Contents

ELT and the Real World by Robert O'Neill

A typically idiosyncratic account of ELT methodologies, by one of the best
known writers in the ELT world.

Page 5

ROLO - a replacement for PPP?

by Paul Emmerson
New ideas on classroom methodology by a highly experienced author of
Business English text-books

Page 10

Row, Row, Row Your Boat by Kaye Anderson

Managing a bi-cultural ELT staffroom by an experienced Director of Studies

Page 14

Learning, Lexis and Business English by Nick Hamilton

The Lexical approach in intensive language learning

Page 18

Accepting ICT in ELT by Howard Ramsey

Some reflections on using the new technology in the language school.

Page 20

Twelve Unprincipled Eclectic Pictures by Krystof Dabrowski

One non-native speaker teacher's account of the delights and disasters of
a Teacher Training course at IH London.

Page 22

Classroom Ideas:
Colour Cards - Motivating Young Learners by Carol Crombie and
Carol Dowie
An account of the authors' innovative approach to motivating and stimulating Young Learners of EFL

Page 24

Giving Low Levels Free Rein by Jo Cooke

Some suggestions for giving lower levels a chance to express themselves in
the class-room

Page 27

Using the Internet in ELT by Karen Momber

An account of one schools experience in using the internet in the classroom.

Page 29

Authentic Listening by Carina Lewis

Using the teacher's voice

Page 32

The Last Word: IH London - a Profile? by Roger Hunt

Is this a profile or a quiz?

Page 34

Reviews of:
Business Builder: An Intermediate Teachers Resource Book by Paul Emmerson (Macmillan Heinemann 1999)
Innovation and Best Practice ed by Chris Kennedy from the English Language Teaching Review (Longman
2000)
Games for Children by Gordon Lewis and Gunther Bedson (OUP 1999)
Market Leader by David Cotton, David Falvey and Simon Kent (Longman 2000)
A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom by Michael Berman. Crown House Publishing
Poetry as a Foreign Language edited by Martin Bates. Availaible From White Adder Press.
Drama with Children by Sarah Phillips. OUP 1999 BEBC Distribution, Ablion Close Parkstone Poole, Dorset
BH12 3L

Editorial
put forward in these pages - we want a letters page - and about
what you read - contribute to our book reviews. Why not tell the
world your story, whether you are fresh off the CELTA or a
seasoned professional. - send us your articles. The Journal
exists to bring the IH Worldwide Organisation closer together so
lets find out more about each other: look at the pen portrait of IH
London by Roger Hunt on p34 and send us your own.Wed like
to imagine you, ten minutes between class, coffee in hand,
leafing through this journal and being suddenly inspired: to
include something completely different in your next class, to have
a go at the Web at last or to tell us how you do it - or think it
should be done - whatever it is.

Welcome to a new Journal for a new Millennium . You will notice

we have a new look and two new editors. Susanna is a recent
recruit to IH London, having spent most of her life teaching
English and French Literature and Language in Independent
schools in Britain. After some years in France teaching Business
English, she returned to Britain where she joined the Executive
Centre in IH London. Rachel has worked as a teacher, DoS and
trainer for IH Worldwide for the last 15 years, in Argentina, Turkey
and Poland. She has been a teacher trainer at IH London for the
last 9 years.
If you want to move forward, its always a good idea to look back.
Accordingly, we went to the original vision statement by one of
the first editors of the IHJ, Charles Lowe, who wrote that it
should be by teachers for teachers and that it should contain
material ranging from articles based on conference papers and
practical ideas to work in progress from leading thinkers in our
field of interest. He wanted to encourage debate, give people a
platform, create new ideas, re-float old ideas, debunk myths, and
generate a new sense of adventure.

Wed like to thank colleagues for a huge amount of support and

interest, particularly of course, the editorial board ( Scott
Thornbury, Jeremy Page, Roger Hunt, Michael Carrier and Pippa
Bumstead who designed the cover). Wed also like to thank Paul
Roberts, our immediate and distinguished predecessor, who
acted as midwife to many of the articles you are about to read.
And finally we have a little vision statement of our own to add to
that of Charles.

We feel that the contents of this issue fulfil all those requirements.
Every contributor teaches or has taught in the IH Worldwide
Organisation. We have new ideas from Nick Hamilton and from
the two Carols, Crombie and Dowie, old ideas
re-examined by Paul Emmerson , practical suggestions on using
new technology from Karen Momber, debate encouraged by
Howard Ramsay, Jo Cooke and Carina Lewis and a myth
debunked (?) by Robert ONeill. And his sense of adventure is
what brought Krzysztof Dabrowski to London.

In a changing world ELT is changing too. What used to be a

minor area of ELT, namely Business English, is becoming
increasingly important. Indeed, some would say it is THE growth
area in this technological age. Teacher Training is changing
radically too as demographics and student loans pressurise the
home market. But the core skills needed by all teachers remain
unchanged. We hope to reflect the way in which ELT and IH
Worldwide are responding to the challenges of the changing
market and together to take the Journal successfully forward into
the new century.

But this is not enough. This is the journal of the IH Worldwide

Organisation: that is, your journal and we need your
contributions. We want to know what you think about the ideas

Susanna Dammann and Rachel Clark

The Poverty and Appeal of CLT

Robert ONeill
Robert ONeill has written more than thirty EFL textbooks and also taught different kinds of learner in very different conditions
in Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Turkey, Brazil and Argentina. His views and opinions are moulded as much by his own
experiences of studying foreign languages as his experience of teaching ELT for more than 40 years.
fast are complaints, or that one of the most frequent uses of the
Present Progressive is not to talk about actions in the present but
about pre-arranged actions in the future, For this reason, many
CLT supporters used to argue, and still do (4) that language
lessons should not be about The Present Continuous or The
Present Perfect, but about Giving and getting personal
information, Asking for and giving directions, Expressing
Opinions, etc.

...the belief, so widely held and so frequently repeated that

language is (a means of) communication is wrong in a way that has
been devastating to any adequate conception of what humans are and
how they differ from other species. Communication is just one use to
which language can be put (and distinguishing between a thing and
its uses should surely form the most basic step in any analysis)
Derek Bickerton; Language & Human Behaviour (London, UCL
Press, 1996)

3 Communicative goals can be specified. We can accurately

describe what learners should have learned and be able to
do with language at the end of the lesson.
An example of a typical communicative goal is given below:-

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has enormous intuitive

appeal. Despite this, I have come to believe that at the heart of
CLT - especially in fundamentalist versions of it - we find a naive,
even impoverished view of language. To demonstrate what I
mean, let me examine six propositions upon which I think CLT is
based. I am going to argue that if these propositions are true at
all, they are only superficially and trivially true - and true only in
essentially uninteresting ways. In other words, they are just as
true as statements like Interesting stories are better than boring
ones. Such a statement tells us nothing about what makes a
story interesting or boring, or why they have the effect that have.
I will try to show this through six counter-propositions. Then finally - I will briefly suggest an alternative - and also
suggest reasons why pluralist methodologies are more likely to
be successful than any single orthodoxy

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

talk about their own jobs and ask classmates about theirs
use the Present Simple accurately and fluently in this context
choose correctly between a/an
pronounce the unstressed form of d you in their question.
4 Good communicative teaching is learner-centred, not
teacher-centred.
Teacher-centred means BAD The teacher doles out formal
knowledge of the language like a cook giving prisoners thin soup
and stale bread in a Victorian prison. Learner-centred means
GOOD.
This view is best summed up for me by what Julian Edge says
on pages 51-53 of Essentials Of Language Learning:

Six fundamentally trivial propositions inherent in CLT.

1 Language is primarily a tool of communication. Learning a
language means learning to perform communicative speech acts
with it.
In CLT, communication means using language to make
requests, give advice, agree and disagree, complain, praise, to
try to persuade people to do things, and so on. The focus should
be on meaning, not on form. Some supporters of CLT, like Geoff
Thompson, (1) argue that this is a misconception of CLT.
However, even he admits that there are good reasons for this
misconception

Many classrooms are arranged so that all students face forward to

the teacher; the message is clear.
the teacher dominates
all information will come from the teacher
interaction between or among students is less valued.
Edge goes on to describe other seating arrangements which
encourage co-operative, communicative pair-work and
group-work. In one picture we see ten or eleven young learners,
perhaps in their late teens or early twenties, listening attentively
to one member of the group talking. In a second picture we see
four learners working together. The learners are smiling, eager,
interested, entirely absorbed in the communicative task that they
are performing.
These two pictures seem, for me at least, to communicate
better than any others the great intuitive appeal of CLT.

2 There is something called a communicative syllabus

which replaces and is superior to a structural syllabus.
It is often argued that a typical structuralist syllabus focuses on
the grammatical structure of language rather than on the communicative or pragmatic2 uses of the language. For example,
sothe argument goes 3 terms like The Present Continuous, tell
us little or nothing about the fact that typical examples of this
form such as Youre standing in my way or Youre driving too

5 What matters most is not whether learners learn to use the

language accurately. What matters is that they learn to get

their message across.
Professor John Trim, one of the founders of CLT, has said that
children learning in school must be taught that language
learning is about communicating, not getting things right. Trim
believes in emphasising the importance of repair strategies and
of the acceptance of errors. He asks if certain learner errors are
so predictable, how much effort is justified in the attempt to put
them right, instead of developing different ways of enlarging that
persons communicative range?. Instead of correcting mistakes,
we should be doing things that will extend the communicative
range of learners.

are prepared to pay money or give up time for.

Language, as Geoffrey Leach has argued 6 has two different
domains. There is a generative and a pragmatic domain. The
generative domain is syntactic and structural and it is possible to
state general rules, at least, about how those syntactic structures
are formed. The pragmatic domain is concerned with speech
acts; these cannot be generated without syntax; but speech-act
theory analyses them purely in terms of their pragmatic effect.
Speech act theory tells us nothing about how they are generated,
and nothing about how they are learned in the first place.

Teachers who spend

time patiently working
with the whole class,
helping them to
memorise irregular verb
forms or to understand
question-formation run
the risk of being
regarded as
uncommunicative.

6 The classroom and the behaviour of teachers and learners

in the classroom should be as similar as possible to the
behaviour of people in the real world outside the
classroom.
Strict turn-taking, display questions, etc. are uncommunicative and do not reflect the real world outside the classroom.
The classroom must become like the world outside the classroom, where we see people using language spontaneously and
communicatively.

Six opposing propositions

How can anyone who is not a reactionary, authoritarian
anti-progressive disagree with an approach based on these
propositions? To give my own answer to this question, I must
express six different propositions.
1Generative competence, the ability to use underlying
syntax and structure, 5 is one of the foundations of
communicative competence.
Without it, there is no pragmatic competence worth talking about.
I have heard CLT supporters say it doesnt matter if learners learn
things like irregular verb forms and even less if they
understand why we form some questions through inversion and
others through the auxiliary (do/does/did) plus infinitive. Just let
them say what they want to say. Listen to the message, not to the
grammatical form.

All languages have very awkward bits. For example, how do

learners learn irregular verb forms like go-went do-did in
English? Or how do they learn the two primary ways of asking
questions in English? Teachers who spend time patiently working
with the whole class, helping them to memorise irregular verb
forms or to understand question-formation run the risk of being
regarded as uncommunicative.
The narrow or fundamentalist version of CLT can easily become
a stifling orthodoxy in which things like rote-learning,
memorisation, display questions, teacher-talk automatically
mean BAD. None of these things alone is bad. What matters is
how, when and why they are done. Although Thompson and
Edge have a much broader vision of CLT than the fundamentalist
version, it is often that narrow version that prevails among
teacher-trainers and other people in strong positions of authority.

