards signs of merit than merit itself”

La Rochefoucauld

How we present ourselves to our clients will influence how theyperceive us. If we arrive in jeans, t-shirt and shabby trainers, wecan expect to be treated as badly prepared, unprofessional,teachers just after an easy life. In some cases we may not (quiterightly) be allowed through the door. If we arrive in a suit and tiethen we can expect to be treated as professionals who are thereto provide a quality service.

This is all, of course, a gloss on the real service which mustcome from the quality language classes delivered, and willultimately be the determining factor as mentioned above.Nevertheless, where the products are all alike (i.e. CELTAqualified teachers), you buy the best packaging.

Another aspect of presentation is the presentation of materials.As with a scruffy t-shirt, a scruffy photocopy will smack of hurried,thoughtless preparation. Materials should, therefore, bepresented as professional business documents which one woulddeliver to a client. After all, remember your students are clientsand what you deliver are the documents of your business.

Like GE, many course in BE are based on course books, butthis may not always be so, in which case consideration should begiven to the consistency of presentation as well as the quality. Ahouse style should be adopted and the consistency anduniformity of presentation adds to the brand value of the product.

Value-added Adding value to the product is extremely important in thedifferentiation of similar products. In a world of web sites, whichcompare products according to scales of criteria orspecifications, what is to stop the discerning client from doinglikewise for his language training supplier? In fact, with largecontracts that is very likely to be what is going on behind thescenes.

Language schools will need to add plug-ins to theircourses, offering additional services free or ‘discounted’ toclients including: Online courses, free ‘e-lessons’, access tolibrary / Self-Access Centre facilities, personal client attention/ Account Management, personalised materials, Personalisedlanguage programmes (PLP).

Schools might find it useful to use quality and reputation todifferentiate from competitors such as: Institutional qualitymarks (ARELS, EQUALS etc), links with stylish / quality brands(Cambridge exam suites, British Chamber of Commerce etc).

Results (product) oriented It is currently fashionable to see language learning as process-oriented rather than product-oriented. That is to say that languagedevelops globally and in a non-linear fashion as opposed to lineardevelopment culminating in passing exams. Although this mayhave the edge according to applied linguistic theory, it is a hard-sell to a numbers man, which all business people are at the endof the day. So, inevitably, results must be measurable.

Everyone’s time is valuable, but corporate clients, more thananyone, need to see that their time is not being wasted.Therefore, both courses and individual classes need to beclearly structured, aims shared with the client (ideally both atthe training manager and class participant levels) and aimsachieved highlighted regularly. Measuring progress is thenmade more efficient, as progress checks and evaluations canbe focussed, on these clear achievements.

Quantitative results In order to provide objective, measurable results of progress, twocriteria are necessary. Firstly, the testing body must be external tothe teaching provider. Secondly, the results should be numerical.

External testing body An external testing body acts as an objective watchdog over theprogress achieved (and thus the return on investment) by thestudent. Nevertheless, since testing is a lucrativecomplementary business to teaching, many schools areregistered test centres for a variety of testing bodies (UCLES,ACT, ETS etc). Schools should take great pains to ensure theindependence of their test departments from their operationsdepartments.

Tests such as BULATS2 also provide added value, asmentioned above, since they bear the mark of a prestigiousinstitution (in this case Cambridge University).


— 19 —

External tests, however, have problems; for example, with theCambridge main suite exams, preparation is needed in examtechnique in order to maximise the students’ performance in thetest. This leads to the so-called backwash effect, whichdescribes the effect an exam has on teaching (in this case,encouraging a focus on exam techniques rather than, forexample, communicative ability or making presentations, etc.)

Numerical results Pedagogical levels are generally divided into global descriptionssuch as ‘pre-intermediate’, ‘advanced’ etc. Whilst useful toteachers, these labels mean very little to training managers andeven less to purchasing managers. These people need to seethat on a scale of 1-100 their employees score, for example, 47.Armed with a score of 47, they ask two questions: what can myemployee do in English? And, how many points does s/he needto be able to do X in English?

But languages are notoriously difficult to (accurately) score on apoints scale. The CEF3 provides perhaps the vaguest (yetarguably most useful) level descriptions and offers only 6 distinctlevels.

The Role of the teacher Within the framework of the client-approach, the teacher hasa very challenging task balancing sound applied linguisticprinciples and teaching with measurable, quantitative results.Furthermore, the teacher faces social, intellectual andpsychological factors which can affect the client-supplierrelationship.

Consider the old British maxim: “Those who can, do. Thosewho can’t, teach”. In your local context there may be a stigmaattached to being a teacher. Conversely, there maybe positiveassociations: The old ‘pillar of society’. Either of these attitudeswill affect the client’s expectations of you.

One of the greatest differences between GE and BE isterritorial. In GE, students come into your classroom. The powerrelationship is, therefore, balanced in your favour. Students’expectations are that you are a knowledgeable, professionallanguage teacher. In BE, you are entering the students’ territory(e.g. office). Inevitably, the power balance is against you as anoutside intruder. One manner of addressing this is to giveclasses in a mutually neutral zone. Not Switzerland necessarily,but a meeting room rather than an office or ideally a purpose-dedicated training room.

There will obviously be a knowledge gap between you andyour students who are professionals in their chosen businessfield. I think it is important to recognise this but to remember twofurther things: 1) you might not know the business, but theydon’t know the English and; 2) this knowledge gap exists in GEas well. If you can get your students to acknowledge point 1then you can have some extremely fulfilling classes as you learntogether, negotiating between specific aspects of their businessand English. Understanding point 2, is understanding the natureof different expectations. The knowledge gap still exists, butstudents don’t bring it with them to class.

Alienation All BE teachers will be working the majority of their contact hours

in the clients’ companies. Although there is a base orpsychological home (i.e. staff room), this figures much less in thelife of the BE teacher than the GE teacher. The cumulativepsychological effect of this lack of permanent workspace,coupled with the stresses of travelling (usually) on publictransport, is one of alienation. This alienation effect is felt withregard to colleagues, superiors and (worryingly) the school itself.The physical distance from school’s base seems to create acorresponding distance between the teacher and employer. Thisis to say that the teacher does not necessarily see himself aspart of the school.

Alienation can therefore seriously affect the business. Ateacher who does not align himself with the school will not be agood ambassador for it. Managers (DoS’s and Directors) needto recognise all these factors individually but also the cumulativeeffect of them together simultaneously and over time.

Conclusion In the end, this article has been about understandingexpectations. Expectations can only be understood if they areacknowledged and this will only happen if they arecommunicated. We started by saying that this was a circlewhich begins and ends with a client. The client communicateshis needs and expectations, sales teams listen, communicatetheir capabilities within those needs and expectations. Salesteams communicate with operations teams and wecommunicate with students who, as clients, communicate withsales who communicate…

1 This term is also used in pedagogy to refer to catering for differentlevels of ability or performance in the classroom.

2 Business Language Testing System (BULATS), Developed by theUniversity of Cambridge, Alliance Française, the Goethe Institut and theUniversity of Salamanca

3 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, Councilof Europe www.coe.org

Consider the old British maxim:

“Those who can, do. Those who

can’t, teach”. In your local context

there may be a stigma attached to

being a teacher. Conversely, there

maybe positive associations: The

old ‘pillar of society’. Either of

these attitudes will affect the

client’s expectations of you

Kate Baade is Recruitment and Quality Manager for IH Madrid. She isresponsible for training in the Business Departments.Christopher Holloway is DoS of the In-Company Language Trainingdepartment of IH Madrid. He is also coordinating work on the forthcomingModular Business English Course to be published in September 2006.

— 20 —


Songs for Swingin' Teachers Mark Lloyd

Greetings, pop-pickers! And to start today’s show, here’sa tricky question for all you music trivia buffs out there:what do Eminem’s Cleaning Out My Closet,

Bananarama’s Love In The First Degree and Eddie Cochran’sSummertime Blues have in common?

Musically, at least, one might struggle to find anything at allto connect these three classics of their time, but those of youwho, like me, tend to judge a book not by its cover, nor indeedits syllabus, but rather by the quality or otherwise of the songswhich appear in it, will doubtless have immediately spottedthat all three feature in current ELT General English coursebooks. Yes, times have certainly changed since that day ofunbridled excitement many years ago when I first set eyes onHeadway Elementary and found myself counting down thedays before I could finally expose my unsuspecting students toWonderful Tonight. Even the potentially devastating discoverythat the version on the tape wasn’t actually Eric Clapton’soriginal didn’t manage to take the edge off.

So, partly in the interests of analysing the pedagogicalcriteria underpinning the selection of course book songs, butmainly to help me get over my frustration at the continuedfailure of Half Man, Half Biscuit to break into the ELT market, Idecided to conduct a little staff room research. But first, a quiz.In pairs, discuss the following questions:

1. Which singer or group has the highest number of differentsongs appearing in ELT course books?

2. Which singer or group is best represented if we also countsongs which appear in more than one book?

3. Which song(s) turn(s) up most often in different books?

4. What is the oldest song that appears in current ELT coursebooks?

5. And the most recent?

6. Which one of the following singers or groups does not (yet)have at least two different songs appearing in current ELTcourse books?

a. Jennifer Lopez

b. The Crystals

c. David Bowie

d. Chuck Berry

e. Dido

f. Madness

g. Roberta Flack

h. The Corrs

(Answers below).

On what basis do course book writers decide which songsto include in their books? To some extent the decision isout of their hands, influenced as it is by the whims of theeditor and by the willingness of record labels to grantpermission to reproduce the lyrics or use the music. Thesame copyright technicalities presumably explain why themajority of songs in course books are not original versions.Of course, there is little to prevent purist teachers fromneatly negotiating this particular obstacle by bringing intheir own copy of, say, Phil Collins' But Seriously album,except perhaps fear of the staff room ridicule to which thisinsight into the darker recesses of their record collection islikely to leave them vulnerable. Supporters of the DOGMEELT movement would probably suggest the teacher wenteven further and sang the thing herself, assuming of

course that there just happened to be a guitar occurringnaturally in the classroom.

Leaving aside these external factors, and assuming that theformat of the book allows for or requires a certain number ofsongs to be included, it seems to me that course book writersprobably choose songs for one of the following reasons:

1. the general subject matter of the song mirrors the theme ofa particular module or unit, so that in addition to listeningand reading practice the song can be exploited either forvocabulary development or as a stimulus for discussion.

2. the song contains useful, authentic examples of a linguisticstructure which is to be presented and practised in the book.

3. the song contains phonological features which the writerfeels can be exploited at a particular stage of the course -this might simply mean rhyming words, but might alsoextend to more complex prosodic features such asintonation or the modification of individual sounds inconnected speech.

4. the song (or indeed singer/group) is well-known and thereforelikely to be familiar to students already - this may besomething teachers can exploit during a pre-listening or pre-reading stage in order to aid comprehension, or it may simplybe motivating for students if the song is one they like.

5. the song may make the book seem fresh, modern andrelevant to its target audience, particularly if it is a recentsong, a new version of an old classic, or if it has been usedon the soundtrack of a popular film or television series - thisis risky, as a song can quickly lose its appeal and becomeover-familiar, although this is perhaps less of a concern in anage when new, updated versions of course books arepublished with increasing frequency.

6. the limited linguistic complexity of the song is such that it islikely to present few real comprehension problems forstudents, so that the song becomes a convenient exampleof comprehensible authentic text.

7. the writer may like the song and may wish to share herappreciation of it with the readers of the book, whether theybe students or teachers, simply for humanistic reasons.

At the risk of trying to second-guess the writers of the booksfeatured, I spent a few idle moments amusing myself bypondering which of these reasons governed the selection ofsome of the songs in today's course books. Perhaps therewere some useful insights into changing trends in Englishlanguage teaching just waiting to be revealed? Or maybe thekinds of songs being used in course books nowadays reflectedmore fundamental changes in the language itself. It seemed tome that these were important issues. After all, with the growingacceptance that language cannot be taught independentlyfrom culture, choosing the wrong song could potentially havedire consequences for the learning process.

Theme The most common theme in course book songs, and in songsgenerally, is love and relationships, and unsurprisingly the usualsuspects are to be found in abundance: the aforementionedWonderful Tonight appears twice, as does Elton John’s YourSong. The Beatles are represented by Yesterday, You’ve GotTo Hide Your Love Away and Eight Days A Week, all ofwhich are clearly love songs although I suspect they were notchosen for thematic reasons. The same might be said about


— 21 —

the two Righteous Brothers standards, You’ve Lost ThatLoving Feeling and Unchained Melody - more on these later.Other love songs which turn up appearing to offer little apartfrom a handy thematic link, include The Bangles EternalFlame , Madness’s My Girl, The Human League’s Don’t YouWant Me? , All Saints’ Never Ever, Everything But The Girl’sMissing and a couple of timeless sixties classics, Chapel OfLove and Then He Kissed Me. I’m also fairly confident thatLou Reed’s Perfect Day was selected for its superficialallusions to love and emotional fulfilment rather than becauseit is arguably the greatest song ever written about heroinaddiction, but I might be wrong. The undisputed, if you will,‘King’ of the ELT love song, however, must surely be Elvis:both His Latest Flame and Return To Sender turn up twice,while Love Me Tender, Suspicious Minds and Always OnMy Mind are also to be found. Although his universal familiarityand the relative linguistic simplicity of his songs are surely keyfactors behind the ‘King’s’ successful career in ELT, it is difficultto see beyond the romantic common denominator.

Leaving love aside, however, there are many other traditionalcourse book themes, which are explored through songs:

Friendship: Stand By Me; You’ve Got A Friend; I’ll Be ThereFor You; With A Little Help From My FriendsMoney and Poverty: Money, Money, Money; Who Wants ToBe A Millionaire?; Money (That’s What I Want); AnotherDay In Paradise; Streets Of LondonMedia: Feel; News Of The World (the press and media)Family: Father And Son; Cleaning Out My Closet; Girls JustWant To Have Fun; Daniel; She’s Leaving HomeTravel and holidays: Planes And Boats And Trains; SummerHoliday; Fast Car; Holiday; Leaving On A Jet Plane;Driving In My Car; Homeward Bound; Space Oddity‘Big Issues’: Blowin’ In The Wind; Imagine; Strange Fruit;New Way, New Life; Where Have All The Flowers Gone?Other ‘no brainers’ when it comes to choosing songs tocomplement a theme include Nine To Five & Manic Monday(work); Fashion (clothes and fashion); It’s My Party (parties);Love In The First Degree (crime and the law): and AnotherBrick In The Wall (Part Two) (education and school).

LanguageMany songs - too many to list - contain excellent examples ofpresent and past simple verb forms, and often have a clearnarrative structure which can also aid comprehension.Exploitable examples of more complex structures can also befound, though - the following songs are used in course booksprimarily to present or provide controlled practice of aparticular language structure:

Tom’s Diner;; Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay;; Raining InMy Heart (present continuous) I Wish It Would Rain Down(hypothetical meaning with ‘wish’ etc.) I’ve Never Been To Me(present perfect for life experiences) Tower Of Strength; IfYou Were The Only Girl In The World (unreal conditionalstructures) When I’m Sixty-Four (‘will’ for predictions)Love Me Tender (possessive pronouns and adjectives)

PhonologyMany songs, of course, are made up of rhyming couplets, afact which writers are often able to exploit in order to providestudents with practice in discriminating between differentsounds. The undisputed champion in this category must beHello, Goodbye, which appears in three different books (all ofwhich, incidentally, are for low levels). Sting’s unquestionableability to find rhyming words in the most unlikely places alsoreveals itself, in both Every Breath You Take and Moon OverBourbon Street (how about “It was many years ago I becamewhat I am. I was trapped in this life like an innocent lamb”?). Apersonal favourite in this category is Elton John’s debut hit

Your Song: Who could have guessed that the writer of theimmortal lines “If I were a sculptor, but then again, no. Or aman who makes potions in a travelling show” would grow intothe national treasure he is today? (Actually, the words werewritten not by Elton himself but by his long-term lyricist BernieTaupin, whom I like to think was having a private joke at thegreat man’s expense.)

Familiarity If students already know a song (the tune, that is, rather thanthe lyrics), or at least if they are familiar with the singer orgroup, this provides them with a certain amount ofpsycholinguistic scaffolding to support them as they listen tothe song and attempt to decode its meaning. They may notlike the song, of course, although I would suggest that thebrain’s musical taste buds are to some extent deactivated bythe fact that the song is sung in a language which is not theirown. This may be because the brain enjoys the challenge ofunderstanding the words, because the song soundsattractively exotic, or because it is more difficult to recognisecrass lyrics for what they are if they are sung in a foreignlanguage. Either way, it probably explains why I can happilylisten to Gloria Estefan singing in Spanish but instinctivelyreach for the off button if one of her English songs comes onthe radio. And it is surely no coincidence that the four mostwell-represented singers or groups in course books alsohappen to be four of the most internationally well-known andmost enduringly popular - The Beatles, Elvis Presley, FrankSinatra and Queen – whilst of the five songs which eachappear three times in current ELT course books, three of themare among the most widely-recognised popular musicanthems of all time – Imagine, We Are The Champions, andSitting On The Dock Of The Bay.