But the grammatical form is part of the message. Grammar is not

separate from meaning. It is an integral part of it. It matters
whether I say Ill see you if I have time or Id see you if I had time
just as it matters whether I say A man attacked a woman or
The woman attacked the man.. It makes no sense to say
Words carry more meaning than grammar. Grammar carries a
very different kind of meaning that we do not find in words at all.
The kind of meaning we get from form, especially syntactic form
tells us essential things, such as who did what, how, and to
whom. It may be possible to communicate very basic messages
using words alone, but this is a hollow argument. It is also
possible and probably more effective to communicate such messages using no words at all. Hunger, thirst, anger, rage, sexual
desire, frustration and interest and most other emotions can all be
communicated through gestures with perhaps a few grunts for
emphasis. This is not the kind of communication training people

2 A language syllabus is more than a list. That is why

examples of speech-acts cannot be the basis of a syllabus.
A list of speech-acts that learners are supposed to perform is not
a syllabus. A language syllabus has an internal structure which
relates objectives such as speech-acts to the underlying
syntactic competence that learners need to perform them.
Knowing how to perform a particular speech act is more than
knowing a few phrases that are only examples of that speech

and they are often very different from the eager, motivated
learners in the pictures in Edges book. Learners in the
classrooms I have in mind, typically all speak the same language;
Spanish in Madrid, Polish in Warsaw. Japanese in Tokyo, and so
on. They do not use English outside the classroom and they
rarely if ever hear it used by anybody else.
There is only one person in the classroom who has a reasonable
command of English who is able to engage them in active use of
English in which they also hear someone using that language
competently. That person is the teacher and CLT methodology
insists that that person should cut teacher-talking-time to
an absolute minimum.
It is true that with so-called teacher-fronted methods, some
teachers talk too much. It is just as true that the specious
description learner-centred covers an equally wide spectrum of
lazy, ignorant, incompetent teachers who talk glibly of learner
autonomy and fail to do any of the things that traditional but
competent teachers in the past did to help learners towards true
autonomy.
The issue is not teacher-fronted versus so-called
learner-centred. The question is how can teachers learn to vary
their methods and approach, sometimes using whole-class
techniques and sometimes pair/group work? When and why
does one approach work better than another? A methodology
that does not recognise this is not capable of providing teachers
with the skills they really need.

act. In the real world, typical speech acts have to be modified

and varied to fit different situations. In the real world, typical
speech acts can lead to very unpredictable outcomes.
A competent speaker has to know different ways of performing
the same speech act. Speakers can do this only if they can
generate new examples of the different syntactic structures they
need to perform typical speech-acts. Unfortunately,
communicative goals in CLT are usually described so narrowly
that it is impossible to study the necessary syntactic forms
properly. The Present Simple, for example, has many other
pragmatic and important uses besides talking about your work.
3 Communicative goals are exercises in illusion rather than
reality. It is not possible to specify communicative goals with
any precision .
It sounds so neat and convincing to say At the end of the
lesson learners will be able to talk about their jobs or be able to
give directions. If these descriptions mean anything, they mean
with some luck and a lot of hard work and good teaching,
learners may be able to say a little more about their jobs than
they could at the beginning. They may be able to understand
stereotypical directions like To get to the railway station, go
down this road, take the first right and then the second left but
in the real world railway stations are rarely so easy to find. Even
native-speakers are often unable to give directions clearly or to
understand them.
There are no reliable ways of knowing what learners have learned
at the end of any lesson, still less of knowing what learners will
actually retain in the long term.
Although CLT grew out of a rejection of structuralism which was
supposed to be based on behaviourism, 7 communicative goals
in CLT are all described in typical behaviourist terminology. This
implies that language is just behaviour and that communicative
competence can be described in simple behaviourist terms. It
cannot be. Genuine communicative competence is much
broader than that.

5 A reasonable degree of accuracy is an essential part of

fluency.
This is not at all the same argument as learners must get things
right from the very beginning. But neither is this the same thing
as saying that because many mistakes are predictable, they are
not correctable. Trim fails to make an essential distinction, or to
ask one of the many serious questions that should be part of any
serious discussion of ELT: What kind of correction strategies
seem to work and which do not? My answer to that question is
regular form-focused practice as well as many different
opportunities to use the forms for a variety of pragmatic
purposes

CLT grew out of

a rejection of
structuralism
which was supposed
to be based on
behaviourism.

6 There are essential differences between using your own

language and trying to use a language you do not know well.
These differences help to explain the differences in behaviour of
people in the foreign language classroom and in the streets
outside the classroom.
The first and most essential difference is that people in the
streets outside the classroom are using their own language to
communicate. They learned that language through a long and
complex process that is part of their natural development.
Children in very different cultures begin using language more or
less at the same age, and go through very similar stages of
development. This suggests very strongly that the process of L1
acquisition is genetically triggered and biologically driven. That is
why we can use our native language without having to think
about underlying syntactic form. It is a language with which they
are as intimately familiar as they are with their own bodies.
In the street outside people are not only using language but

4 Good teaching requires an understanding of both

whole-class and pair/group-methods.
Very often, far more often than most CLT supporters are
prepared to admit, 8 competent whole-class teaching is more
efficient than pair and group work.
In the real world, real teachers have to deal with real learners

good lessons have an

affective or aesthetic
dimension which is just
as important as their
pragmatic or pedagogic
dimensions

doing a wide variety of other things; walking dogs, kissing,

reading papers, or even committing criminal acts. Our reasons
for being in the street are very different form our reasons for being
in a classroom. That is why different forms of behaviour are
expected in the two places, It would not be possible to learn or
teach anything in a classroom if we allowed all the learners in it
to behave more or less as they do in the streets outside. The
demand that classrooms should be more like the real world
outside is based on a profound misunderstanding of both what
we can do well in classrooms and how and why we do what we
do when we are in the streets outside.
Many typical forms of classroom behaviour, such as strict
turn-taking, teacher-dominated interaction, and so on, make it
possible to focus on things that we normally would not focus on
in the world outside the classroom because in the world outside
the classroom we would not have time to focus on them or even
think about them. L2 learning (and I believe it is learning and NOT
acquisition) is something very different, despite some apparent
and very superficial similarities.

There are also a number of more practical

considerations:
1 Is there something about the format of the lesson that makes
it easily retrievable? For instance, if I am the learner, and didnt
understand parts of it or have forgotten it for some other reason,
is there some way I could look at or listen to parts of it again as
I go home on the bus or tram, or when I am at home the
following day?
2 Does the format and material of the lesson not only provide
useful input for the learner but also lead to output and
language production by the learner?
3 Does the material and the format help to generate
spontaneous language-use that is not easily predictable?
4 Are there features of the language and the lesson format that
are likely to stretch the expressive potential of the learners? That
is, is there something that helps the learners to improve their
generative and pragmatic competence rather than simply use
fossilised resources?

An Alternative To CLT
What I am going to suggest works for me - and I believe it may
work for many others. But this does not mean it can work for
everybody. The principle behind this is that NO single method or
approach can work for all teachers or for all students. We
recognise that different learners have different preferred styles of
learning. If this is true or learners and their learning styles, it is
also true of teachers and their teaching styles. There is NO
scientific evidence of any kind that proves or even suggests that
typical CLT techniques work well or work at all under all
conditions and with all learners. In fact, what little evidence there
is points to the opposite conclusion. In a case such as this, it is
far better to endorse pluralistic teaching strategies and
techniques which allow for greater diversity and choice not just
for individual learners but also for individual teachers. But,
though I do not present it as the alternative. - what is my
alternative?

My own solution is to adopt a narrative approach to the lessons

I teach. As it happens, a fairly short text is usually the beginning,
but never the end of the lesson. But the lesson would not have
a narrative structure at all if that was all I did. And it is quite
possible to teach within a narrative structure and not use a text
in the conventional sense . A lesson has a narrative structure if
these conditions are met.

Teaching as Narrative
In other words, at each stage of the lesson, the participants have
something to look forward to in the next stage; it may be a
crucial piece of information they will hear in listening practice - it
may be as simple as the answer to the question -What did Mary
do after she saw Bill kissing her best friend in the living room? or
as complex as What led Watson and Crick to believe that the
study of viruses could illuminate the secrets of DNA, and how did
Rosemary Franklins work help them to discover its double helix
structure?

As Scott Thornbury
has argued, good lessons have an
affective or aesthetic dimension which is just as important as
their pragmatic or pedagogic dimensions. For me, this
aesthetic dimension fulfils certain conditions:
1 The lesson, the format and material should arouse interest that
goes beyond the language itself.
2 There should be a pleasing and logical relationship between
the different parts of the lesson.
3 There should be something that the participants can look
forward to besides the end of the lesson, and the chance to
escape and go home.
4 The language that was used or generated during the lesson
should be memorable in some way.

The purpose of the narrative structure is not simply to arouse and

sustain interest. It is to keep learners involved with the language.
If, however, the narrative does no more than keep learners
involved with the language, it will fail as vehicle of languagelearning. The narrative has to lead to language-production by the

Footnotes

learner. For example, there may be narrative gaps that can be

interpreted in different ways - and which require learners to
extend their pragmatic and generative repertoires as they do so.
The texts should also provide parallels which invite learners to
compare their lives, views and preferences with each other as well
as the characters who appear in the text.

1 Some Misconceptions about Communicative Language Teaching;

English Language Teaching Journal Volume 50/1 January 96.
2 Pragmatic in this sense is used in the sense Geoffrey Leech
uses the term in Principles of Pragmatics; the meaning language
acquires when used socially, by and among people, in order to
perform typical speech acts.
3 From Beginners Choice , Mohamed & Acklam, Longman 1992.
I use this example only because it is quoted by Julian Edge in
Essentials of English Language Teaching.
4 EFL Gazette, December 97
5 See the origins of syntax in Bickertons Language & Human
Behaviour, pp 66-84 for a discussion of the importance of
syntax not only for language but for human evolution and
cognition.
6 Principles of Pragmatics (London, Longman, 1983)
7 Structuralism is one of the major philosophical movements of
the 20th Century, and its European form is emphatically not
behaviourism
8 See for example Wong-Fillmore, L. When Does teacher Talk Work
As Input? Input In Second Language Acquisition; Newbury House,
1985
9 Good lessons share features with, among other art forms,
good films. They have plot, theme, rhythm, flow and a sense of
ending. Scott Thornbury, Lesson Art and Design, ELT Journal,
January 1999
10 Henry Widdowson has said this, but I cannot remember
where.

In my own case, these texts are not likely to be authentic in the

narrow sense - unless, of course, I am writing for or teaching a
group that can respond authentically to authentic material10.
The texts or conversations I write for or use with typical
pre-intermediate classes will either be specially adapted or
specially written. They have to be accessible and short enough to
allow for a range of other exercises, tasks and activities to take
place within a typical lesson (45 - 90 minutes ). Suppose, for
example, I want a dialogue in which someone deliberately lies, or
threatens someone, or promises to do something and then later
fails to fulfil that promise. Where could I find an authentic
example of such dialogues? When people know they are being
recorded or observed; they fall into neutral styles that reveal as little as possible of their true intentions or feelings, especially if they
intend to deceive someone. This is just as true when they are
angry, jealous, in love or want advice about a personal problem.
Unless they are pathological (and probably boring) exhibitionists,
they will not behave authentically or normally if they know they are
being observed or recorded.
Yet all of us know - at least in our own languages -what people are
likely to say in such situations. Why should we refuse to use those
intuitions in the materials we create or use for our students? It may
be that the products of such intuitions have to be idealised in
various ways in order to make it possible for non-native speakers to
understand
them,
but
this
makes
them
more - not less - useful for our purposes. Typical transcripts of
native-speakers talking to each other are often incomprehensible,
even for other native-speakers. All good writers or speakers adapt
and modify what they say or write for the people they are speaking
with or writing for. The logical conclusion of the authentic only
argument is that we should treat non-native speakers of English in
a way good writers and speakers of English would never treat
anybody else; that is - that they should ignore the problems
non-native speakers have with English and speak or write as if
those problems simply did not exist.
What EFL needs today is writers capable of developing skills that
writers in other genres regard as essential: they must be able to
develop the kinds of story, plot and character that can keep
groups of very different learners interested in the language. The
texts and conversations they write must exemplify as naturally as
possible how people speak and write outside the classroom.
However, the texts and dialogues must also serve the distinct
pedagogic purposes that I have tried to categorise here.

ROLO: Reformulate Output Lightly but Often

Paul Emmerson
Paul Emmerson taught Business English in Portugal for many years. He now teaches at the International House Executive
Centre, London, and is the author of Business Builder (Macmillan Heinemann). He is a regular conference presenter on all
aspects of BE methodology and does teacher training in Poland and Hungary.

What is ROLO?
Some lessons have an input > output shape. These are
presentation lessons where language is presented then
practised then produced. Other lessons have an output >
input shape. These are fluency or skills work lessons where the
main focus is on extended speaking or writing and there is
feedback at the end. Lets stop and think for a moment about
this feedback.
I have coined the term ROLO to describe a technique of doing
diagnostic language feedback after tasks and skills practice.
ROLO is accuracy and form based language work, but because
it comes after student output the language cannot be
pre-selected. It is diagnostic - you wait to see what problems
and needs the students have while actually speaking or writing.
Reformulate Output = start with students real output (speaking
or writing) in a task, then elicit/give more appropriate language as
feedback.
Lightly = do this quickly, perhaps with a concept question, but
without a heavy explanation.
Often = do this often, and revise the same points over
several feedback slots.

ROLO in action
Lets take a look inside a classroom where ROLO is happening.
The students have just finished a speaking activity: it could be a
carefully prepared task, or a role-play, or a discussion. It might
have arisen out of something prepared for homework (perhaps a
newspaper article), or it might have arisen spontaneously
(perhaps continuing a discussion from the coffee break or talking
about something that happened to one of the students last
night). While the students were speaking the teacher didnt
interfere much. Instead he/she was busy writing down a number
of language points where:
there was good use of language that could be brought to the
attention of other students, or
there was an error, or
where a student needed language they didnt have
Now the activity has finished and its time for the language
feedback slot. The teacher stands at the board and goes
through the points, writing up what s/he heard on the board with
a full, clear context and eliciting (if possible) or supplying (if not)
corrections. Good language use is congratulated and the
teacher explains why it was good. Each language point takes
between 30 seconds and a few minutes to cover, and the

teacher aims to cover perhaps 10-15 points in total, including

grammar, functional expressions, lexis and pronunciation.
Lets continue in our imaginary classroom and look in more detail
at just one of the points chosen by the teacher: well take a
classic grammar area as an example. The teacher heard an
example where the student used past simple instead of present
perfect, and wants to focus on it briefly. The teacher writes up
the example on the board and then uses a concept question: is
this referring to the past, the present, or the past and the
present? If the students answer correctly and can give the
correct form, the teacher writes this on the board and then
moves on. The teacher may at this point do some controlled
practice such as a mini-drill - asking a few students to give
another similar example or a personalized example.
If the students are confused or cannot answer the teacher may
take a few minutes to give a very simple explanation (perhaps a
time line on the board) and/or refer to a page in a grammar book
for self-study after the class. Then the teacher moves on.
Looking back at the previous paragraphs we can see that:
1 the teacher starts with student output (unpredictable before the
activity began)
2 the student output is reformulated (the correct version being
elicited or given)
3 this is done lightly (short time taken in class, just a simple
concept question/explanation)
4 this is done often (the same language point will be returned to
in other feedback sessions).
The simple concept questions/explanations are very important, so
as to move forward quickly and avoid a heavy grammar
session improvised on the spot. Here are some other simple
concept questions to elicit correct language:
1st/2nd conditional mistake: Is it a real possibility or an
imaginary possibility? So it should be ...?
Definite/indefinite article mistake: Do we know which X?
So it should be ...?
Present simple/continuous mistake: Is it usual/permanent or in
progress now/temporary? So it should be ...?
What happens if students can supply the answer?
In order to reformulate the example on the board or answer the
concept question the students have done some mental processing.
They have activated language knowledge which:
may have been presented and practised already on earlier English

10

courses
may be intuitive through general exposure to English Now they are
much nearer to being able to actively produce this language in its
correct form the next time they need it. And the teacher helped them
to this. Well done.
Usually the students will be able to supply the answer as the teacher
will choose language points within the students capability - things
that they know but cant produce actively just yet.
What happens if students cant supply the answer?
If the simple concept questions and prompts fail to elicit the
correct language, then either:
1 The teacher simply gives the correct language (perhaps with a
very short explanation).
2 The student is referred to a grammar reference/practice book
for self-study.
3 It might have to be presented more fully and conventionally
in another lesson.
4 The language point is beyond the scope of the course or the
abilities of the students and the teacher refrains from dealing with
it again with that particular group in that way.