ModernityIncluding a recent song in a course book is risky for severalreasons. Although the market for English language popularmusic is increasingly international, musical trends within acountry often reflect subtle aspects of that country’s cultureand may therefore never catch on elsewhere. Also, the wastebin of pop music history is packed full of records whose shelflife was so short that if they had been used in a course bookthey would have dipped below the horizon of publicconsciousness almost before the book was even published.When Beginner’s Choice came out the writers probably took itfor granted that Dire Straits would be up there with The RollingStones at the top of the longevity league, such was theirworldwide popularity at the time, yet how many of today’sstudents (or indeed teachers) could confidently hum the tuneto So Far Away, taken from their mega-selling Brothers InArms album? And how the writers of the new edition of New

with the growing acceptance that

language cannot be taught

independently from culture,

choosing the wrong song could

potentially have dire

consequences for the learning

process

— 22 —


Headway Pre-Intermediate must have cursed when it wasannounced that the TV series Friends (along with itshorrendously catchy theme tune) was to be axed, no doubt theday after they’d paid for the rights to use the song. Faced withthese hazards, however, course book writers have come upwith an ingenious solution: use songs which are both timelessclassics AND modern hits, for instance old songs which havebeen granted a second lease of life by being covered bycontemporary artists or by being included on the soundtrackof a new film: both the Robbie Williams/Nicole Kidman and theFrank and Nancy Sinatra versions of Something Stupidreceive a mention in English File Elementary, whilst UnchainedMelody, You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, Pretty Womanand Stand By Me were chosen for course books not becausethey were big hits in the sixties but because they appeared inhit films in the late 1980s. Love Is All Around falls into bothcategories simultaneously, having been re-recorded by WetWet Wet for use in Four Weddings And A Funeral, hence itsinclusion in Pre-Intermediate Matters.

Simplicity Unlike other texts, perhaps, songs (along with poems) do nothave to contain language which is in any way complex in orderto be considered sophisticated. This fact alone is enough tomake songs attractive to writers, because it removes the needto spend long hours editing the text for the level concerned.So, even in very low-level course books writers can safelyexpose students to such faultless examples of the song-writing craft as Raining In My Heart, Rock Around The

Clock, Eight Days A Week and Baby, Please Don’t Go.Songs can cross level boundaries as well, the best examplebeing the appearance of She’s Leaving Home in bothHeadway Elementary and Think Ahead To First Certificate.

Favouritism I know from experience how frustrating it feels to stretch one’screative powers to the limit in order to find a valid linguisticreason for including the likes of You’ll Never Walk Alone, IAm The Walrus or Bermuda Triangle (“…try to see it from myangle…”), either for silly sentimental reasons (as in the case ofthe first), because you love a challenge (as in the second case),or (in the case of the latter) because you just can’t resist a bet.That’s why I have nothing but admiration for those writers whohave somehow succeeded in shoe-horning a personalfavourite into their own contribution to the staffroom resourcesshelf. Hats off, then, to the authors of Cutting Edge Advanced(Tears Of A Clown), Framework 3 (Strange Fruit), NewHeadway Upper-Intermediate (new edition) (Nick Drake’s OneOf These Things First) and (particularly impressive, this one)Advanced Gold (Bare Naked Ladies’ When You Dream andMen At Work’s Dr Heckyll & Mr Jive). But without doubt theclear winner of the prize for ‘Not Letting Pedagogical ConcernsGet In The Way Of A Good Tune’ must be In English Pre-Intermediate, which keeps light years away from the relativesafety of the middle of the road, where Collins, Clapton and theFab Four lumber along in their musical 4 x 4s. How the writermanaged to slip Eydie Gorme & Steve Lawrence’s I Want ToStay, Maurice Williams & The Zodiac’s Stay (Just A Little BitLonger) and Gene McDaniels’ Tower Of Strength into onepocket-sized volume, I cannot begin to imagine. Suffice to saythat IH Bath might well be using In English Pre-Intermediatewith its elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate, advanced and IELTS classes next term!

Answers to quiz: 1. The Beatles, with 8, followed by Elvis Presley (7), Frank

Sinatra (6) and Queen (4)2. The Beatles again, with 12 (compared with a lacklustre 1

from The Rolling Stones!), followed by Elvis with 9. 3. A five-way tie, with Hello, Goodbye, Imagine, She’s

Leaving Home, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay’ and WeAre The Champions all turning up three times.

4. Without spending too much time checking this, it seems theoldest song by far is Nat Ayer and Clifford Grey’s If YouWere the Only Girl in the World, written in 1916. There isthen a jump to Let’s Do It (written by Cole Porter in 1928),then Strange Fruit (written by Lewis Allen in 1940),followed by Bill Haley’s Rock around the Clock in 1954,and then Elvis’s Blue Suede Shoes, Sinatra’s How AboutYou? (from Songs For Swingin’ Lovers) and Who WantsTo Be A Millionaire? (originally from the musical HighSociety), all from 1956.

5. At the time of writing, the newest songs appearing in EFLcourse books are probably Dido’s White Flag and Don’tLeave Home, both taken from 2003’s album Life for Rent.

6. Jennifer Lopez as yet has only one of her songs (Feelin’ SoGood) in a course book. All the others have at least two.

Visit the IH Journal site www.ihjournal.com for a comprehensivelist of songs in current course books, compiled by Mark. Youcan also find an IH Seminar on using songs, by Diana England,on the Seminar pack CDROM in your school. (Editor)

Mark Lloyd has been Director of Studies at IH Bath for the last three years, having previously spent nearly sixyears as Assistant Director of Studies at IH Madrid Serrano. He is also a co-author of Framework 4 (publishedby Richmond), and is currently involved in writing material for other components of the Framework series.

[email protected]

ALEX MONK


— 23 —

IHWO has plenty of schools and needs plenty moreteachers. Many of these teachers are CELTA qualified andsome have followed an International House Certificate in

Teaching Languages (IHCTL – formerly known as the IHC)course. In both cases the majority of our teachers do thesecourses intensively over four weeks. Over the years that Ihave been training, I have noted some real strengths in thefour-week course.

Candidates have opportunities to observe teaching, toexperience teaching techniques as learners in a range ofseminars, they have the opportunities to teach and receivefeedback, and to reflect on their experiences. This mimics therecursive experiential learning cycle described by Kolb, 1984:

• Concrete Experience

• Reflective Observation

• Abstract Conceptualisation

• Active Experimentation

So, within the IHCTL, candidates have opportunities to gothrough the full cycle:

• teaching a real group of learners (Concrete Experience),

• reflecting on this alone, with colleagues, and with theirtutor (Reflective Observation),

• relating this experience and reflection to guided learning inseminars (Abstract Conceptualisation),

• and trying out new approaches in the classroom (ActiveExperimentation).

Of course, though, there are limits to what can be achieved ona four-week course: Kolb’s experiential cycle does not fitcomfortably into the four-week course and the process can bequite wearing for some participants.

What’s wrong with a four-week course? Don’t get me wrong, I love working on face-to-face intensiveteacher training courses, and of course, there areopportunities to follow these courses part-time. But, the pacedoes not suit everyone, and there are other potentialdrawbacks for some candidates.

• The very intensive nature of the course means there is littletime to assimilate information. This can put a great deal ofpressure on candidates.

• This pressure can manifest itself in a variety of ways.Some candidates find they are getting little sleep and areworking hard in the evenings and at weekends and thiscan have an impact on their performance on the course.As one candidate wrote on a ‘hot’ evaluation form directlyafter teaching: ‘How can I concentrate when I’m so tired!’(CELTA candidate, IH Newcastle Jan / Feb 2005).

• Another potential frustration, particularly for candidateswho have previous teaching experience, is that, althoughthey are being exposed to new ideas, materials, andapproaches to teaching, there is little time to experimentwith all the things they want to on the course. This wouldbe really useful, particularly as during the course, theyhave the option of getting feedback on these experiments.

• It can be a relatively expensive option. The candidate hasto take a month off work and this may not be subsidised

at all by their employers. For schools upgrading the skillsof their staff, it is an expensive option too - particularly asthey are without their staff for the duration of the course.

• In some cases the context where the candidate isfollowing the course is not the context they will be / havebeen teaching in.

• The above point is linked to the disorientation thatcandidates may experience when they follow the courseaway from home. While this may be an exciting option, thereality is often that candidates take time to adjust to thenew context, and have little time to enjoy the new settinguntil the course ends!

• An intensive course does not suit all learning styles.Reflective learners may find the pace too much or find therequirement to give immediate / face-to-face feedback tocolleagues after teaching practice a bit of a trial. Equally,some candidates find it hard to accept feedback.

• Some components of the course will be more stressful forsome candidates. For example, in the case of TP feedback(where feedback often takes place on the same day as thelesson or the day after), there is little time for candidates toreflect and take an objective view of their lesson, beforethey are required to open this up to group debate.

• Not everyone gets on, and this can be an added pressureover the four weeks where candidates spend a lot of timetogether. Competitiveness can be an issue and unhelpfulcliques can form.

• Many people have family, work, personal commitments orhealth issues which do not allow them to follow the four-week course.

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much in the way ofalternatives to this option to date. There are a few part-timecourses but some of the issues above may still apply. Onlinecourses exist, but teaching practice is not included, which isclearly not satisfactory:

But surely the main objective of an effective ELT course mustbe the development of trainee teachers’ personal theories ofaction; and hence its main focus should be an ELT pedagogycourse into which teaching practice and observation isintegrated, and which uses a variety of experiential techniquesas well as lectures, reading, discussion. as Penny Urconcludes in her article: ‘Teacher Learning’

So current courses do not necessarily provide a structure tofacilitate the development of reflective practitioners. Therefore,we need other alternatives combining the strengths of theface-to-face IHCTL and CELTA courses with added flexibility,to suit more people in a range of teaching contexts.