How is ROLO language work different to

Present-Practice-Produce?
The ROLO feedback slot has a language/accuracy focus, just
like PPP, but the emphasis is on activation of language rather
than presenting it for the first time. To make the difference
between ROLO and PPP very clear, lets take the three stages of
PPP:
a) Presentation of language may be absent in ROLO, or may be
reduced in time and complexity. Students often know the correct
form and supply it themselves, and when they dont a very
simple explanation from the teacher or another student suffices.
Often presentation is self-accessed in a grammar book outside
the class in a comfortable chair with a cup of coffee.
b) Controlled practice of language may be absent in ROLO, or
may be reduced in time and complexity. The teacher may just
elicit/correct and move on. Alternatively the teacher may choose
to do a quick drill, perhaps asking the students to think of
similar, personalized examples using the language item.
c) Freer practice of language will probably be absent in ROLO.
The teacher will simply wait for another task on another day
when s/he hears the language point being used wrongly, or
being needed. S/he will then repeat the process of ROLO with
the same language point in a new example/context.

Review: why ROLO?

1 Because you start with real mistakes, lacks and strengths
revealed by students doing an activity in class just now. This is
highly motivating. You have a ready-made context and the
students have high levels of attention, ready and waiting to
correct themselves.
2 Because it offers variety and flexibility. You can start a lesson
with an open-ended task, skills activity or discussion and not
worry about where the lesson goes. Starting a lesson like this is
a natural, lively, fun thing to do - for you and your students. You
know that at the end, whatever happens, theres going to be
some solid accuracy-based language work.
3 Because its a very good way to activate language. The student
is offered the chance to do some mental processing: to self
correct and use passive understanding. ROLO allows students
to feel they are making progress by correcting themselves and
other classmates, and this can happen naturally before active
production.
4 Because it requires zero preparation. Materials can of course be
used to stimulate and structure the initial task or discussion, but
they arent needed. ROLO can follow from students speaking
spontaneously about anything at any time anywhere.
You just need to take notes as preparation for the feedback slot.
5 Because in the initial task students are free to produce
whatever language they want.

How does ROLO differ from PPP in terms of

learning theory?
Mostly in terms of the length of time that students need to get
it. PPP assumes that students will be able to produce the
language item after the final P, and this usually means by the
end of a 50-minute lesson. Of course PPP is not so simplistic
and says that there will also have to be opportunities for revision.
ROLO, however, assumes a much longer period of receptive
understanding before production is possible. Students will
probably have to go through these stages over several
weeks/months/years:
1 being unable to produce correct forms, but being able to
supply them when they see a mistake on the board
2 trying to use forms, doing so tentatively and with mistakes
3 trying to use forms, doing so with fewer mistakes and
immediate
self-correction
(even
while
speaking)
4 being able to use correct forms more fluently, but still with
some mistakes
ROLO will help this process by returning to language items
several times in several lessons. Meanwhile, and regardless of
the students progress in producing correct forms, their ability to
communicate effectively and confidently will have been increased
enormously as a result of the tasks and skills practice activities that
begin a ROLO lesson and that a ROLO approach encourages.

11

Isnt ROLO just the same as task-based

learning?

students produce in real time in class, and this is by nature

unpredictable.

TBL seems to mean different things to different people but

certainly - like ROLO - it involves tasks rather than
presentation-type lessons. However, there are some differences:
In TBL preparation of language for the task is very important.
In ROLO there may or may not be language preparation before
the task. Certainly students can plan and ask the teacher for
language, but it is not essential. Perhaps in ROLO preparation of
ideas is more important than preparation of language, so that
students have rehearsed in their minds some content and the
task/discussion is more fluent and interesting.
ROLO can follow a lot of things that are not really tasks - for
example a discussion that just started spontaneously at the
beginning of the lesson.
In TBL the students know that the task is to practise the
language they have prepared. In ROLO the students can
produce whatever language they like.
In TBL there may be a short feedback slot, but it is not
essential to the lesson - the language focus happens before the
task. In ROLO the language work is done after the task in a
feedback slot, and this is a key part of the lesson.
TBL makes much use of models of good language use before
a task (e.g. native speakers doing the same task). ROLO
doesnt.
In TBL there is a report-back stage on how the students did the
task. I have never really understood this, but anyway its lacking
in ROLO.

In fact ROLO can present an even bigger problem for the lesson
plan because the initial task/discussion could go anywhere. In
fact as a teacher you think its excellent if the lesson goes off at
a tangent, because language will be generated in a natural, lively,
spontaneous way as the class follows its own direction and
energy. The important thing is that youll come in with a strong
accuracy-based language slot at the end based on the notes
you take. The justification for working in this way is variety, that
you want to focus on activation rather than presentation, and
that it is motivating for the students to start with their own
language rather than that chosen by a teacher or coursebook
author.
How easy is it to do language work in assessed lessons by
diagnostic feedback on unpredictable student output?
How often is this approach encouraged in teacher training?

So ROLO is not the same as TBL. Amongst other well-known

approaches to teaching/learning the closest to ROLO is
probably Test-Teach-Test. In a way ROLO is an explicit
development of what the Teach bit of Test-Teach-Test actually
involves.

language will be
generated in a natural,
lively, spontaneous way as
the class follows its own
direction and energy
Conclusion
On many teacher training courses or in situations like observed
lessons (e.g. for a British Council inspection) the lesson plan with
its clearly stated language aims rules supreme. This is for a good
reason. But for the sake of variety it should be possible to do
language work diagnostically, and this could be encouraged.
With a ROLO approach you cannot specify language aims on the
lesson plan because you want to work with the language that the

12

Summary
This comparison should make things clear.

Presentation-Practice lessons

ROLO lessons

Language items are covered one at a time, in detail.

Many language items are covered in one feedback session.

Each item is covered lightly and often

Language items are pre-selected, either from the pages

of a coursebook or the lesson plan of a teacher.

Language items are not pre-selected: they arise naturally as a

need/mistake during students output in the lesson.

Focus on the presentation of new language. Appropriate for

first contact between learner and language item.

Focus on activation of language already learned or exposed to.

Appropriate for all subsequent occasions when language item is
needed or misused.

Presentation stage is nearly always followed by controlled

practice.

Presentation (explanation) in feedback may or may not be followed

by controlled practice.

Controlled practice stage nearly always preceded by a

presentation.

Controlled practice in feedback may or may not be preceded by a

presentation.

Generally precedes skills practice/task.

Generally follows skills practice/task.

In courses where PPP lessons are frequent, the

grammar syllabus is explicit and coursebook or teacher led.

In courses where ROLO lessons are frequent, the grammar

syllabus is implicit and student needs led.

In courses where PPP lessons are frequent, grammar work has

a high visibility and is seen as essential and necessary for all
students, both during class time and as homework.

In courses where ROLO lessons are frequent, grammar generally

has a low visibility. Detailed grammar work is seen as a choice
available to students, with a further choice between class and
self-study time.

Appropriate in all courses for variety.

Appropriate in all courses for variety.

Appropriate as the main way of doing language work:

Appropriate as the main way of doing language work:

on extensive courses
where the backbone of the syllabus is the English verb
tense system
where the students objective is accuracy of form
where the students are studying to pass an exam

on short, intensive courses

where the backbone of the syllabus is topics and functional skills
where the students objective is accuracy of meaning
where the students are studying to increase their ability to
communicate effectively

Appropriate for large groups.

Appropriate for small groups.

Absolutely essential for one-to-one.

Appropriate when the students see native speaker grammar use

as the ultimate goal/model to which they are aspiring.

Appropriate when the students mainly come into contact with other
non-native speakers who will not notice/mind their mistakes.

Role of the teacher is classroom manager, managing the flow

of language from off the pages of the coursebook or lesson
materials to the students.

Role of the teacher is language consultant, managing the flow of

language from the students back to the students.

As can be seen, ROLO makes particular sense in Business English and one-to-one, but it could be used for variety, motivation and
activation in any context.

13

Row, row, row your boat.......

The DoS as people manager Kaye R. Anderson
Kaye Anderson has worked in IH Budapest where she took the Diploma and proved an excellent student of Spanish. She is
currently DoS in IH Lviv.
One of the questions I am often asked in Lviv is: Why did you
come to Ukraine?. Translated, this invariably means : Are you
crazy? Why would anyone in their right mind come to a country
that we are so desperately trying to leave?
In most of these cases Ukrainians are wondering how a
Westerner can possibly cope with the living conditions; for
example how a foreigner can tolerate having water for only 6
hours a day. They are not usually thinking about how much more
difficult it often is, to get to grips with a different culture, where
peoples reactions to events and situations are not always the
same as mine, and is frequently mystifying. Nor are they thinking
about the management aspects of working with a group of
people from two different cultures who have diverse educational
backgrounds, a variety of different work experience and possibly
quite different career aspirations.
I am sure we are all familiar with situations where our responses
are at variance with those of another culture. A fairly typical
Westerners reaction to a problem in the workplace is to sit down
with those concerned, to analyse the problem, and figure out a
solution - in other words to exercise some control over the
situation, believing not only that such control is possible, but also
desirable. However, the last 50 years or so have not given
people in Ukraine much cause to believe that such behaviour is
necessarily useful or feasible.
In a school where the predominant culture is other than ones
own, that is, not an English-speaking one as in perhaps the
majority of IH schools, these differences of attitudes to situations,
coupled with differences in educational background, work
experience and lifestyles, affect ones role as DoS - the way one
attempts to row the boat, facing forwards or backwards, with
one or two paddles, heading upstream or downstream.
I dont pretend to have too many answers or to have found some
significant research on the subject, but I can air some of the
challenges and opportunities we encountered at LVIV, and
together come up with some practical ways of dealing with the
problems these divergences sometimes cause.
We can identify several areas of difference between local
teachers and native speaker teachers.
Perceptions of status and attitudes towards those in authority
may vary in different cultures. By and large, in Western cultures,
while there is respect for those in positions of authority, modern
approaches to management tend to favour democratic-decisionmaking processes and open-door management styles.

It is considered acceptable to challenge the views of such

people, and that such challenges can be used constructively to
the benefit of the organisation. In other cultures, the manager
may play a much more autocratic role, may be considered to be
an expert and therefore to be fully responsible for all
decision-making. A managers decisions are final, and there may
be little room for negotiation.

How does this affect ones role as DoS?

First, at teachers meetings it is sometimes difficult to get local
teachers involved in decision-making. Native-speaker teachers
air their views much more readily and openly. This can create
some false impressions :
That the native-speakers are running the show; ie taking too
much control
That the local teachers are either uninterested or dont have
any opinions
That the DoS is making all the decisions
Secondly, because the local teachers are unaccustomed to
expressing their views openly it may take a great deal of time,
patience and probing to get to the real heart of the issue.
To deal with these problems I make sure I take any issues of
general concern that are raised with me on a one-to-one basis
after meetings, back to a full meeting, hoping to show that such
issues can be dealt with at a team or group level without
causing undue conflict, and can in this way be effectively
resolved.
Thirdly, it may be necessary on occasions to be somewhat
autocratic in order to get things done. Asking nicely doesnt
always work! And sometimes teachers simply want a decision to
be made and handed down. Theres a cultural-linguistic issue
here, too. A request in English such as Could you possibly do
a placement interview, please? will normally evoke a positive
reply from a native speaker of English. For a Ukrainian the
request may well appear as exactly that and a flat refusal may be
given.
Similarly, I am somewhat taken aback when a request from a
Ukrainian is framed as: I want you to do an interview.

Professional Development
In general, local teachers need assistance with :
preparing lessons using authentic materials, such as

14

newspaper or magazine articles, songs and videos. This may

involve help with transcribing listening texts as well as the
development of tasks and activities
lexical aspects of a lesson, especially at higher levels
project-based learning where students have considerable
freedom in the language they produce and the procedure is less
teacher-controlled
teaching higher levels eg developing confidence in using freer
approaches to lesson structure, such as the jungle path method
and what they want from seminars is complete lesson
packages, rather than ideas that need to be adapted.

the exchange system

between schools has
the potential to provide
interesting and stimulating opportunities for
local teachers.

On the other hand, native speaker teachers need assistance with :

structuring lessons coherently
linguistic analysis
ways of presenting grammar clearly
and what they want from seminars is extension and revision of what
they covered on their CELTA course eg drilling techniques, ways of
teaching vocabulary, how to use rods etc, which the local teachers
have mostly seen and done before.

Career Options
For local teachers there may appear to be few :
the likelihood of getting a permanent position as DoS is not great
the possibility of transferring to another IH school depends on a
number of factors : the school they are currently working in, the particular country they live in, their personal and family
circumstances. The introduction of the exchange system between
schools has the potential to provide interesting and stimulating
opportunities for local teachers, and the Soros schools are looking at
a similar idea between their schools, which may make
realisation of the idea much more feasible for teachers in Eastern
Europe.

From the schools point of view the local teachers represent a

stable core of growing expertise. Management needs to recognise
the value of this and demonstrate its appreciation in concrete
ways. It also needs to be aware of the importance of continued
professional development, looking at ways to enable teachers to
do the DELTA as well as considering the advantages of teachers
taking time out to work in other countries or schools.
For native speakers, by comparison, the options seem unlimited.
teaching experience in a variety of schools and countries
doing the DELTA and Masters courses
promotion to AdoS, DoS and other management positions
From the schools point of view, these teachers are transients,
who usually stay a year and move on, with the school gaining
little from that first years teaching experience. For this reason
native speaker teachers may not get all the professional
development they need, and may be used to teach lots of
different classes once a week as the native-speaker, before
they disappear to another school.

DOSs face the problem of catering for the differing needs, educational backgrounds and strengths of local and n-s teachers.
There are a number of dichotomies here, shown in the table below :

Local Teachers

Native-Speaker Teachers

Strong academic background

Very good knowledge of linguistics

Varied academic backgrounds

Often incomplete knowledge of linguistics

0-6+ years TEFL experience

Fluent in L1

Zero TEFL teaching experience ie straight off CELTA course

Beginners in L1

Not yet completely fluent and accurate in L2

Fluent in L2

Educational experience favoured methods of teaching

with the teacher as expert, dependence on published texts,
with little room for creativity and little attention paid to the
development of skills of analysis and evaluation.

Educational experience varied, but usually favoured methods of

teaching with the teacher as facilitator, providing opportunities
for creativity, expression of own ideas, originality, analysis and
evaluation.

The effect of this is that the professional development of staff needs to be handled very much on an individual level, sometimes
making it difficult to provide seminars which are relevant to all staff.

15

Teacher-Student Relationships
These are inevitably different: native speakers have a certain
status by virtue of just being that, and they enjoy a built-in
information-gap which they can readily and usefully exploit in
their lessons. What student wants to tell a local teacher about
the Christmas traditions with which they are both familiar? On the
other hand, local teachers share a common educational and
cultural background with their students, which means they have
a clear insight into their students prior language learning
experience and the specific problems they encounter in learning
English.
It may be difficult for local teachers to adopt the role of a nonautocratic figure in the classroom - essential for the affective
climate of a language learning classroom. This may arise from
the teachers own learning experiences, but is perhaps more
likely as a result of student expectations from someone of the
same background.

Extra-Curricular Activities
Although it depends on how such activities are managed whether teachers are paid overtime or not, for example, - there
may be some difficulty getting local teachers to participate.
Their weekends are more likely to be devoted to family (family life
is very important in Ukrainian culture), and in my school, to
teaching private students to boost their salaries. This means that
the English Club in recent times has largely been run -fortunately
willingly - by the teachers, who enjoy the contact with students
outside the regular classroom and happily acknowledge the
situation local teachers are in.

Resource Development
There is a conflict of interests here between Native speakers and
local teachers. Local teachers tend to build their own files of
resources and supplementary materials on the basis that they will
use them again and again over the years. They tend to add
relatively little material, such as pelmanism sets, to the general files.
This effectively disadvantages the first-year native speaker teacher
who comes into the school with practically nothing. The approach
I have decided on is to encourage the n-s teachers to add to the
files to save future and existing colleagues from hours of
preparation. Because of their own intrinsic transience they quickly
come to appreciate the value of materials prepared by others and
happily add useful material to the general files.
As I mentioned earlier, local teachers are not as confident as native
speaker teachers in devising original worksheets or tasks, mainly
because they feel their English is not good enough. Transcribing
spoken texts such as songs and video dialogues is also a difficult
task for non-native speakers of English. Some resistance to
developing their own materials also stems from belief in the

expert and a resulting dependence on professionally written

material. This is a problem in terms of developing tests, too, where
questions for a reading text often need to be created.

teachers tend to
build their own files of
resources and
supplementary materials
on the basis that they
will use them again and
again over the years
One solution to this problem is to give whatever assistance one
can in the development of such material eg help a teacher
transcribe a video dialogue and then together work out tasks and
activities to go with it. This helps build confidence in their ability
to do it themselves.

Building Relationships
The importance of building relationships in a workplace where the
majority of the teaching staff are permanent cannot be
underestimated. The fact that the DoS and n-s teachers are
transient is a significant factor, and maybe a problematic one in
terms of their relationships with one another as well as their
relationships with local staff. From the local teachers point of view
there seems little to be gained from making friends with someone
wholl be gone in 12 months. Another important aspect is that
where most of the staff are permanent, the foreigners have to fit
into a workplace culture which is well-established - they dont
create that culture in the way that it happens where most of the
staff are itinerant native speakers. And just how soon can a
newcomer catch on to in-house jokes and traditions? I was glad
I had 9 months to figure out through careful observation exactly
what I was supposed to do on my birthday.
The relationships that are relevant here are as follows :
between DoS and local teachers
between DoS and native speaker teachers
between local teachers and native speaker teachers
In my experience developing relationships of trust and collegiality
with local teachers has been relatively slow. This is quite
understandable, and highlights a strong reason for DoS contracts
in such schools to be of two-year duration.
Where there are few native speaker teachers and few foreigners
in the city, relationships between them inevitably form quickly,

16

regardless of status. I have found myself in the role of mentor, city

guide and shopping-mate to a greater or lesser extent with all
native speaker staff. There is a minor difficulty here sometimes in
terms of maintaining that little bit of distance that the role of DoS
requires.
Relationships between local and native speaker teachers can be
more problematic. Foreigners lose their novelty value after a few
years and local teachers have their own families and friends to
spend their free-time with. Inside school the use of L1 in the
teachers room and socialising areas of the school can be a
problem. Outlaw it, if you can. In my situation this has seemed
neither possible or desirable, but changing dynamics such as the
introduction of new part-timers and the arrival of new
personalities has improved a situation which often left native
speaker teachers feeling isolated and excluded. In an attempt to
overcome this, we have decided to establish a buddy system
where one or two or even three local teachers will assist
newcomers in school matters, survival issues etc.
In conclusion here are a few suggestions for ensuring a smoothrunning bi-cultural staff-room:
1 Ensure that native speaker teachers are given every opportunity
to learn the native language, and encourage them to take an
ongoing responsibility for doing so.
2 Ask local teachers to take on the roles of guides, mentors etc
with specific tasks over a set period of time, followed by both
parties reporting back on the effectiveness and usefulness of the
exercise.
3 Focus professional development on the individual, giving
different kinds of assistance according to differing needs and
wants.
4 Be wary of throwing out the course-book! Experienced local
teachers and inexperienced native speaker teachers both need
the support of a reliable framework for their teaching.
5 Consider assigning n native speakers to English Club and other
social activities as part of their special contribution to the school.
6 Discuss cultural differences openly, especially those that show
up in language which are of professional interest, and discourage
the kind of criticism foreigners often indulge in as a reaction to
culture shock.
7 A mentor, for you as DoS, from outside the school, probably
somewhere in IH World Organisation, is extremely useful. This is
especially necessary when you are in an isolated situation.
Judging what is normal can become quite difficult and you can
run the risk of making elephants out of flies, as the Ukrainians so
nicely put it - or doing just the opposite.

we sit in the middle of

our boats, with our
backs to the future,
rowing madly,
sometimes with the
current and sometimes
against
When I first discussed the idea of this article with the Director of
my school, I asked her for some ideas about the title - a
Ukrainian proverb or the like. Her suggestion was : When you
live with wolves, you must hunt with the wolves. I rejected it
because of the negative associations that we (Ukrainians too)
have connected with wolves. But the saying nevertheless holds
a good deal of truth. As DoSes in foreign countries we have no
choice but to get alongside our local staff and feel their
problems, in the same way as we should do with our native
speaker staff. In so doing we can enhance the very valuable role
they play in our schools.
To return to my other metaphor - as DoSes we sit in the middle
of our boats, with our backs to the future, rowing madly,
sometimes with the current and sometimes against. Although
the time we spend in a school may be comparatively short in the
overall scheme of things, the least we can do is row the boat as
gently and merrily as possible while were at the helm.

17

Learning, Lexis and

Business English Nick Hamilton
Nick is a teacher and teacher trainer of General and Business English at International House London. He has taught and trained
teachers in Germany, Turkey, Poland and Lithuania.
The following are some ideas on how we might help students to
become better learners by giving them skills they can take away
and continue to use after their course. It is based on my attempts
to implement a lexical approach in my teaching and my own
experience as an Intermediate level learner of Turkish. There are
four main areas that I have been working on.

Changing students perceptions of language

and learning
We probably all use some form of Needs Analysis as a way of
determining course content in Business English teaching, but
what actually does it tell us? Ive come to see that it is not
necessarily about students actual needs, but often more about
their previous learning experience, hence the frequently heard
statement I need to improve my grammar. Theres a very
familiar old Chinese saying that if you give someone a fish, you
feed them for a day. Whereas if you teach them to fish, you feed
them for a lifetime. In my experience, teaching single items of
grammar makes very little difference to what students are able to
say, and seems only to satisfy the needs of the lesson. There is
also a very real issue of cost and benefit for a Business student
on a short intensive course, not to mention the debate about the
nature of International English in the business world.
In response to this, I try to show students that there are other
ways of looking at language learning. So, in a first lesson with
new students I ensure there is time for detailed feedback on the
language the students are using and the type of errors they are
making. I then focus their attention on this with a number of
questions: What really affects their ability to communicate
effectively? How much time/energy do they have to work on
language? What are the priorities? I help them to see that its not
the grammar that plays the most important part in
communication but the lexis.

Showing the communicative power of lexis

Having shown students the limitations of focusing primarily on
grammar on an intensive Business English course, I then show
them what looking at language as lexis means. The model I give
students is the one presented in the Lexical Approach (words
and phrases, word partnerships, semi-fixed and fixed
expressions); a very clear summary of this that includes
examples can be found in the introductory unit to Business
Matters by Mark Powell (LTP). I then apply this to the language
feedback we have been doing and start to explore and extend
the lexis with them. It is important to make it clear to students

that this way of working does not exclude grammar (which then
tends to be dealt with remedially) but puts it in perspective, the
emphasis being firmly on lexis as the communication tool.
The key is to show students the difference between these two
areas of language and how they do in fact overlap.

Presenting our teaching approach as a

learning tool
My main aims here are to train students in the skills of noticing
lexis and chunking written and spoken text, and to show
them ways of working on language that they can continue to use
independently after the course. Here are 3 examples of such
activities that students can see at work in the classroom and take
away with them:

Noticing lexis in a text

Following work on a reading text, ask students to turn over their
papers. Write up on the board 7- 10 examples of word
partnerships and semi-fixed expressions from the text, but with
a key word blanked out in each. Students work together to find
appropriate ways of filling the blanks, and you write up all their
suggestions that would fit. Finally, students check with the text
for the original version. The lexis on the board can then be
explored for other collocations, ways of filling the slots,
opposites, etc. Students can then have a chance to experiment
with it. The advantage of this way of working is that it requires no
preparation, and helps students to notice lexis for themselves. In
my own learning of Turkish I have found that I not only notice
useful language but that it quickly feeds into my speaking and
writing allowing me to express myself more naturally.

Chunking a written text

Select and copy three or four business news summaries from the
press. Ideally they should be one sentence. The front page of the
Financial Times is a good place to look. Write two of them out in
a chunked version and cut them up. In class, divide the students
into two groups and give each group one of the cut up texts
which they have to sequence. When students have had a go at
this, hand out the copy for them to check, and focus on the
interesting lexis. Then draw students attention to the way in
which you cut up the text and introduce the idea of chunking.
Students can then choose one of the other two texts and have a
go at chunking it together. You can then go over the principles of
how to do this with them. In my experience, the main issue is to
decide where the prepositions should go; interestingly, they

18

Recording Language/A Lexical Notebook This can include the following sections:
cross-referenced to the topic pages.

1 Miscellaneous A-Z. Here you put words and phrases that

dont fit into the other sections. This can include pronunciation, word class, simple explanation in English or translation,
and an example sentence for each one.

1 Word building. Here you can note examples of word

families (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) that are difficult to use
or remember. You can also note the word stress pattern in
each case.

1 Topic pages. Here you can record language around specific

topic areas.