One size doesn’t fit all IHWO has commissioned the writing of a course which includesteaching practice and which can be followed extensively. Overthe last twelve months, a team of tutors at IH Newcastle hasdeveloped and modified the IHCTL course to allow forextensive learning and to offer a real alternative to the four-weekexperience. The first pilot of this course will take place in March2006, and at the end of the course, candidates will receive thesame IHCTL certificate as candidates who choose to do thefour-week intensive option. This new version of the IHCTLcourse will be known as the IHCo (The IHCTL online).

One Size Doesn’t Fit All – Everything you everwanted to know about the IHCo (IHC online)

Diane Thurston


The IHCTL: Key Features The IHCTL course has a long pedigree running back to the1960s and was the forerunner of the CELTA course. Thecourse has been run continuously since the 1960s and eachcourse meets the following minimum requirements.

Total Course Hours of 120 include:

• 60 hours input / seminars

• 6 hours observed and assessed Teaching Practice (percandidate)

• 4 hours guided observation of experienced teachers

The challenge is to devise an online version of the course withthe same strengths.

The Distance Course: Key Features of the IHCo • a mix of face-to-face training and learning online

• a mix of intensive learning (face to face) and learning atyour own pace (online)

• six hours of assessed teaching practice per candidate

• 4 hours of observation of experienced teachers percandidate

There will be two components:

Orientation Course (Face-to-face) 15 hours A three-day course at the beginning of the programme, oftena weekend, led by an approved IHCTL tutor. Candidates willteach one unassessed lesson and one assessed lesson, beobserved by their colleagues, and get feedback on theirteaching.

The three-day orientation course also aims to familiarisecandidates with the course, to ensure they can competentlyaccess course materials and contribute to the online section ofthe course which follows, and to allow them to experienceteaching techniques as learners in seminars. The first courseassignment will also be set.

All IH schools can apply to IHWO to run these courses aslong as they meet the criteria for IHCTL centres as set out inthe IHCTL handbook for centres. This means that candidateswill be able to select from a range of centres and choose themost convenient for them - based on geography, finances orpersonal preferences.

Distance Modules Nine modules will run over nine months on the same syllabusareas as the face-to-face IHCTL. Candidates will completetasks and read online, and will also submit tasks to the learningplatform, and interact with fellow course participants and theirdistance tutor via discussion boards.

Assessed Teaching Candidates will teach 8 assessed lessons (nine in total, includingthe assessed lesson from the orientation course) which will beobserved by a local supervisor. The candidate’s lesson plan,self-evaluation and the local supervisor’s observation report willbe sent to the distance tutor to be graded.

The Platform Candidates will access the platform to view learning materialsand course resources, and to contact their tutor and othercourse participants. Candidate assignments will be uploadedto the platform at set deadlines.

Portfolio Candidates will maintain an online portfolio. This will bemonitored by distance tutors, and tutors will give onlineprogress check tutorials to the candidates at three points inthe programme.

Questions

Who should do the IHCo? Like the face-to-face IHCTL, the IHCo is suitable for:• people who have no or little teaching experience, and

want a recognised qualification.

• English teachers with experience who would like arecognised qualification.

• experienced language teachers who would like to expandand develop their teaching skills.

It will also be useful for:

• qualified and experienced language teachers who want arefresher course, a more practical qualification or a moreinternationally-recognised qualification

• teachers of other languages or other subjects who areable English speakers and who would like to update theirteaching methodology.

Of course, all applicants will need access to a group oflearners during their course.

In addition, the IHCo will add flexibility and will suit teacherswho would like to continue working while they study. Itprovides an alternative to intensive and part-time face-to-facecourses and allows candidates to work at their own pace, toreflect on the ideas and theory they are presented with and toincorporate these into their own working environment. Thismay be particularly useful for ‘provisionally’ affiliated schoolswho need to upgrade the standard of teaching andqualifications of their teachers.

What support will candidates get during the course? Throughout the programme, there will be a team ofexperienced IHC tutors working with candidates to ensurethey gain as much benefit as possible from the programme.

Candidates will be part of a ‘virtual’ study group (maximum12 participants) that will participate in online discussions,monitored by an experienced tutor. Based on my ownexperience of face-to-face courses, and as a learner on theIHCOLT course, the value of being part of a learningcommunity should not be underestimated. This is emphasisedby Adrian Underhill in his article exploring how other peoplecan promote teacher development:

‘While this kind of personal or professional development canonly be carried out by myself on behalf of myself, other peoplecan play a very important, even decisive, role in helping memobilize my resources for change, My learners and mycolleagues form two such groups, and within these groupsthere can be created a very definite kind of psychologicalclimate that can support the growth of this kind of experientialenquiry.’ Underhill, A. 1991

The Local Supervisor will provide extra support, giving informaltutorials and will observe teaching.

What qualities / qualifications will Local Supervisorsneed? All participants on the IHCo need to choose a person who willact as their Local Supervisor during the course of theprogramme. A Local Supervisor should:• be an experienced and qualified teacher. The Local

Supervisor will not necessarily be a teacher trainer. Inmany schools, this role will be taken by the DoS, or aSenior Teacher.

• have experience of teacher development work or haveworked as a teacher trainer

— 24 —


• be working in the same school as the candidate, or verynearby.

• be willing to spend approximately 2 - 3 hours per monthwatching their candidate teach, monitoring progress andoffering support.

Local Supervisors may also volunteer to work with more thanone candidate.

What support will Local Supervisors get? All Local Supervisors will be given a briefing pack before thecourse begins. The briefing pack contains: • An observation standardisation task

• Course guidelines

Why become a Local Supervisor? Developing teachers is part of the DoS role. For some SeniorTeachers or DoSes, this supervisory role could be a steptowards teacher training. And, of course, it’s intrinsicallyrewarding.

How will Teaching Practice be assessed? The lesson on the orientation course will be assessed by thetutor(s) running the course.

During the distance component, the Distance Tutor willreceive all lesson plans, self evaluations and Local Supervisor’sreports and will assess the lesson. The Distance Tutor will keepa record of the strengths and action points for each lesson andwill give progress check and virtual tutorials.

What technology will candidates need access to? All candidates on the IHCo programme need to have adequate

access and IT skills to enable them to follow the course. Theseinclude: • access to computer facilities with CD ROM drive, Internet

access

• adequate word-processing skills to enable them completewritten assignments

• being a competent user of the Internet and e-mail

• regular access to internet facilities (minimum one hour perweek)

• regular access to adequate word-processing and emailfacilities

• anti-virus protection regularly updated

The next step? Designing the distance IHC has been a rewarding, exciting andsometimes scary (!) experience. The first pilot course will takeplace in March 2006 with the orientation course taking place inPamplona. Two other pilots are scheduled to start in 2006,before the launch of the course more widely. Hopefully we’ll beable to update you on our progress in another issue of the IHJournal. One thing is certain, it will be an interesting year!

References Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experimental learning. Englewood Cliffs,N.J. Prentice Hall, IncUnderhill, A. (1992) The Role of Groups in Developing TeacherAwareness in ELT Journal 46/1Ur, P. (1992) Teacher Learning in ELT Journal 46-1

For any further information on taking the course, becoming alocal supervisor or an IHC Online centre, [email protected].

— 25 —

Diane Thurston started her ELT career in Egypt (happy memories!) and has been teaching for 16years and working as a teacher trainer for the last ten. She is the Head of Teacher Training at IHNewcastle and works on IHC, CELTA, DELTA and DDOC courses and whatever else is going.She’s recently started to get into all things online since taking part in the pilot for the IHCOLT andsigning up to a rash of discussion forums. She enjoys a challenge, which is just as well!

What is it to be today? Chunking, phrasal verbs,functions? - or shall we have yet another go atsorting out the present perfect? Will they all be there,

or will it be the usual suspects, bright enthusiastic girls fromAsia, and earnest young men from anywhere, to be joined laterby the also-rans, yawning and sluggish, rubbing the results oflast night’s over-enthusiastic partying out of their eyes andwrecking the group dynamic so carefully fostered in the firsthalf of the morning? Or will I be waiting for the CEO of one ofTurkey’s most important textile companies to roll in, possiblytwo hours after the start of his one to one class. Or today willI be sitting on the floor with a group of five-year-olds,exhausted after a day in ‘real’ school, chanting “One twobuckle my shoe” or colouring in shapes for a listeningcomprehension?

Whichever it is, I’ll have to be there, on time, alert,inspirational and funny, ready to think on my feet but also toget through the syllabus, to make sure everyone gets value formoney and nobody is left out. Ready to pander to the one-to-one client’s slightest whim, and to keep a spare pair of eyesin the back of my head to spot goings on in the back corner,whether it’s small people having an L1 chat about football, orbigger ones getting an affair off the ground. Whatever goes onin my classroom, it’s up to me to make it happen, or nothappen, on time, entertainingly and informatively and aboveall energetically.