1 Favourite errors. Here you can keep a record of common

errors that you make. These can be divided into spoken and
written ones, and you can include common pronunciation
problems with sounds and stress patterns.

1 Fixed expressions. Here you can record semi-fixed and

fixed expressions for specific situations.
1 Word partnerships. Here you can record word partnerships
and expressions with very common words, e.g. do, make,
get, thing, point, etc. keeping a page for each one. You can
also record phrasal verbs in this section, which can then be

1 Grammar section. Here you can keep pages of examples

of grammar points that you find especially difficult. These can
be ones that youve seen written or heard.

You will need some kind of filing system for this where you can add extra pages to the different sections as you need to. This allows
you to organise the language as youre learning it, and makes it much easier to review. Choose a system that suits you.
come more often at the end of a chunk than at the beginning.
If you take the texts off the Internet, it is even easier as you can
quickly chunk the texts on computer ready to cut up.

Sound chunking
Record the TV or radio business news headlines. In class,
students listen and choose one to work on intensively; using this
as a dictation you then build up the text on the board. You can
then explore with students how it is spoken, i.e. Where do you
pause to breathe? Which words are stressed? Which words link
together? What about weak forms? You can then practise the
pronunciation of whole chunks by inviting students to choose
from the text and compare their way of saying it with yours.
This way of working is essentially the Observe Hypothesize
Experiment model (OHE) of the Lexical Approach. I present it to
students in the variation of Notice Check Experiment (NCE), and
back it up by introducing the use of monolingual
dictionaries as a means of checking language independently.
Linked to the business of students noticing language for
themselves is their ability to ask the right questions to clarify what
they notice. Once I recognised that the question Why do you say
such and such? is actually asking for confirmation of what to say
in a particular situation, I was able to expand on this and direct
students towards a more useful line of questioning. For example,
Is there another way of saying this? Which is most common?
What else can I say?
These are questions that I found myself repeatedly asking in
Istanbul about what I had seen or heard. It is only when students
do this that the language they are learning becomes truly useful
and can be confidently used as a means of self expression.

Building and recording the lexicon

It is clear that when we start working in this way it becomes
essential to give students guidance in how to organise the
language they are learning. And this needs to be done quite early
on in the course if it is to be of any practical use. The framework
I give students is based on Wordflo by Steve Smith and
Jacqueline Smith (Longman) and encourages them to choose a
format and style for a lexical notebook that they find appropriate.
I usually present this on the second day of a course and
subsequently point out to students how they might record the
language that comes up in the lessons. The choice of a format
seems to work well as it takes into account the different types of
learner; and I have seen the benefits of such a lexical notebook
in my own learning of Turkish. About halfway through the course
we then review and compare the different formats that students
have come up with. It is important to realise that this (very
analytical) approach to organising learning does not suit
everyone, and there are always one or two students for whom it
is a complete non-starter.
In summary I would say that we need to be advising students on
how to prioritise their learning, raising awareness of what
language is, and encouraging effective learning strategies. In my
own teaching I want students to take from the course a way of
looking at language and processing it that they have seen is
effective.

I want students to take

from the course a way of
looking at language and
processing it.

19

Accepting ICT in ELT

Howard Ramsay
Howard Ramsay is an educational technologist at International House London. He has taught in Eastern Europe and the UK,
most recently developing applications of IT in English Language Teaching. He can be contacted at
howard.ramsay@ihlondon.co.uk
The use of IT as a tool in ELT is coming of age. The last five years
has seen a rapid assimilation of new technologies into
workplaces and home lives. We are now using the tools we
marvelled at in science fiction films twenty years ago. The spread
of these technologies, for example email and the World Wide
Web, has had the effect that teachers new to the profession have
not just tolerances but expectations of technology applications in
ELT as much as in any other profession. The use of language
labs spread as the ownership of cassette recorders among
teachers and students at large increased. The technology itself
had not improved radically in these years, but acceptance of it in
teachers personal lives had spread sufficiently. In the UK three
years ago, many people snorted at the thought of mobile phones
(expensive, unnecessary, showy) and are now enthusiastic users
of these (essential, fashionable, convenient) items. The shift has
been in how people view them.
Teachers may have started using the Internet (email, the Web,
Internet Relay Chat etc) partly as a novelty, to gain advantage
over competitors. But the recent growth in usage by both
teachers and students has allowed teachers to bring a new tool
to their lessons that is an authentic part of their day-to-day life in
a way that CD ROMs never were. What seems to happen is this:
When an aspect of technology has a use in even a small
minority of teachers lives outside the classroom, that minority of
teachers will look for practical opportunities to take advantage of
the technology in the classroom.
To predict the next developments in the implementation of IT in
ELT reaches the dangerous ground of the crystal ball, but
conclusions can be qualified - there is a pattern of development.
Firstly, what could these developments be, these developments
which, like email and the Web, have become such a vital part of
so many peoples lives? They have been talked about for
decades, but it now looks like (mobile) video phones will become
economic realities in the next eighteen months to two years in
Western Europe. Similarly, the introduction of inexpensive, fast
Internet connections (eg ADSL at 10-50 times current speeds)
will enable real-time high quality video viewing across the
Internet. How do these suggestions fit into our theory? Would an
EFL teacher with access to these facilities come to see them as
must-haves? Who really needs video on a mobile telephone
(remember what many of us said about mobile phones in general
three years ago)? Download an English language film (in
seconds) to watch on a PC? Or just watch the channel of your
choice live? Surely that would delight any ex-pat on a rainy
Sunday afternoon. Homesick? The new fast connections will

allow high-quality video link between you and home. The

technology for this is not predicted for some vague time in the
future. It is available in some countries already and in the UK, for
example, from June 2000. How long for the assimilation in
private life to filter into the classroom? Of course, much depends
on budget. Few ELT schools can afford a full computer lab or
someone to run it full-time. However, the expectations of
students will inevitably change this over time.
Once a class in one country has video-conferenced with a class
in another for the completion of a task, they wont be particularly
impressed at the next lesson with being told to pass slips of
paper to their classroom partner with adverbs of emotion (yet
another time). But we would be in a dreadful nannying situation
to insist that we did not want to give students these tools
because of the risk of spoiling the students. One day the
majority of schools will have these facilities and the ones who are
the first to introduce them well will clearly give themselves an
edge in the market in the longer term.
How can a school prepare itself for the cultural shifts among its
staff and students? There has been a belief that training EFL
teachers in IT is a waste of resources. In some respects this is an
understandable argument. The average contract for an EFL
teacher is some nine months, often viewed as an inefficient
investment. However, basic IT training need not be a protracted
process and the benefits of basic training may be
proportionately greater than that for advanced training anyway.
But why train people for skills that they seem to be acquiring anyway, outside school? The spread of knowledge is divided
sharply. There seems to be a recognition amongst teaching,
training and management staff that IT is a good thing and we
need more of it and we need it now. This ignorance places
management in a position of weakness, not necessarily because
of what they can or cannot do with the office PC, but by not
being aware of what their staff could or could not be doing, how
students and trainees could or could not be benefiting.
Decisions are often made on very vaguely thought-out
arguments. These motivations of good thing, more and now
are replicated in teaching staff for personal and career reasons.
And that is where a school can easily, and relatively inexpensively,
add value to contracts and the schools image.
Around all these issues and arguments there remains, in some
places, a strong ELT prejudice against IT. This also is

20

understandable. Language teaching is perhaps the most

basically human of the professions. The early advocates of CALL
were unable to cut through the voices who shouted that a
computer was never going to be able to do my job!. Yet this is
not what the early advocates were saying. The new
technologies were just more tools for the teacher. Perhaps even
the word technology has been to blame for this prejudice.

Teachers should not be encouraged to use a wider variety of

technology but a wider variety of tools. The arrival of the, to
many, enigma of computer exercises and CD ROMS was
frightening. They had little or no experience of such things in their
own lives. That which they knew was second-hand. Now,
however, the tools at our disposal in the classroom can be the
tools we use in our private lives. The tools are valuable. IT in ELT
has come of age.

IH LONDON. 106 PICCADILLY

The blur is a bus - on the whole the building does not normally move !

Answers to IH London quiz:

All the statements are true! IH is a big busy place with a great deal happening in the class-room and out. Disadvantages of
working here include the Londoners habit of digging up Piccadilly whenever they get bored; advantages include working in one
of the most elegant buildings in Mayfair.

21

Twelve unprincipled eclectic pictures

Krzysztof Dabrowski
Krzystof took a Current Trends course at IH London in 1998 and subsequently wrote this original and entertaining view of life as
a trainee at 106 Piccadilly. Having entered it for our annual competition, which is open to all trainee teachers, he won a free course
at IH London.

Picture One

can still easily describe the paintings in detail.

Its early April and Im reading the IH TT brochure. I skip anything

thats not in July and costs over 500 pounds. Not very much
choice. It has to be Current Trends. Sounds very good because
Ive reached the point in my T life-cycle where I need to be
reassured or increase my confidence by seeing that others hold
similar beliefs or teach in similar ways - a line which I find a few
months later in Martin Parrotts handout. But its still April and too
early yet to get terribly reassured about Am I current enough?
Anyway reading the copy in brochures is like reading publishers
catalogues.Take the titles out and you wont be able to tell Cutting
Edge from Chatterbox. A slight exaggeration perhaps but there
must be some truth in it. Every course is so carefully graded,
flexible, task-based, learner-centred and of course easy to teach
from. Can teaching ever be easy?

Picture Five
Just another course day. Its 10 30. Time for a smoke. It damages
your health, I know. Hearing included? Im having a conversation
with one of the colleagues from the course. I cant understand a
word. We are both teachers of English. In one of his sessions,
Rodney says that non-native English may be a better kind of
English than native. The videoed Peter Medgyes talks about NEST
vs. NON-NEST. NON-NEST is good! Is the story of English going
to be the same as the story of Latin? Rodney gives a mini lesson
in Italian to illustrate the PPP principle. Wouldnt I rather have an
Italian teacher to teach me Italian? Wouldnt Rodney? NON-NEST
....Im one of them, but non mi piace.

Picture Six
Picture Two
Arrival. The centre of London is a theme park - a line I hear in a
theatre play a few days later. Makes me want to run away. Am I
tired of living? Fun! Have fun! Lets have fun! Lessons should be
fun! We talk about it during one of Rodneys sessions. The
session is fun although strangely enough Rodney doesnt put
Mickey Mouse ears on. Someone suggests that a book of Irish
jokes could solve the problem.

Picture Three
Martin begins his session with a joke about a lecture on
groupwork. Nobody laughs. Thats the joke, says Martin. Silence.
He repeats the joke.

Picture Four
Tate Gallery. I walk round a room and look at Turners paintings.
My friend walks in the opposite direction and also looks at the
pictures. We study the paintings carefully. After completing our
circles we meet where we started. We look at each other smile
and say: You tell me first. Two non-nests of two different
nationalities playing a game called Let me guess your favourite
picture in this room. We are delighted if we happen to choose the
same picture and we frown if we cant guess. Then we go to a
next room and do the same. A task-based visit to a gallery.
Pairwork. Student-generated because we invented the game
ourselves. Real fun. But I wouldnt necessarily like to
play this game with a stranger or if somebody told me to play it. I

Its August 1st. Heathrow Airport. Im waiting for a plane to take me

back to Warsaw. A little boy comes up to me and asks in English:
`Excuse me. What time is it?
I look at my watch. `Eight twenty five The boy turns to his
mother and says
`Mamo, dopiero dwadziescia piec po osmej! Mamy duzo czasu.
That Polish sentence means Its only 8 25, Mum. Weve got plenty
of time.
I never say to the boy Im Polish too. Hes so proud of himself. His
mother smiles at him.

Picture Seven
A weekend in Liverpool. A bit nostalgic but exciting. The Beatles
and all the rest. But Liverpool can be depressing. And its not just
the derelict buildings. On Monday I tell Rodney I went to Liverpool
and completely lost my confidence in English. Its their accent. And
I never learned that you could call a train conductor darling.
Rodneys answer is Don t worry. I would understand about 7O%.
Pigs might fly, NEST, but thank you for your supportive comment.
Youve heard so many foreign people speaking your language
(because it is YOUR language). How did they sound? Ive heard
some foreign people speaking my language. They had very
interesting stories to tell but it wasnt REAL. My words, phrases or
sentences were not exactly their words, phrases or sentences.
Although the sounds may have been quite similar, the meaning
was different. Think of a simple word like sandwich. Or think how

22

ridiculous How are you? must sound to a Polish ear. Is English

without How are you? still English? Is English without its culture still
English? We cant solve that problem. And anyway Ive seen some
very bad NESTS and some very bad NON-NESTS. And some very
good ones too. Both.

overall experience on a scale of zero to nine where 0 = Very

disappointing and 9 = Excellent, 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Im
thinkingabout some possible differences between 5 and 6 Cant
think of any. Even between 5 and 7. What has to happen so want
to circle 1? I put the card away and never fill it in.

Maybe thats how we

become better
teachers: by making
discoveries about
real life.

Picture Eight
It `s so nice to escape from the theme park and walk into the
Lyric theatre. Im watching a play called Closer. I understand
99% of it. I am able to help a friend with a few lines. Tangled
human relationships are intercultural. Im enjoying it enormously
and I laugh at the jokes, my response time being only 0.5
seconds worse than that of the London audience. Im so
excited that I miss a few lines completely. Great! After the play
the friend asks Why is the play called Closer? I dont know.
Back home I look up all the 23 meanings of close and still cant
answer the question. Lets not worry about labels, the friend
almost regrets she ever asked that question `You can still be a
very good teacher without knowing what principled eclecticism is
cant you? Can I?

Picture Nine
Things we do for love. Another play, another title. Clearer than Closer.
Jane Asher. Very good acting. Ayckbourn should be
recommended to all NON-NESTS even at a price of perhaps causing
some NESTS to smile a that-is-a -bit-middlebrow smile. Many years
ago, Jane Asher was Paul McCartneys girlfriend. That was even
before I became a teacher. Ages ago!
Current trends in acting. Has she ever attended a course like that?
Has she read many books on the theory and practice of acting? At the
moment shes simply doing a very good job in this play. I remember
her in a film, an early-seventies story directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, a
Polish emigre to the UK. She was good too. I must see that movie
again and compare. Teaching is very much like acting, isnt it?

Picture Ten

Picture Twelve
Im on a plane to Warsaw. Between some fierce turbulence per
ods Im trying to read the rules of the International House
Teacher Training Competition 1998. The ways in which your
course this year has helped you as a teacher. I had wanted to be
reassured or increase my confidence by seeing that others hold
similar beliefs. It didnt happen. It couldnt happen in the age of
principled eclecticism. I cant just circle a number or even explain
in words. Sorry l know Im useless. And its not just because Im
a NON-NEST. Its because theres a world of difference between
developing a film (How many pictures were OK?) and developing
as a teacher (On a scale of zero to nine Nonsense!) So my
answer to your question is Well done, IH! I am more confident
now that real life is CLOSER to teaching than it may seem. There
are analogies to discover between teaching and ... a play, a
weekend trip, a visit to a gallery or a simple scene at Heathrow
Airport. Maybe thats how we become better teachers: by
making discoveries about real life. You helped me in that. So I
think we did a good job.
We painted twelve unprincipled eclectic pictures together. Thank
you. Now you must decide what the pictures are really worth. So
please rate your overall impression on a scale of zero to nine.

Whistle Down The Wind. Andrew Lloyd Webber. Not at his best but
its unmistakably him. One of the catchy tunes is called When Children
Rule the World. The musical is a fairy tale in which
children protect a criminal who they take for Jesus Christ, from the evil
hearts and deeds of the adult population of a small American town.
But
good
musicals
must
be
fairy
tales.
Learner autonomy. Arent we creating another fairy tale?
A lesson isnt a musical, is it? And how many of us are Andrew Lloyd
Webbers of the classroom? I believe Rodney would agree, though he
might not say it.

Picture Eleven
Im in a hotel room. Theres nothing better to do at the moment,
so Im reading the Customer Comment Card. Please rate your

23

An Idea is Born...
Carol Crombie and Carol Dowie
Carol and Carol worked together at IH Viseu where they developed this interesting and highly motivating system for helping
young learners to read.
If you are in your mid-thirties, you may remember R.S.A. reading
cards from your time at primary school. We did! Or at least we
remembered the concept and this then was the inspiration
behind our idea of The Colour Cards.

Despite our attempts to come up with something witty, original,

catchy or clever for our new
system, we couldnt.

And so The Colour Cards were born.

We had been looking for something to complete the missing
element in the Young L.earner course we were designing. What
we were looking for was something to fulfil the following
requirements:
1 A series of tasks with standardised grading in terms of difficulty
2 A means by which to code these tasks and therefore indicate the
level of ability and amount of progress made
3 An aspect of self access or at least a degree of decision making
by the student as to what s/he particularly wants or needs to study.
Two key words came up from our memories of these particular
cards: COLOUR and CARDS!

How does it work in practice? The Colour card system consists

of a sturdy box containing all the work cards divided into their
separate categories (within each category the cards are ordered
in terms of difficulty; i.e. from yellow to gold). Its important to
note that there should be duplicates, of the lower level cards at
least, so that more than one student can work on the same card
at the same time.
Each student should have his or her own specific answer book
especially for using with the cards and it should have a record
sheet in the back to record progress.

Colour

Brief Guidelines

Possible Exercise Types

Yellow

Recognition only
T.L. given
T.L. appears in isolation/
semi-isolation (word level)

Ordering
Matching T.L. words to pictures
Grouping exercises
Drawing

Orange

Production of T.L
T.L. produced in isolation
not in sentences

Writing the word for the picture

Simple transformation (positive - negative)
Anagrams

Blue

Production of T.L.
T.L. in sentence level

Complete the gapped sentences

Answer simple questions about a picture
Match T.L. to mini-situations

Silver

Production of T.L. only

T.L. is in short text (which may
include language beyond
production level)

Short text - complete the sentences

Short text and matching
Short text and add T.L.

Gold

Production of T.L. in a short text.

May also include production of
language not taught, but within their
pool of knowledge.

Writing a short text

Completing a short text
Error correction of short text

T.L. = target language

24

In class the teacher gives out student books and put the box of
cards and coloured pens or pencils in the middle of the room.
The students then go to the box and select the card they want
to work on. The teacher should be available to help the student
select appropriately in keeping with the grading.

SHOPPING

This is essential at first when students need reminding of the

order of colours.
The students work individually and write the answers in their card
books.

How much is......?

Example... the sweater

Orange
Divide the items in the shop into 2 different groups.

the rubber

the exercise

When a student has finished, the task is marked by the teacher.

We found that some sort of system is required for this correction
period. The one we use is as follows: Students finish, then write
their name on the board in order, and then wait their turn for
marking. During this time they can select the next card. As the
majority of cards can be marked quickly, they generally dont
have to wait long, and the fact that they can do something in the
meantime reduces the chaos caused by the FINISHED! crowd.

How much are......?

Example....the trousers

the blouse

the chewing gum

the radio

the tights

books
the knickers
the pencil case
the hamburger

the socks

the jeans
the dress
the computer
the CD

SHOPPING
Once the students card has been corrected, there are three
possibilities
i) If there are any errors, the student goes back and tries again;
ii) If the card is correct, the student colours in the appropriate box
on the record sheet and continues with the next card;
iii) If the student has unsuccessfully attempted the same card a
couple of times, the teacher can advise him to try a
different category and return to this one later after doing some
study or revision.
The student then chooses another card according to the grading
system.
At the end of the allocated time, students return all the cards to
the box and the teacher collects all the answer books. any
outstanding corrections can be done by the teacher before the
next session.
Example Cards:

Blue
Match the questions to the correct answers
Example:
1) How much are the jeans?
2) Can I help you?

Yes please
Theyre 32

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)

a) Yes, it is...its 198

b) Theyre 5.99
c) Yes. Weve got lots.
d) Its 20
e) Im medium
f) I want small please
g) I want red please.

What colour do you want?

What size are you?
How much are they?
How much is it?
Have you got any sweaters?
Is it expensive?
Do you want small or medium?

SHOPPING
Yellow
Look at the prices below and match them to the correct words.
Example:

5 five pounds

4.99

twenty-five pence

6.30

seventy-nine pounds
twenty-five

25p

six pounds thirty

68.50

one pound eighty

1.80

eighty-eight pence

79.25

sixty-eight pounds fifty

88p

our pounds ninety-nine

The cards have been in use now for two and a half years.
They are still proving to be very popular with each new group of
students and extremely motivating. Obviously there are still the
odd couple of students in each class who dont like writing or
doing exercises, but at least the cards seem to be slightly more
acceptable to them than pages in an exercise book. On the
whole the children tend to look forward to the cards sessions
as they like to see their progress.
Interestingly enough, they have developed two distinct ways of
working through them: the more able try and work through all the
colours and get to Gold in each one; The less able work through
the yellow in each set, followed by the orange in each set, then
the blue, etc. These are, of course, the easier cards. However,
this means that both groups of students may in fact complete
the same number of cards in one session. We have found that
this in particular is motivating to the less able
students who feel that they have achieved the same as the
others.

25

The students tend to pick which category they would like to work
on for a whole host of reasons. This may be due to their interest
or what they find easy and therefore will have more chance of
success. However, there is a third group of students who do,
with slight prompting, recognise that they need more practice in
a particular function or lexical set and will choose this to work on.
Its very satisfying to see that some students go home and study
something they had problems with so that in the next cards
session they can get onto the next colour level.

Its a great opportunity

for the teacher to be able
to give some individual
time to each student.
These sessions have provided short periods of intensive individual
work on the part of the students. It has to be said, though, that
it is also quite intensive for the teacher. However, when a set
system has been introduced and the students start working
independently, .Its a great opportunity for the teacher to be able
to give some individual time to each student, even if its just to
admire the picture they have drawn and to praise them. It also
gives a very clear picture of the progress each student is making.
One look at the childs record sheet will show if he is able to cope
with the text production level, etc.

As we chose to use a younger learners book which did not

place a huge emphasis on making grammar explicit, the cards
proved to be a useful supplement for the students who liked or
needed rules and clear guidelines and exercises to help
consolidate the concepts they were learning.
After using the cards for some time we realised that the less able
students who never progressed past blue werent getting
enough text level input, especially in writing. We have since had
to instruct teachers that they must supplement the course with
basic writing skills which were not being covered in the cards at
the lower level colours.
We have found it hugely satisfying to see that in general the
cards seem to have been and continue to be a success with
both students and teachers alike.
Despite our attempts at approaching publishers, there seems to
be a reluctance to undertake any project which is not book
based. If there is anybody out there in the publishing world who
agrees with us that it seems like a good idea, you know who to
get in touch with!

26

Giving Low Levels a Free Rein

Jo Cooke
Jo is a teacher trainer at IH london. She has taught in various countries, including Greece, Germany and the Czech Republic.

Teaching low levels can be extremely rewarding as both students

and teachers feel they progress very quickly. Each piece of
language the students acquire improves their ability to
communicate almost quantitatively. However, it is sometimes
difficult to know where to start - how can the teacher decide
what is most useful for the student when everything seems to be
useful? The obvious answer is to look to the coursebook for a
graded syllabus that will give the students a sense of progress
with sufficient focus and control. When looking in coursebooks,
however, it is still often the case that the basis of each unit is a
grammatical structure and the vocabulary input is
supplementary. Students at this level clearly need grammar, but
what use is knowledge of grammatical structures without the
lexis to make those structures meaningful?

What low levels need

When I started teaching beginners and elementary students on
intensive courses, I found that the needs of my students were to
be able to communicate from day one and to learn fast. Their
language was very limited, but not their intellect, so they wanted
topics to discuss that were relevant to them and stimulating.
Secondly, they needed language in chunks to help them build
their ideas into meaningful utterances. They needed controlled
practice in the language areas, to help them familiarise
themselves with the structures and sounds of the language.
Finally, they wanted to be given the opportunity to take risks and
further develop language in an individualised way.

but valuable extra tool for the teacher, as it gives students a

written record of the language that has been analysed.
There are two reasons why models are useful for students. First
of all, it provides a natural context for the language that is to be
studied, and secondly, it gives the students something concrete
to work from or copy when they come to produce language of
their own.

Choosing language
The next thing to do is choose chunks of language or basic
structures that will be useful for the students and to limit the
number of these to a manageable level. Analysing the language
used in the model, as you would do in a task-based approach,
will usually reveal a rich variety of language to select from.
The key here is to choose the areas that will have the widest
coverage for students at this level, and to avoid overloading
them. It is as much a matter of what to leave out as what to
include. Suggested language areas to focus on from the model
might include verb and noun collocations:
e.g. answer the telephone/meet clients/ work on a
computer/write reports/arrange meetings/sell a product etc.
Another area that might occur is phrases for times:
e.g. in the morning, after lunch, in the afternoon, in the evening.
Finally the students will need to know how to formulate questions
to find out about their partners:
e.g

Considerations for lesson planning

Bearing these needs in mind, I found that when planning lessons,
it is useful first of all to think of a topic rather than a language
area. It is then possible to predict what students might want to
say about the topic. For example, if the topic is work, students
may want to talk about their own jobs and what it involves and
ask other students about their jobs. This simple exchange of
information has the benefit of being limited enough to make it
feasible to predict useful language, but wide enough to enable
the students to individualise the language studied.

Designing a model
The next step is to think of some kind of model for the students
to work from and analyse. In this case, it might be in the form of
an interview between two people with interesting jobs. This can
be recorded by English language speakers, keeping the level of
the language clear and simple, but without sacrificing
authenticity. A tape-script of the recording is a time-consuming

What do you do in the morning?

Do you use a computer?
What about you?

Designing the lesson stages

Once the language content is decided, the input needs to be
interspersed with practice and speaking, to avoid overloading
the students and checked carefully for difficulty. An example
lesson plan could be as follows:
Students identify various simple job categories e.g. sales,
accountancy, law, etc. and say what their job is.
Students match verb and noun collocations.
Students in pairs say which activities are associated with each
job, and which ones they typically do.
Students put the time phrases on a chart to show the order in
which they happen in the day.
Students look at the verb and noun collocations again and say
at what time of day they usually do these activities.
Students listen to a recording of two people talking about jobs

27

and identify the jobs mentioned and what they do.

Students listen again and write down any questions that they
hear. (repeated as many times as necessary)
The teacher focuses on the basic question forms with the
students.
Students practise saying the questions, paying careful
attention to the intonation of the questions.
These stages are very controlled and break up the language into
little sections, each one being tried out as soon as it is
introduced.