I’m exhausted just remembering; there comes a moment inthe life of many teachers (not all - some are really ‘bornteachers’ who can think of nothing more satisfying, fulfillingand worthwhile than to continue sharing their gifts and spirit,

Life After EFL - Out of the Language TrainingPan and into the Management Consultancy Fire

Susanna Dammann


till the day they turn up their toes) anyway there comes thismoment when you think ‘I’ve had this for a lark: I’m tired ofnever being able to go to the doctor or the dentist, withoutinconveniencing at least three people and possibly up totwenty, from the class itself, faced with a strange face andpossibly work they’ve done before, to the wretched standbywho has to mug up a topic they know nothing about, and thepoor old DOS who has to ensure that the above doesn’thappen and deal with the complaints when it does. I’m tired ofhaving to think of new and exciting ways to present the samelanguage, to get people to actually use it, and keep beingbright eyed and bushy tailed ALL THE TIME!’

I reached this point a few years ago, when on return froman overseas management post, I realised that even after asix-month break from the class room, I was looking for waysto do the job as easily as possible rather than as well and aseffectively as possible. I was stale, and a stale teacher is abad teacher. So it was obvious really, I needed to get out ofthe classroom for good; and after a stint working with the IHWorld office, and particularly acting as an IH Visitor, whichgave me a wonderful insight into the multifarious wayslanguage schools manage their people, balance their books(mainly) and look to diversify their offering, it became clearthat although they are all gloriously different from oneanother, what they have in common is that they are all SMEs(Small or Medium-sized Enterprises) and share the bulk oftheir problems with other SMEs, whether they are producingwidgets or providing a comfortable and welcoming night’saccommodation.

Moreover, after years learning more about managingbusinesses from the executives and CEOs in my English forBusiness classes, than they ever learnt from me about thePresent Perfect, I knew that I could perhaps transfer mytraining and communication skills to the business worldwithout having to leap over too much of a knowledge gap inthe process. Production management, operationsmanagement, people management and the systems tosupport them, had become more than just collocations.

So becoming a business advisor began to look like aviable option rather than just a vague idea. However therewas the considerable problem of credibility: the averagewidget maker is unlikely to accept that an ex-teacher couldpossibly have anything useful or helpful to say about hisbusiness (I say ‘his’ advisedly – the vast majority of MDOs,or Managing Director Owners, of the vast majority of SMEsare still men). Actually, the vast majority of MDOs take someconvincing that anyone could have anything helpful to sayabout their business; if things aren’t going well, the problemmust be the market, the staff, the suppliers, the accountant,anything rather than management skills or systems or, morelikely, lack of them.

So, how to get started? I did what anyone does thesedays with a question to answer - put ‘business advice’ intoGoogle and came up with a range of options. One can setup as a business advisor with minimum preparation; all youneed is a phone, a laptop and a great deal of cheek. Onecan also fail spectacularly; it’s a good idea to join somekind of support network and they come in all sorts ofshapes and sizes, from those who will relieve you of about£10,000 and offer a fantastic training package and a fullmarketing service, to simpler outfits who will offer modulartraining and a website information service at a slightly lesseye-watering price.

One thing became clear very quickly – to make any kind ofa go of this you need to have a speciality. For ELT teachers,the obvious areas are cultural awareness and, connected tothis, corporate communications (both internal and external)and the foot in the company door achieved by deliveringtraining can lead to a more hands on and operationalrelationship, and eventually perhaps a regular consultancycontract. In my case a passionate concern with theenvironment and with the need to deliver quality customerservice were added into the mix. Oh and I specialise inbusinesses owned and run by women.

I’m so new in this game I don’t feel in any position to hand outadvice; however here are a few pointers if this is a way you thinkyou might go, when you hand in your register for the last time.

1. Wait till you’re older – this is one of the areas where age isactually a plus!

2. Look very carefully at training deals – some are useful, someare really not worth the time or money. And letters after yourname are less useful than hands-on experience.

3. Select a speciality – culture, communications, marketing,whatever you feel confident enough to tackle

4. Offer a specific service, with specific aims and outcomes,and make sure it ties in with the needs of the company

5. Be ready to network – contracts come through contacts6. Make sure you have another source of income – until you’re

established, fees which look very fat compared with whatone earns as a language trainer, are nonetheless few andfar between

My clients currently include a small business start-up (caféoffering mouth-watering organic food) a medium-sizedbusiness start-up (amazing new eco-project combining foodretailing, two restaurants, a wine bar, and a cookery schoolunder one environmentally sound roof) an adult educationcollege, and several corporate trainingcolleges. Whatever else life after EFL is, it’scertainly varied – and very busy!

Susanna worked with IH London for several years as a business and language trainer; withIHWO as Academic and Membership Co-ordinator; and is now dividing her time betweenvarious projects and spoiling her grandson. She is also a former editor of the IH Journal.

— 26 —

after years learning more about

managing businesses from the

executives and CEOs in my

English for Business classes,

than they ever learnt from me

about the Present Perfect, I

knew that I could perhaps

transfer my training and

communication skills to the

business world

Below is an interview that Roger Hunt of IH Barcelonaconducted with Ron Carter and Mike McCarthy theauthors of Cambridge Grammar of English. As you will

see, Roger was very impressed with the approach of thesetwo seasoned EFL writers and even more so with the outcomeof their extensive research. (Editor)

Firstly, let me saythat I feel this is themost significant bookto be published in thefield of grammar for avery long time.Nothing compareswith it; it isgroundbreaking andin a word exceptional.

I was fortunateenough to be able to

interview the authors (albeit by email) and include here, in full,their answers to my questions, as I believe their first handaccount of the background, rationale and approach to the bookis better than any second hand account that I could provide.

Question: What was the motivation to write the book?We have both spent many years of our professional liveslooking at real spoken language and trying to find ways ofdescribing it effectively, mainly with teachers and studentsof English in mind. We have always felt that it has neverbeen accorded due significance in the study of grammar.Most grammars are either based entirely on writtenexamples (sometimes only on invented examples) or wefind that the spoken language only really gets attentiontowards the end of the book. We have put spokengrammar first on the grounds that speech is primary andon the grounds that most of our daily communication isthrough speech.

We also felt that you can never really get to the heart oflanguage, especially spoken language, without theevidence that a large corpus can give you. TheCambridge International Corpus is now the largest in theworld and totals nearly 900 million words. We spent a lotof time contributing to the spoken corpus elements of thiscomputerised collection. It took a lot of time to build thecorpus but we were motivated to stick with it because itdoes give us the evidence we need from speakers in awide range of social contexts. And the software enablesus to describe patterns and structures that are bothfrequent and salient in modern English.

Question: The book is multifaceted in as much as it includeslexical, utterance, discourse level etc views of grammar – wasthis with a view to combine much of what has been writtenindependently on these various facets into a whole?Yes, we were conscious that a lot of grammars arestructured on the basis of words and sentences only, withthe sentence often the upper limit for description. There isthus a danger that you only look at language bottom-up,starting with the smallest units but never reaching throughinto discourse or context in any meaningful way. We havetried to write the Cambridge Grammar of English so thattop-down and bottom-up descriptions sit alongside eachother. We feel this gives a richer picture of the language.Of course, in writing the more top-down discourse-drivenparts we have been massively influenced by existing workin discourse and conversation analysis, work in

sociolinguistics and work in ELT on the importance ofseeing lexis and grammar as interdependent.

Question: The book seems weighted in favour of spokenlanguage – was this intended?Yes, we wanted this to be the first grammar that had moreexamples drawn from spoken varieties than written. Butwe also wanted to ensure that we didn’t go too far. Thereis still a lot in the Cambridge Grammar that describeswritten English. For example, there is a long chapter onacademic English; that is, on the very kinds of structuresneeded by students to study advanced level academiccourses such as post-IELTS university courses in a rangeof subjects where the ability to manipulate highly formalwritten structures is crucial to success. But we do see thefuture of international communication through Englishdepending more and more on successful spokeninteraction, in both formal and informal contexts, and havetried to reflect this in our examples and in the way thebook is structured. We are particularly pleased with theway the CD-Rom has turned out. It is vitally important thatthe emphasis on spoken language is backed up bylearners having an opportunity to hear as well as readexample sentences and utterances from the Grammar.

Question: How did you work together? Did one of you takeresponsibility for a particular section or was all workcollaborative?It wasn’t an easy book to write so we tended to passchapters back and forth between us. The chapter onmodality, for example, passed between us over thirtytimes in various drafts over a period of five years. It is anexample of a chapter that brings together spoken andwritten examples, in the process trying to say somethingnew about modality. It’s perhaps no surprise that neitherof us could do it on our own. And along with otherchapters too, we benefited greatly from the advice andhands-on commentaries we received from the membersof the Cambridge Grammar Panel.

Question: What sources (apart from CANCODE - Cambridgeand Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English) did you use inyour collection of language examples and data?CANCODE was a major source. But the CambridgeInternational Corpus as a whole was mined for informationand we often looked at examples of American English inthat corpus for purposes of contrast and comparison. Wealso drew on our own collection of examples from our ownteaching over the years: examples of ads, literaryexamples, favourite newspaper stories, bits of datagathered here and there in the kind of way that all Englishteachers collect such examples magpie-like over the years.

Question: What influence do you expect CGE to have on theway grammar is described in ELT course books andapproached by teachers in the classroom (I realise this isasking you to predict the future!)?That’s not for us to say. Our only hope is that teachers willsee the importance of rules being based on examples ofreal English, not invented English. We also hope that thebook underlines strongly what all teachers of Englishknow: that successful written and spoken communicationdepends on appropriacy. We hope the examples andevidence we provide will go some small way to reinforcingthat vitally important stance.


— 27 —

Grammar is Dead. Long live Grammar! Roger Hunt

Ron Carter and Mike McCarthy theauthors of Cambridge Grammar ofEnglish

Question: If you had to start writing the book again would youdo anything differently?

We would probably pay even more attention to theimportance of clusters and chunks. Michael Lewis, JohnSinclair and others have been very influential over theyears here and clusters are a vital part of successful fluentuse of English, in speech and in writing but especially offluent conversations. We have devoted our first Appendixin the Grammar to this topic and have used corpusresearch to illustrate key features. We are still, however,not wholly clear about the theory and practice of these‘chunks’, nor about how they function, how we mosteffectively describe them and how we use a corpus toattest them. But we feel this is a very big topic and wouldhope to make it more central to a second edition.

Perhaps one of the most significant features of this book is thatit starts with authentic data – real speech and written text – asopposed to sentence level fabrications invented to exemplify athesis. I was delighted, for example, to read the section onconditionals which starts with just under a page on the first,second and third traditional descriptions then follows with nine

pages under the title ‘RealConditionals’. These nine pages, tomy mind, destroy the first, secondand third myth once and for all. Imention this as this book breaks‘rules’ and replaces them withreality throughout.

As a final word let me say that thismust be the first time that I have reada grammar book cover to cover (andthis one is 973 pages long includingthe glossary, index and appendices)and I found myself fascinatedthroughout. If this doesn’t representa very strong recommendation toyou to read this book then nothing will!

I would like to thank the authors for their full and informativeanswers to my questions.

Cambridge Grammar of English by RonaldCarter and Michael McCarthy is published byCambridge University Press (2006)

— 28 —


Roger Hunt is Director of Education at IH Barcelona

Introducing IHCampusat IHPalermoCentroStoricoMarco Faldetta

This article focuses on the use of the IH e-Campus at IHPalermo Centro Storico where it was launched inOctober 2005.

IH Campus is the IHWO online learning environment for IHstudents and teachers. It offers thousands of highly interactivelanguage practice exercises, listening activities, games andgrammar reference units.

IH Campus is a fun teaching/learning tool that can be usedat all levels. Being online, it is a resource that can be usedwherever there is an Internet connection and at any time.Therefore, IH Campus can be used in class, in a self-accesscentre, at home or at work. The access point for all IH schoolsusing this program is www.ihworld.com/campus.

IH Campus varies according to who is using it. • Students will find hundreds of exercises and a pathway to

follow;

• Teachers will find a methodology database and studentmonitoring tools

• Schools will be able to assign and revoke usernames andpathways according to courses, terms and student levels.

More specifically students will: • receive a username (i. e. IHDNIPRO0054) and password.

• access from www.ihworld.com/campus

• use the numerous different learning tools under theirteacher’s guidance and within the parameters syllabus

And, on the school administration side:• students are added to the system and administered

throughout the year

• teachers can access using a teacher login with special

privileges (access to methodology database, studentmonitoring pages etc.)

• materials for lessons, homework and blended learningtasks can be chosen among the activities available on thesystem

• pathways can be added via a Paper Pathway

Screenshots Listening

Online Pathway Syllabus for Headway


News Items in collaboration with The Guardian

News Items in collaboration with The Guardian

Other Features available:• generic pathways and book-related pathways

• paper pathways (via the Administration Console)

• online dictionary with UK and American Englishpronunciation

• grammar reference units

• search engine to find more exercise on a given learningtopic

• web projects

• methodology database for teachers

• and much more! (contact Marco Faldetta via email –[email protected])

IH Campus is a wonderful instrument and can significantlyaid both the learning and the teaching processes. Like mostnew things however, an adjustment period is needed! Many IHSchools already use various computer-based instruments intheir resource centers. IH Campus requires some planning, butit can yield excellent results, give your school great visibility andshow that you are already in the fast track of English learning.

One of the most important challenges IH Palermo CentroStorico faced was to make sure that all members of staffquickly became familiar with this new system. We decided toassign passwords to all students following pre-intermediateclasses and above and to have a teacher login for every level:pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper intermediate andadvanced. Most courses at IH Palermo Centro Storico use theHeadway series.

It was not difficult to explain that exercises for the Headwaybooks were available online, and it was soon clear to everyonethat homework and general study could be done on the system.

Mary Woodiwiss (DOS at IH Palermo Centro Storico), writing forthe DOS Conference in January, explained the positive aspects ofthe system and made some recommendations for improvement:

“Initially we did have quite a few teachers that were makingphotocopies of the workbook to give as homework to their

students – this of course completely defeats the object ofCampus – it is important to keep the channels ofcommunication open with your teachers and ensure thatthey are following the new system properly”.

“The teachers’ initial response to being told not to use theworkbook was that the students preferred the workbook. Thisnegative attitude by the teachers was probably passed onto the students in this case”.

“Encouraging teachers to be enthusiastic about theprogramme obviously has an effect on the students’perception of it”.

Therefore, one problem that schools may face, is thatteachers may be inclined to avoid the new system and stickwith what they know. Most teachers are used to assigninghomework and tasks from books or photocopies. It can bedifficult to do without the trusted support of paper.

“It would be ideal logistically to enforce homework tasks bylesson on the teachers, although classes do not always dothings at the same speed or have the same needs. It would belimiting on the teacher to enforce such restrictions”.

The solution IH Palermo Centro Storico adopted was to usea Customised Pathway Syllabus.

With a Customised Pathway Syllabus the DOS merelyrecommends the materials that correspond to the workteachers are doing as part of the general syllabus. Teacherscan then assign specific tasks and select homework from theCustomised Syllabus. Students can opt to do the minimumrequired by the teacher or look at the syllabus on the websiteand do as much as they want.

In contrast with the teacher’s initial reactions, studentsresponded positively to this new instrument and it has beenobserved that many of them prefer IH Campus to othercomputer learning tools already available in the self-accesscentre at IH Palermo Centro Storico. Training is still required,but it is generally fun for students, as it can be done within anormal lesson.

One obstacle may be presented by student technophobia,especially in the case of older students.

While technophobes may fear the worst initially, theygenerally end up enjoying it! Many older students are alsohappy to be shown how to use a computer – most peopletoday realise what an important skill this is and don’t want tobe left out. Encouragement is needed to make the most of thesystem, but younger generations are very keen.

In December 2005 IH Palermo Centro Storico did a smallsurvey on sixty students and the results can be seen in thecharts below.

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire asked three questions, whether IH Campuswas useful, whether it was fun and whether it was better thana workbook.

When students were asked if Campus was useful to themthe general answer was ‘it is very useful’. A small percentagechose the option ‘it is quite useful’ and a tiny percentageseemed unimpressed or described Campus as ‘no use to me’(see Chart 1).

— 29 —

Chart 1StudentSurvey – is IHCampus usefulto you?

— 30 —


Some student comments gathered in the survey:• “It’s very useful to listen to the dialogues and texts in the

correct pronunciation by very English people”

• “It’s something useful and fun, but sometimes I haven’tgot the time to go here!”

• “I like studying with web computer. I can use it when I stayat home”

• “I don’t have Internet at home” or “the Internet isexpensive”

The second question asked in the survey was whether it wasfun to use. The results were similar to the previous chart, witha majority finding it ‘lots of fun’ or ‘quite fun’ and a smalleramount being unimpressed or finding it ‘boring’ (Chart 2).

The third question was whether IH Palermo Centro Storicostudents thought IH Campus was better than a workbook.Here the answers were evenly mixed, making it impossible toestablish whether the students are taking a clear position(chart 3). The most selected option by a couple of points is:‘It’s ok’. The least chosen is: ‘It’s ok but not better’. Equallyselected are ‘Yes’ and ‘No, I prefer the workbook’.

Interested in IH Campus?• order your users from IHWO (Anna Ingram -

mailto:[email protected]) you will receive anexcel spreadsheet with all usernames and passwords

• personalise your school users and classes with theAdministration Console access is limited to DOSs andDirectors. A tutorial is provided and Marco Faldetta isalways available for help

• every user needs a computer with an Internet connectionand Basic IT literacy

• each user costs £16, which can be either a student or ateacher password.

Finally, here are a few considerations that should be kept inmind:• IH Palermo Centro Storico’s experience shows that in

general this new system works well, students like it andteachers quickly warm to it. Introducing IH Campus isrelatively easy, but it does need planning on behalf of theDOS who along with the teachers should know its ins andouts as well as the book(s) used.

• On a commercial/marketing level, students feel they aregetting the most up-to-date methodology and aretherefore likely to stay with your school rather than headfor the competition;

• Blended Online Learning encourages learner autonomy,which can boost confidence and productivity.

• Students who are really busy who have little or no time tospend in the school find this program a great asset andhave done a lot more homework than usual!