The task
The next stage of the lesson, the task stage, is much less
controlled, i.e.
Students in new pairs talk about their jobs and ask about their
partners job.
What tends to happen here is that students start using the
language given during the input stage in a rather mechanical
way. If the topic is sufficiently personal and motivating to them,
however, they will try to really explain what they do in their job
and then find they do not have sufficient language to express
themselves. At this point the teachers role is to encourage or
even push the student to take risks and feed in the language that
they need to communicate with. This is the language that is really
useful for the student at that moment and this is what they will
be motivated to remember.

Why do it this way?

There is no pedagogical reason why the teacher should always
control the amount of language that the students
produce.
The language that the students need at that moment is the
language that they will ask for, and be motivated to remember.
Students like talking about adult topics and about
themselves.
Students learn language in context.
Students have the opportunity to take risks with the
language, thereby increasing the potential complexity of their
language.
The lessons are more student-directed.
Students practise communicating difficult concepts with limited
language in a safe and controlled atmosphere.

Conclusion
Imagine that your students are horses. Being on a tight rein all
the time is very frustrating, constraining and doesnt allow the
horse to use its full potential. Giving the horse free rein is more
dangerous - it can fall, stumble and injure itself, but it also has the
freedom to gallop, enjoy itself and exercise all of its muscles. (too
naff - what do you think? I want to work the image in somewhere
but maybe this is too much. Advice please!

After the task and feedback the students can focus on the new
lexis or structure together and practise as necessary.

Advantages and disadvantages

I found that once the students became familiar with the idea of
asking for information and language, the complexity and variety
of language that the students produced increased dramatically.
Most of the time it was not accurate, but continual reformulation
of their mistakes every time they occurred meant that the
students language gradually became more accurate as well.
This approach works best with small classes as individualised
language input takes time. However, it can be difficult for the
teacher, for three reasons. First of all, the teacher needs to be on
his/her toes all the time, and be able to clarify and teach new
language without previous preparation. Secondly, this lack of
control can cause anxiety in teachers, as they feel they ought to
control all stages of the lesson, especially with low levels. Finally,
the students themselves may well have some initial resistance to
this approach to learning, and it is the responsibility of the
teacher to draw attention to the benefits of the learning process.
For example, a traditional gap-fill exercise revising the language
studied the day before can be used to convince students that
they have learned something.

28

The www: Putting the methodology

into the technology

Karen Momber

Karen used to work in IH Taragona and is currently the DOS at IH Viseu.

Assuming teachers are familiar with the mechanics of www use,
what can we do to enable them to use it as effectively as any
other teaching tool at their disposal? In this article Id like to
describe how we helped teachers at IH Viseu to explore the
relationship between their learning aims and the www, and to
discover how the Web can be an integrated part of a course.
IH Viseu is a medium-sized school with approximately 780
learners, 84% of whom are aged under 18. There are eleven
members of the English teaching staff, including a Director of
Studies and a Senior Teacher.
There is a computer room with eight work-stations available for
individual use by teachers and for classtime use with learners.
It has one black and white and two colour printers, and a
scanner.
During the academic year, 1998/9, all the teachers at IH Viseu
did some computer work with learners. This was principally with
word processing and CD Roms. Some teachers also used
Gapmaster, Matchmaster and Fun with Texts programmes, and
the www. Most Internet use, however, was generally personal
with the majority of time on-line being spent on the sending and
reading of e-mail.

most of the technology to fulfil learning aims. Should the Internet

be used as a resource bank, a treat for learners, or can it be
integrated into the courses?
Accordingly our aims were, first, to help teachers answer the how
and why questions they posed about using the Internet and enable
them to start integrating it in a considered way into their day to day
teaching; and secondly, to do this as part of a long-term
developmental process involving teacher reflection, where teachers
could set their own targets and work towards meeting them.
As a first stage in meeting the above aims, four input sessions
were held highlighting possible connections between regular
teaching practice and the Internet, and Internet use with
students was encouraged over a two-month period. After
reflecting on the input sessions and Internet classes, teachers
could then take this initial development further by requesting
further support in terms of lesson planning, team teaching or
observations, or by becoming involved in a programme of action
research if they wished. Input sessions covered the why and
how of using the www, young learners and the Internet, and
e-pals.

input sessions were held

The main learning aims highlighting possible
of computer usage were connections between
regular teaching practice
stated as being the
and the Internet.
development of
The aims of the first input session were to help answer the how
grammar, vocabulary
and why questions posed by teachers showing that the WWW
could be used like any other teaching tool. The session was an
and writing abilities.
adapted version of a session plan devised by Greg Selby
By the beginning of the academic year 1999/2000, teachers
were at a point where they could handle the technology but were
unsure about the methodology of the Internet. As one teacher
commented, I have no idea how to use chat rooms or Internet
with students. I feel I dont use it to its full potential. Of the ten
teachers, five teachers had had no experience of using the
Internet at all in the EFL classroom and only two teachers had
used it with children under 13 - an age group accounting for 43%
of students. The main learning aims of computer usage were
stated as being the development of grammar, vocabulary and
writing abilities. They wanted to know how they could make the

Integrating the www into Language Course Delivery: Teaching the

Teachers IATEFL CALL Review November 1998 pp10-14. Selby
sees a need for a principled, and above all, integrated, use of the
web resource in the computer room as a tool to facilitate
language instruction in the classroom, alongside other such tools
as cassette players, VCRs, paper handouts, realia - magazines,
newspaper articles and the like - and (lest we forget!) the
whiteboard (Selby 1998:11)
The following table shows how the input sessions were
structured and how this structure was linked to the aim of each
session.

29

Session stage

Aim

Small group discussion - what can we use the Web for in terms
of language teaching outcomes? Open group feedback.

To encourage teachers to make connections between the

Internet and other teaching resources they use, and Small group
discussion......
also to consider what advantages the Web might have over other
means, depending on desired learning outcomes.

Small group discussion- if we can achieve those learning

outcomes through other means, why use the Web at all?
OHT1 - mind map of www advantages over other teaching
resources. Add group suggestions to it.
OHT2- three ways of using the Web in ELT.

To highlight the distinction between using the www as a resource,

for one-off lessons and integrated use.

Focus on first use - the Web as a materials resource. Teachers,

grouped in pairs at computers, go into the website:
http://www.its-online.com
Following instructions they look up How to write a love poem.
Then spend a short time exploring the site and discussing, in two
groups, what they would select for classroom use. Suggest other
sites appropriate for use as a material resource e.g.
http://www.lyrics.ch/

To introduce teachers to some useful websites, showing how

certain materials are more appropriately exploited off-line, and to
demonstrate the ease in accessing and printing out materials and
the topicality of what is available. Then to give teachers an
opportunity to think what materials they could choose to exploit
and how.

Focus on second use - one-off lessons on the Web. Again, in

pairs, teachers go into http://www.guardian.co.uk
Following instructions they look up notes and queries and listen
to a suggestion for exploiting it as a one-off computer-based
lesson. The lesson involves learners selecting a problem in the
notes and queries section, brainstorming possible solutions,
checking answers sent in by readers and then possibly e-mailing
in their suggested answer. Again, pairs then have a short time to
further explore the site and discuss how they could exploit the
material.

To show an example of material that is suitable for one-off lessons, and give an example of how it can be exploited to provide
challenging, skills-based on-line work. Then, again, to give
teachers an opportunity to think how they could exploit materials
from newspapers for one-off one-line classes.

Focus on third use - integrated use of the Web. Teachers go into

the website: http://www.lonely planet.com,go to destinations,
select
a
country
in
pairs,
explore
the
information about that country and then feedback how it could be
used to teach or practise language.

To show how the www can be used as an integrated part of a lesson to meet a variety of learning aims, focussing on
pre- and post- computer room work, thus making connections
between standard classroom practice when exploiting any text
type.

Handout table of suggested uses (Selby 1998:13/14). Focus on

the three lesson stages which result in integrative use.
Split teachers into two groups. One group looks up:
http://www.royal.gov.uk the other one: http://www.whitehouse.gov Pairs fill in the blank chart with their ideas for
exploiting the site and then feedback as an open group

30

Going through the planning process further consolidates the idea

of integrative use. The framework and small group formats give
teachers an opportunity to identify appropriate learning aims and
consider ways of meeting those aims through pre-, Web, and
post-www stages.

By December 1999
All teachers had used the www for their students.
5 teachers had used it with under 13s.
Teachers identified a change in their main learning aims reading, information collecting, writing and speaking all become
key focuses.
Teachers generally felt progress had been made in 2 principal
areas: their efficiency in selecting materials, and using the Web
with a purpose.
Areas teachers were keen to develop further were, for those
who gained most confidence with the Web, in the area of
classroom management.
For others it was extending use to a younger age range.
For the least confident group it was making time to search for
and adapt materials.
All teachers discussed ways of making progress in these areas
over the next two months.
A file was created at IH Viseu for teachers to put www plans in,
and also to make a note of any useful websites with
recommendations of book tie-ins, level etc.

PO
IS
IT
IO
N

O
N
LY

This is how we did it at Viseu; now you have seen how easy it
was, galvanise your school into action on-line!

31

Listening - Skills development

or something more? Carina Lewis
Carina is a teacher and trainer of foreign teachers at International House London. She is currently writing an Elementary Level
Coursebook for Addison Wesley Longman.
When I was learning Portuguese I found that I learnt a lot of
vocabulary and grammatical structures by listening to people
using the language and by asking questions about the language
which I was unsure about. Unfortunately, I could not do this as
much as I would have liked because I couldnt really interrupt
people mid-flow to ask about the intricacies of the
language being used. Consequently I decided to encourage my
students to ask questions about the language they heard on
recorded materials or from me in the classroom. I started to
record myself in the classroom so that students could listen to
me speaking naturally and then they could listen to the recorded
version to work on the language. I have had a very positive
response from my students to this technique and now I find
myself using my own voice, or that of colleagues, as much as I
use pre-recorded course book materials.

What are the advantages of using your own

voice?
Ive found that students are much more motivated when I tell
them a story or something that has happened to me or friends of
mine than when I press Play on the tape recorder and they hear
the theme tune to the next unit in their course book.
Students have the advantage of being able to watch my body
language which assists comprehension.
Students listen to natural language rather than actors on
pre-recorded tapes.
I can choose the language I want to include.
I can grade the speed and level of the language I use by
watching the students expressions to see whether they are
following me or not.
I dont need to spend hours searching for appropriate
listening material and, better still, I dont have to cue the tape.
I use my topic as a model for the students (more detail given
later).
I can use it with all levels of students

The structure of a lesson

The general structure of lessons using this method is as follows:
1 Introduce the topic.
2 Tell students a story, an anecdote or give a description, which
includes the target language depending on your syllabus needs.
Record it at the same time. The recording should not exceed 4
minutes.
3 Ask the students to take notes and then orally summarise the
content with a partner.

4 Play the tape.

5 Extract the target language from the recording by stopping the
tape at the appropriate moment and asking the students to repeat
what was said.
6 Provide controlled practice of the target language.
For example, a gap fill exercise.
7 Give students 5/10 minutes to prepare a talk about their own
personal experience, tell a story or give a description using my
recorded text as a model. The teacher helps when necessary.
8 Students give the talk to their group.
9 Teacher listens and provides feedback on the language used.
I have found that my students are happier to listen for the general
gist of what I have said when they know that they will be given the
opportunity to question the language they are unsure about later.
It is important that they are motivated enough by the content to
enjoy summarising it afterwards. At that point I am able to check
their level of comprehension and use of the target language. I have
found that students enjoy extracting the target language as the
context is very clear so they can see how the language is used
naturally. They then have the opportunity to practise using the
language in a similar context which is personal to them. The
purpose of giving the students 5 to 10 minutes preparation time is
to encourage them to think about using the target language in their
own story and to experiment with the language before speaking.

Using this technique

A teacher can use this technique for a variety of purposes such as
teaching vocabulary, grammar or functional language.

a. Teaching vocabulary
I teach lexical sets of vocabulary by talking about something which
involves using the target language. I think about the topic I want to
talk about and then rehearse the story so that I know which
vocabulary comes up. For example, I recently wanted to teach
some phrasal verbs related to shopping to a class of intermediate
students so I thought about an unsuccessful shopping trip I had
been on and noted down the phrasal verbs I needed to tell the
story. I then went into the classroom with the key words in my
notebook so that I could remember what I wanted to say. I asked
the students to summarise my story which they did successfully
but with a limited range of language. We then extracted from the
tape the verbs I had used and checked the meaning. After some
controlled practice activities I asked them to tell each other about
a good or bad shopping experience they had had using as many
of the new verbs as possible.

32

b. Teaching Grammar
I will sometimes teach grammar in a similar manner. For example,
I have taught narrative tenses by telling the students about a
memorable holiday experience. We then extracted the target
language and I elicited the reason for using each of the tenses. The
students then had to decide which tense to use in a gapped text
about a holiday to provide them with some controlled practice
before moving into free speaking. After giving them preparation
time I asked the students to tell their group about a memorable
holiday experience they had had. Sometimes I show them the
grammar in a more traditional way first and then use this method
to put the language in context so that the students can see how
to use it in a realistic situation.

c. Teaching Functional Language

To teach functional language I sometimes work with two teachers
in the classroom as the students have the opportunity to watch
and listen to two people interact in English and use spoken
discourse markers in a natural way.