• Although IH Campus can be used as a self-access tool, itwould be limiting to use it only as such and its potentialshould be exploited to the full.

The few difficulties that may be encountered when introducingIH Campus can be overcome with patience and planning. Inthe end, it is well worth the effort.

Chart 2StudentSurvey – Is IHCampus fun touse?

Chart 3StudentSurvey – Is IHCampus betterthan aworkbook?

Marco Faldetta is the IT Specialist at IH Palermo. He is also IH World Administrator for Onlinecourses, YL Keypals, which he created in 2004 with Mary Woodiwiss, and IH Campus.


— 31 —

— 32 —

IHWO News IH Journal • Issue 19, Autumn 2005

Michael CarrierExecutive Director, IHWO

New SchoolsIn 2006 the IH network has grown further, to 135 schools in 50countries worldwide. New schools joining the IH family thisyear include:

Kazakhstan - IH Almaty

Serbia - IH Belgrade

Spain - IH Vitoria

France - IH Paris

Slovenia - IH Ljubljana

There are many other new schools with whom we are inaffiliation discussions, and the network will continue to growand bring the benefits of IH educational quality and innovationto new locations.

IH Resources The creativity of IH teachers is well-known, and each yearmore of them contribute to the shared resources of IHWO,made available to all schools online in the members' area ofIHworld.com. In the last months we have published severalmore packs for the online Resource Bank.

English for Lawyers, a course in legal English for schools touse in setting up ESP courses locally, was published in 2005and the next in the series will be English for VocationalTraining, developed by teachers in IH Riga..

We're working on the Grammar Clinic, a booklet of Grammarreference and Practice Exercises for students to use outsideclass, which will be available later in 2006.

The IH Dictionary – a special edition of the CambridgeUniversity Press Learners Dictionary on CDROM – is being re-printed after we sold out of the first edition, and it can beordered via the IHWO office.

Not all new resources are academic - to help schools with theirpromotion, we also provided them with a CDROM ofcopyright-free photographs of IH students and learning scenesso they would not have to pay inflated prices for commercialphotos.

IH Teacher training The IH Certificate Online is now being piloted and will beavailable to all schools via the IH Online VLE described in thelast issue.

The IH COLT training course for teachers who want to teachonline is now being run regularly, and is available for schoolswho want to run it with their own trainers.

Similarly the IH Certificate in 121 Teaching is now availablefor schools to run independently.

We are currently piloting the IH Certificate in BusinessEnglish Teaching (IH BET) which trains teachers in the specialskills needed for successful Business English teaching, andprepares them for the LCCI FTBE examination.

IH Online In addition to the Teacher Training materials online, we nowalso provide an Online Placement Test so that prospectivestudents can test their proficiency and assess which IHlanguage level would best suit them. Check this out atwww.ihworld.com/opt

IH Study Abroad Helping students worldwide decide which IH school to studyat is part of the job of IHWO. As well as the popular StudyAbroad CDROM, which gives information and photo guides tothe schools teaching 16 languages intensively around theworld, IHWO has added new promotional resources.

The new IHWO Video is available on CD and DVD, and is ashort video presentation introducing IHWO, for schools to usein conjunction with their own video promotions.

Just published also is the new IH Study Abroad Catalogue,which is a global catalogue promoting all Study Abroadschools with detailed descriptions course offerings, and aseparate set of course dates and prices. This is designed forschools to customise, and in some cases, translate locally,without their having to design the whole brochure themselves.

Download a copy at www.ihworld.com/studyabroad

Fairs and ExhibitionsIH has been or will be represented this year at many industryfairs and conferences worldwide such as:

BIT Fair Milan, AISLI, IH Portugal Symposium, TESOLArabia, Language World, EAQUALS, Expolangues,IATEFL, EDUCA, World Education Fair Kyiv, BrazTESOL,ICEF and others.

Calendar of IH events 2006

IH WORLD NEWS

Event Date

IH Directors' Conference April 29 - May 3, 2006

IH Prague Educational Conference May 20, 2006

IH London Educators' Conference May 19-21, 2006

IH YL Conference November 2006

IH Modern Languages Conference November 2006

IH DOS Conference 2007 Jan 3-5, 2007


— 33 —

— 34 —

Book Reviews IH Journal • Issue 20, Spring 2006

BOOK REVIEWS

Move IntermediateAngela Holman, Bruce Milne and Barbara Webb Macmillan, 2006

As a teacher, trainer andauthor, I’ve learned not toexpect surprises from

publishers. After all, with a market asdiverse as English language studentsand teachers, there are not too manyways in which innovation andsurprise can sidle their way betweenthe covers of Senyora Coursebook.

I remember being impressed byInside Out, however. Sure, there wasfar too much material and the

listenings were tough but there was an edge of ‘realness’about the language, a seemingly genuine attempt by theauthors and editors to involve students in the learning process.

My first reaction to Move was New Inside Out. Macmillanhave even denied us the surprise of a new layout, new icons.But this version of ‘the popular Macmillan course’ does haveone surprise. The book is divided into three modules, witheach module subdivided into four mini-units. Units focus on adifferent aspect of the main topic area, and each module hasa revision section and four pages of standard grammaticalcontrolled practice activities.

This tinkering with structure isn’t necessary, of course -teachers are capable of dividing their current course intoworkable chunks - and in some cases it’s annoying. Forexample, it’s easy to refer to the grammar reference at theback of the book but more wearisome when it’s divided intothree sections. But for short courses of young adults this bookwould be a good choice. As a CELTA trainer this sort oforganisation means I can plan my teaching points easily, witheverything broken down into neat little bites.

There are no surprises in topics and tasks, especially ifyou’re familiar with other Macmillan courses. Lifestyle, travel,hobbies and free time activities, neighbours from hell, etc. Afamiliar blend of safe pop topics, traditional activity types andcommunication games. The advantage of this, of course, isthat teachers will already have their own routines for exploitingthese topics, making this book easily exploitable andteachable.

Units are designed to integrate skills and language workwithin a ‘no surprises’ structure. ‘Lead in’ moves to ‘readingand vocabulary’, moves to ‘speaking’, moves to ‘listening andwriting’. There are the usual range of grammatical structureand lexical areas. There is some useful exposure to a goodrange of language structures with a few surprises thrown in forgood measure. We are, for example, instructed to include suchsentences as ‘That smelly cheese you really love makes mefeel sick” into our ‘shared house’ role play.

There are a range of information gap and discussionactivities which aim to develop fluency and accuracy. As usual,speaking is seen as a form of pronounced grammar practice.A surprise here is that they decided not to included the

‘anecdotes’ from Inside Out. But never mind, we can still roleplay an argument with our housemates.

Macmillan have a market in mind - schools who liked InsideOut but couldn’t get through it all; teachers who arecomfortable with their working practices and who are notseeking any seismic shift in their classroom practice; andteachers who run short courses and require a higher level offlexibility -such as myself. And for these people Move would,unsurprisingly, be a good choice.

Reviewed by Simon Gillow, IH Barcelona

Move Upper IntermediateSue Kay, Jon Hird, Peter MaggsMacmillan, 2006

Coursebook meetings in myschool always grind to a haltwhen deciding which text to

use with the upper-intermediatelevel. In a market increasingly gearedtoward external examinations,teachers often have very differentexpectations about what students atthat level need.

Move has now arrived on our table,aimed at a market of adults andyoung adults. The layout is

colourful and lively. An abundance of questionnaires andquizzes provide opportunities for personalisation andenjoyable discussion. The authors have used authenticmaterial and a creative twist to address the problem of howto make a topic covered at previous levels interesting andrelevant. Joss Stone, Laura Bailey, Keane and theubiquitous Jamie Oliver all make appearances to make thebook modern and appealing.

The book is divided into 3 modules - People, Things andPlaces - and each module into 5 units. The grammarreference section, wordlists and communication activitiesappear at the end of each module together with extrapractice and listening scripts. To my overworked brain, thiscreated some initial confusion, but I can appreciate that thisformat could help in setting short-term learning objectivesand a sense of cohesion for testing and revision purposes.

But what about the language content?

Each unit has sections under language study, vocabularyand main skills. Sometimes the language study is whatwould once have been labelled ‘grammar’, covering thelikes of ‘uses of the infinitive’ and ‘passive and active’.Other categories provide clever umbrella topics to presentthe type of language so often omitted from coursebooks asit doesn’t come under a neat heading. In this way ‘besupposed to/be meant to/be going to’ are included underthe heading ‘talking about the past’. The anticipatedsqueals from students - and some teachers - about the lack

IH Journal • Issue 20, Spring 2006 Book Reviews

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of grammar is surely a small price to pay for the inclusion ofreal language so often missing in other coursebooks. Thelanguage focus boxes require students to analyse thestructures presented to work out rules and to noticepatterns before referring to the grammar section at the endof each module.

The vocabulary sections are particulary rich in useful andcontemporary lexis thanks to the abundance of authenticreadings and listenings. A series of interviews with womenon what they look for in a partner presents expressions suchas “God’s gift to women”, “not much up top” and “full ofhimself”, which should put students in good stead in anumber of social situations.