For example, I taught a group of Late Intermediate students

language for expressing an opinion, i.e. If you ask me ....., and
expressing agreement with an opinion, i.e. Yeah, it is, isnt it?.
We asked the students to choose topics they wanted us to talk
about and write them on slips of paper. We then picked one of the
topics and asked the students to take notes on the general
content. We split the class into two groups and they listened again.
Group A had to listen for language we had used to express
opinions and Group B had to listen for language we used to
express agreement.
We elicited the language from the groups onto the board. After
some controlled practice, we asked them to work in groups of
four, pick a topic to discuss and try to use as much of the target
language as possible. If it is not possible to invite another English
speaker into the classroom then you could record the dialogue
onto a tape before the lesson.
In conclusion, I have found that these output-driven procedures to
listening have had a positive response from my students. They
have learnt to determine the difference between listening for gist
and using listening as a model to help develop their speaking skills.
It is enjoyable, flexible to most language areas, productive, time
efficient and provides variety in the language classroom.

33

IH London A Profile
by Roger Hunt (DOSTT)
I was surprised on a recent visit to two affiliated schools in Spain by how little many of the teachers knew about IH London. Put that
surprise together with a request from our new Journal Editors to write something about IH London and here it is. However, rather
than just tell you, I thought Id set a quiz - here it is. How much do you know about IH London?
11 Our Executive Centre also offers Teacher Training courses for
teachers of English-for business purposes.

1 IH London has three, five-storey buildings.

True

False

2 We have 26 full-time teacher trainers and only one of them is

American.
True

False

True

True

3 Over 300 individuals/institutions are members of our Teachers

Centre.
True

False

False

12 Our HR department recruits between 300 and 500 teachers

for affiliated schools each year.
False

13 One of our 5 Directors of Studies writes poetry in his free

time and another sings in a choir
True

False

4 We offer an MSc in conjunction with Aston University.

True

14 Tom Wilmott has run the IH Restaurant and bar for 16 years.

False

5 We offer 18 different teacher training courses in addition to the

Cambridge/RSA CELTA and DELTA.
True

False

True

15 We run cheap courses for refugees from all over the world
True

6 We run approximately 40 CELTA courses each year.

True

False

7 We offer teacher training courses in Spanish, French, German,

Italian and Japanese
True
False
(as well as in English).
8 We employ approximately 35 teachers of languages other than
English.
True

False

False

16 106 Piccadilly was decorated by an 18th century painter

called Angelica Kauffman
True
False
17 We have over 10,000 books in our library
True

False

18 Our social programme includes visits to the Houses of

Parliament and to Brixton Police Station.
True

False

False

19 The Queen is one of our closest neighbours.

9 You can only smoke in one of our 6 staffrooms.
True

True
False

10 The BEBC Bookshop is situated in our 106 Piccadilly

building.
True

False

20 Hugh Grants mother and Gianfranco Zolas wife have both

studied here.
True

False

False

Answers to the above on P.21 (NB We know that people working in IH Worldwide would like to know more about your school.
Send us 200/300 words in any format you like telling us all about whos who, whats what and wheres where. Eds.)

34

Book Reviews
Keeping teachers and trainers abreast of the latest publications and developments in ELT

Innovation and Best Practice edited by Chris Kennedy.

Innovation and Best Practice comprises articles which focus on
innovations and current changes in the ELT classroom and
discuss whether these changes, taking place within the
microcosm that is the classroom, actually reflect the external
socio- economic, technological and financial changes in the real
world. The authors try to introduce methods (the best practice
of the title) of bridging the gap between the chaos of the real
world and the sometimes artificial practices of the language
teacher in the ELT classroom.
The articles are stimulating, topical and thoroughly researched.
Particularly interesting is the investigation of the difficulties
Inherent in innovation. A salient case in point is the the area
of studying an academic subject in English, which is becoming
more and more commonplace. In his article John Clegg explores
the problems the ESL student encounters when using English as
a medium for studying an academic subject (both at school and
at university). This kind of immersion in English is a good idea in
theory, but Clegg asks whether in practice the student simply
ends up with an unsatisfactory understanding of both the subject
and the English language. The book also reports (from the British
Council in Beijing) some success stories like the Distance
Training Programme in China, which has helped to retrain English
teachers in a more contemporary, student-centred and
essentially Western methodology. Economic and sociological
changes in China have necessitated these important changes in
the Chinese classroom.
This collection of articles is stimulating and would be suitable for
the high-flying DELTA trainee. However, it is by no means an easy
read. Innovation and Best Practice is more palatable in small
doses. Dont try and swallow it whole! (Jayne West)

three books in the series each include three modules, allowing

you to pick and choose according to the needs of your students;
a needs analysis form is provided at the beginning of each book.
The great attraction of this material is its user-friendly
presentation and the fact that most lessons could be built around
a single photocopy. While clearly aimed at the Business English
market, a lot of this material would be equally accessible to
General English students for developing spoken fluency and
dealing with work-related topics; the module on Job Interviews
would surely be of interest to most students.
As with all material presented in a modular format, certain things
tend to jump out at you more than others, and everyone finds
their own favourites. Great to dip into. (Nick Hamilton)

Drama with Children by Sarah Phillips. OUP 1999

This is a useful resource book, which aims to help both
experienced and inexperienced teachers to develop drama as an
extra dimension for practising language in the classroom. It acts
as a very practical introduction to drama for teachers whove
never dared to use it before. The activities create realistic
simulations of everyday situations, giving children the opportunity
for natural language practice. The book is user-friendly in that it
indicates the Iength of each drama task and the Ideal age and
level of me partcipants. In addition, the instructions for each task
are detailed and extremely clear. The activities involving puppets
and songs are particularly creative and would provide an ideal
way of changing the pace and variety of a lesson.
However the improvisation activities often require more prompting and language input than the book provides. Teachers should
adapt/avoid improvisation tasks which would require an
unrealistic amount of creativity from the students. (Jayne West)

Business Builder intermediate Teachers Resource Scries

by Paul Emmerson. Macmillan Heinemann 1999
This is the series Business English teachers have been waiting
for, especially in the IH London Executive Centre, where the
material was piloted over a number of years. The three books are
a resource bank of photocopiable worksheets with
accompanying notes for the teacher on the standard range of
business communication skill taught at intermediate level
and above, such as meetings, presentations and telephoning.
Each skill is covered in a module which focuses on different
aspects of key language and then goes on to provide a variety of
practice activity frameworks for both pair- and group work. The

Games for Children by Gordon Lewis and Gunther.

Bedson OUP 1999
This is an excellent resource book for the primary classroom.The
games and language practice tasks are aimed at children aged
between four and eleven, It is an extremely teacher-friendly book,
arranged thematically and containing step-by-step instructions
for each game. The descriptions of the games are so clear that
mother tongue explanations would not be necessary, To help the
teacher, the authors indicate the length of each task and the ideal
age of the participants. They also ensure that all the

35

activities have been tried and tested in the classroom, What is

most impressive is the vast range of activities: movement games;
card and board games; drawing games; guessing games; role
plays; singing and chanting tasks, and word games, This is an
ideal resource book for new teachers, but it does not offer any
revolutionary new ideas for experienced teachers, In conclusion.
Games for Children is an indispensable classroom aid for
new/inexperienced teachers. (Jayne West)

A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom by

Michael Berman. Crown House Publishing
The author attempts to expand our view of the three
fundamental learning styles (Auditory, Visual, Kinaesthetlc) by
defining and exploring eight different kinds of lntelligence:
Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical; Bodily Kinaesthetic, Musical;
Spatial, Intrapersonal; and Naturalistic. The definitions in Unit I
are interesting from a psychological/learner styles perspective
(I learnt, for example, that my inability to read maps indicates that
I do not have a Spatial Intelligence). However, the activities
developed in the following units to allegedly cater to these
various kinds of Intelligence are much more valuable from a
linguistic rather than a psychological learner styles point of view:
the writer produces gap-fill tasks to supposedly cater to the
Logical Mathematical Intelligence. Please!! The gap-fill is just a
jolly good controlled practice activity and no more! Experienced
teachers dont need a book to tell them that a Find Someone
Who... task appeals to Kinaesthetic Iearners. Inexperienced
teachers reading this book might labour under the illusion that
catering to individual learner styles is more important than the
linguistic input of the lesson. The book painstakingly categorises
activities according to their suitability to different types of
intelligence without considering the problem that in one class
there may be several different styles to cater to! Give this one a
wide berth. (Jayne West)

Poetry as a Foreign Language edited by Martin Bates.

Availaible From White Adder Press. BEBC Distribution,
Ablion Close Parkstone Poole, Dorset BH12 3L
This could so easily have been one of those anthologies that
make you cringe: the kind no-one except the contributors ever
buys, the kind thats bloated with poems no-one will ever
read. It is very much to the editors credit that Poetry as a
Foreign Language isnt like that at all.
It helps, perhaps, that the collection contains poems by a
handful of poets (among them Edwin Morgan, Christine McNeil,
Charles Hadfield and Michael Swan) who already enjoy considerable reputations in the wider poetic community. And then you
think of the calibre of yet more illustrious language teacher/
writers - James Joyce, say, or John Fowles - its perhaps not
surprising that the world of ELT should have produced a
collection
of
such
consistently
high
quality.

This is a substantial anthology (and, as such, inevitably contains

the very occasional turkey) and the readers navigation through it
is facilitated both by its division into fourteen sections and a
guide to the typography of the poems. The former (with titles
such as Language and Identity, A Meeting of Cultures and
Migration and Exile) seems useful, the latter less so. There are
poems by teachers and ex-teachers, learners and ex learners
and even learners turned teachers. There are poems written out
of the experience of being in some of the most remote, exotic
and tedious places in the world. Anyone involved in ELT will find
much striking of chords and ringing of bells in these pages. ld
even go so far as to suggest that ELT practitioners with no
interest in poetry will discover writing here to challenge, entertain
and charm them.
Personal favourites include Jim Scriveners The lmportance of
Socks with its memorable concluding couplet: He packed
board pens and handouts in a box. Had a quick Guinness Went
home. Washed his socks.; Christine McNeils Words in his
Pocket, John Kays prize winning Moshav, and Michael Swans
I Can Make Myself Understood:
Hello, taxi.
Aeroport, please.
Is sunny time.
I like your urb.
Here for congress.
Academic intercourse.
Are you sposed, taximan?
I sposed. have three dwarfs.
Residual in Roma.
For my work
I insane the sudents.
I insane to a degree.
A minor gripe: the acronyms EFL and TEFL recur throughout the
preface and introduction. They we never very useful or
meaningful. Cant they finally be consigned to the dustbin of
history? (Jeremy Page)

Market Leader by David Cotton, David Falvey and Simon

Kent. Longman Pearson Education Limited 2000
Market Leader is an Intermediate level Business English course
for business people and students of business English and was
developed in association with the Financial Times. This
association is evident in the inclusion of the many very
interesting and stimulating texts and the very generous use of full
colour illustrations. The book indeed, looks very attractive and
doubtless the younger students of business English in particular
would find this aspect quite motivating. Some of the illustrations
however, are rather overwhelming - very brightly coloured and in
some cases, occupy more than half the page. One might
question the response to this layout by older more mature
business people. They might perceive it as being somewhat

36

patronising. The units themselves are well organised and offer a

good variety of tasks and practice in the different skills areas.
There are plenty of topical, stimulating and indeed challenging
discussion topics and there is some very good work on the
language functions appropriate for the each of the various tasks.
One of the particularly strong points of the course is the Case
Studies. These are easy to set up - require a minimum of
reading to prepare the participants and are structured in such a
way as to motivate intensive meaningful discussion. Another
strength is in the writing activities. I found these to be truly
excellent. They are simple but nevertheless challenging, and offer
clear models of the most common and really useful types of
writing that would be needed by the non native speaker. And
there is plenty of realistic writing practice to motivate the student
to revise and recycle the language learnt or practised in the
particular unit. There is one element of the course however,
which requires caution, and this is the grammar work. Students
at the level the book is intended for need either, more intensive
remedial work or, more advanced grammar instruction than is
within the scope of this book or more simply, reminders by way
of clear examples of the particular grammar point in question.

There is also a Practice File Teachers Resource Book to

accompany the Course Book. All of the writing exercises are very
useful. Some of the others are less so and some are even rather
juvenile, and should perhaps not be suggested for use with
mature experienced business people. Using the Teachers
Resource Book necessitates flipping through several different
sections to find all the material for a particular unit or topic. It has
three sections: Notes on Units (very useful for non-native speaker
teachers or those without business experience), Text Bank and
Resource Bank, and each section contains various material for
the 16 units in the course book. Why cannot all the material for
each unit simply be grouped together?
To sum up - this book is very highly recommended for the
student of Business English. There are audio-tapes to
accompany the course and a video which will be released later
in the year. (Gail Richards)

37

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the

j o u r n a l

of education and development

CLT and the Real World by Robert O'Neill

ROLO - a replacement for PPP? by Paul Emmerson

Row, Row, Row Your Boat by Kaye Anderson

Learning, Lexis and Business English by Nick Hamilton

Accepting ICT in ELT by Howard Ramsey

Twelve Unprincipled Eclectic Pictures by Krystof Dabrowski

Classroom Ideas: Colour Cards - Motivating Young Learners

by Carol Crombie and Carol Dowie

Giving Low Levels Free Rein by Jo Cooke

Using the Internet in ELT by Karen Momber

Authentic Listening by Carina Lewis

The Last Word: IH London - a Profile? by Roger Hunt

Issue No 8

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