The practice activites that the book provides arecontextualised and enjoyable while the extra practiceactivities at the end of each module could be integrated bythe teacher into the lesson or given for revision at home.

All good so far, so what bothers me? I would like to see amore detailed comprehension grammar reference section forthis level of student. The section on ‘talking about the future’,for example, doesn’t provide nearly enough information onthe nuances in meaning between the different future forms,let alone enough attention to form.

Pronunciation too is lacking in both the grammar andvocabulary sections. There are a few activities addressingproblem sounds and word stress, but not enough to helpstudents with the significant phonological problems socommon at this level.

Would I use it though? Yes. It is appealing and fresh andI see it as ideal for mature teenagers or young adults with asolid background of grammar-based learning who need towork on fluency. I would supplement it with exercises onpronunciation and point out that it was time for students tobuy a decent grammar reference book. With students whoare heading towards an FCE preparation course, I would alsosupplement Move with more writing exercises to avoid thelast minute panic and refer them to the well-designed CD-ROM, which includes practice activities similar to those in the‘Use of English’ paper.

Reviewed by Christopher Cooke, IH Manzoni, Rome

GrammarScott Thornbury. Series editor: Alan MaleyOxford University Press, 2006

This is another must have bookby Scott Thornbury. Traditionalgrammar and grammar books

look at language at the sentencelevel, very often using inauthenticexamples to illustrate a point. For agood example of this sort of thing seepage 96 of ‘The Good GrammarBook’ By Michael Swan andCatherine Walter (OUP). You will seeyou can form such sentences as‘Next week breakfast will be sent to

Canada by a black cat.’ and ‘In twenty years your clothes willbe washed by a small man in a raincoat.’ And many other

‘interesting’ examples of the future passive. This is becausetraditional grammar is concerned with a focus on form – howstructural patterns can be used to express a particularmeaning or use. Grammar practice books intended for use bystudents in or out of class usually take this sort of approach aswell, with the focus on the student producing accurateexamples of form. As can be seen by a quick look at anyauthentic text we don’t always conform to these rules. Forexample consider the conditional ‘type’ of the followingauthentic examples taken from a magazine: ‘If your employeris not aware of benefits that are not taxable you could bemissing out on some excellent perks.’ ‘If you have not been toa comedy club in eons because they are just too depressingand predictable, check out a new one just off Baker Street.’Clearly neither of these conforms to the rules of form we findin grammar and course books, but the fact is that our studentsare confronted by authentic English all the time on the internet,in music and films and in publications they may read. Theyneed a grammar that describes the English all around them,not that which describes the antics of a black cat sending yourbreakfast off to Canada.

A large number of the activities in Thornbury’s ‘Grammar’involve students working with text with a focus on helpingstudents notice grammatical features within the text. In otherwords, rather than prescribing a structural pattern, thestudents work on whatever they encounter. They are assistedin making sense of what they find then encouraged to put itinto practice in ways of their own. They are also encouraged toexplore authentic English with such activities as Internet huntwhere they are shown how to discover authentic examples ofsuch things as conditionals.

There are a number of old favourites in the book as well withactivities involving situational presentations, dialogue buildingand parsing. One small niggle here with the parsing activities isthe way Thornbury calls adjuncts ‘adverbials’. A lot of adjunctsare adverbial of course but not all. One of his own examples‘Julia was reading a book in bed last night’ includes anadverbial adjunct ‘last night’ but the other adjunct ‘in bed’ isprepositional. Regardless of terminology these types ofactivities help students with the very basic building blocks ofEnglish syntax and are invaluable in showing studentsessential differences between English grammar and that oftheir own language.

A particularly noticeable feature of the book is its verystudent centred approach with the majority of the activitiesdesigned to help the student work out meanings and patternsof form for themselves. There is also a lot of fun in the bookwith activities such as Language bingo and Grammar poems.

The book is for teachers who can select whichever of theactivities they find of relevance to their classes. It is divided intothree main sections the first of which is concerned with wordgrammar, the second with sentence grammar and the third withtext grammar. The aims of each activity are clearly expressedand recommendations are given as to the level of student eachactivity is suitable for and the approximate time it will take.

In all, there are sixty-two activities in the book but themajority are generic, rather than one off ideas, which meansthey can be applied again and again using different texts andexamples which can be selected by the teacher and studentto meet the needs and interests of a particular individual orgroup. All in all this is a highly practical book full of excellentteaching ideas which go way beyond the norm in currentpublications and take students into the real world of English

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Book Reviews IH Journal • Issue 20, Spring 2006

grammar in challenging, engaging and enjoyable activitiesdesigned to help students make sense of the authentic Englishall around them.

Reviewed by Roger Hunt, IH Barcelona

Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of SecondLanguage DevelopmentJames P Lantolf and Steven L ThorneOxford University Press, 2006

James P Lantolf, lead author ofthis book, is Greer Professor inLanguage Acquisition and

Applied Linguistics at PennsylvaniaState University and a student of thelinguistic and social theories of theRussian psychologist, LemSemyonovitch Vygotsky(1896–1934). In this book he aims to applysocio-cultural and activity theory tothe understanding of secondlanguage acquisition. As such it

provides theoretical support to teachers, learners andresearchers involved in second language education research.

Vygotsky’s studies of human consciousness and his theoryof signs explained how children internalise language in thecourse of their cultural development. According to Vygotsky,to understand how individuals function mentally can beunderstood from the social and cultural influences from whichtheir mental process derives. Vygotsky called his approach‘cultural-historical’ but his theory has become known as thesocio-cultural theory or SCT. He identified the zone of proximaldevelopment or ZPD as the key area of influence and theprocess by which the child internalises these influences as‘inner speech’. Inner speech describes how the mind evolvesto reflect the external reality.

For Lantolf and Thorne culture is independent of any oneindividual and rooted in shared social practice as it has evolvedover history. The development and use of language is at thecore of how people characterise their culture. A socio-culturalapproach, according to Lantolf and Thorne, seeks tounderstand the relationship between human mental functionand its cultural, historical and institutional influences. Theprimary concepts of Vygotsky’s theory of socio-cultural theorywere the genetic method, mediation, internalisation and thezone of proximal development.

Vygotsky also added an additional concept which hasbecome a theory in its own right, activity theory. Each chapterof the book explains the theory and later commentaries andresearch on it, including relevant case studies.

Briefly summarising each of Vygotsky’s key concepts, thegenetic method defined four genetic domains (historical timeframes) through which one can observe mental development.They are phylogenesis (emergence of modern man as aspecies), sociocultural development of human culture throughhistory, ontogenesis of individuals during their lifespan and

microgenesis, mental development in specific areas in a specifictime span.. Obviously in second language learning ontogenesisand microgenesis are the most relevant time frames.

Mediation describes the hypothesis that we don’t act on ourworld but our actions and language are mediated symbolicartefacts (language, numeracy, concepts and institutions) andmaterial artefacts and technology and social relationships.Mediation affects things like cognition and concept formation.Lantolf and Thorne distinguish between mediation throughprivate speech (internal dialogue, formation of intellectualconcepts) and mediation through others in social speech.

Internalisation is the process whereby interpersonal and‘person-environment interaction’ affects mental functions andactivity theory describes the influence of cultural activity onindividual and group psychology and its influence on languagedevelopment. The zone of proximal development offers amodel of development processes and a tool for understandingmental capacity. Finally, activity theory emphasises culturalactivity as the principle of psychological function.

The final part of the book relates these ideas to the theoryand practice of second language learning, both throughVygotsky’s principle of conducting teaching through scientificprinciples and ‘dynamic assessment’ a pedagogical approachgrounded in ZPD (the zone of proximal development).

The conclusions are interesting. Lantolf and Thorne trace theevolution and application of Vygotsky’s ideas through morerecent thinkers about language, such as Chomsky andKrashen and ask whether second language learners are ableto adapt to a new language and conceptual system learnedfrom adolescence onwards. Short term evidence suggeststhat second and foreign language learners lack the culturalbackground to be able to fully appreciate lexical concepts, butthese can be learned. However, as far as Lantolf and Thorneare concerned, the jury is still out on this.

What is more interesting is Vygotsky’s conviction that that adegree of formal teaching before language use yielded farbetter results than the building of language experience anddrawing the grammar rules from it. Lantolf and Thorne citeexamples from Moscow, where children showed aboveaverage results in reading and writing if they were taught rulesfirst and practised afterwards. For Vygotsky, building theconceptual framework was an essential precursor tosuccessful language use.

Vygotsky reacted against the idea of language as afreestanding formal structure independent of social influencesas was modelled by Saussure and others. He developed aconceptual system of cultural influences and processesinfluencing psychological and linguistic development, whichLantolf and Thorne go to great lengths to explore and validatein the light of more recent research. Weighing in at almost 400pages, this is a heavy academic tome but written throughoutin a very clear academic style with good signposting. Not aneasy read but a worthwhile one for teachers wishing to get togrips with the applied linguistics background to secondlanguage learning and with Vygotsky’s theories ofpsychological development and their application to languagelearning.

Reviewed by Barry Tomalin, Director of Cultural Training,IH London

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