The Mick Jagger of the English Verb

Stephen Murrell, Italy

Stephen Murrell is DOS at The Training Company, Italy.
E-mail: smurrell@thetrainingcompany.org

After a brief unspectacular career in the movies Stephen became a language trainer. Working in Greece and Italy before opening his own school. The school brings courses to the customer They teach on trains, cruise ships and through the press as well as in classrooms. His interactive CD, Safe Sailing is being published by the Cambridge University Press in April

What the Rolling Stones were to traditional rhythm and blues my school is to English grammar. We sell our English lessons as entertainment for tourists on holiday The only factor that decides if our contract is renewed is student numbers. We scour EFL literature for communicative teaching methodology that amuse . We choose the juiciest most attention grabbing lessons . Our only aim is huge groups of people laughing in the target language. The didactic aim is limited but the students seem to learn more than with more traditional methods Huge groups of people laughing in the target tongue teach them to talk. We get the credit for an originality that isn’t ours. The Stones sprang unknown classic blues numbers onto a commercial music market we do something similar with Communicative grammar lessons.

I am our front man, the Mick Jagger of the English verb. Campers with Touring Club Italia choose between the “Latin American experience “(a short course in dancing) or English lessons, “English with Steve” as the lessons are billed in the brochure. The Camp Director presents me on the first night. I come on stage after the dancer and before the guys who do the diving course. The Camp Director in a sequined jacket calls for a big hand for “L”autentico nebbia di Londra” “the authentic fog of London “. I take the stage in my bowler hat to present the course.

‘Stand up campers ‘

I give the order very boldly but I am always a little apprehensive about what will happen if they don’t stand but they always do. Perhaps they want to be sure the other guests know they speak English. Four hundred guests in shorts and socks and sandals stare at me with the same looks of ripe anticipation they direct at all the staff on the first night.

I hold up my sign, the overworked symbol of affection with ‘I ❤ U’ on it

I point and they repeat quietly

‘I love you’

‘Louder’

I say after three attempts the whole camp is shouting I love you and I turn the sign round to

‘I ❤ you Stephen’

Which they all bawl together, with an appreciative laugh.

‘See you tomorrow nine am’

The opulent breakfast includes a view of the brown mountains of Corsica breaking though the clouds across the bay and the perfume of biscuits freshly baked in the pizza oven next to the tables . The rim of my hat forms a harsh false horizon as I sip my tea and stare at the impossibly blue Mediterranean that surrounds Sardinia. I eat in my black suit and bowler just in case someone hasn’t realised that the authentic London fog is offering English lessons;

Communicative language teaching and it’s older brother Humanistic training aims to escort students gently up the learning curve from what they do know to exciting new information without the trauma of confronting their ignorance. In the holiday camp we are never sure what the students do know. We never know who will turn up.

Sometimes entire families arrive, parents enthusiastic and teenagers horrified to be stuck with a teacher during the holidays, bored singles, couples. An English lesson is a place where the old and the disabled can participate on equal terms with everyone else so the less mobile come. Some students are refugees from the non stop glow of good nature that the animators give off. We have to accommodate them all.

Some of the students actually want to learn English so we have to prepare a few nuggets that will hold their attention in the 30° heat.

‘There is no future tense in English

We read about it in Michael Lewis but we present the information as stunningly original approach to grammar.

I raise the bowler and swab the sweat from my brow as a prelude to starting my lesson and say something they all know. The alphabet they all know, the alphabet. “ABCDE” .” I whisper, and on a good day they repeat. If they don’t I tell them to stand and we go through the alphabet five letters at a time, shouting , whispering, angrily, happily until all the students are following me round the open air dance floor imitating a marine march I see myself as John Wayne, the tough sergeant with a heart of gold rather than Rambo and I lead thirty campers on a marine chant of the alphabet and chanting as US marines do in countless films.. This entertains the class and draws attention from the other campers who come the next day . is the main The main aim is always boosting numbers and the school’s income

The beginners over, I shed my suit and swim until lunchtime

Back on duty at 2 pm I always feel a certain moral superiority over my students. They lay browning their bodies in their thick layers of sun block. My black suit absorbs the thirty degree heat and my Church’s shoes feel as they will melt as I march smartly down the sandy beach.

The four course lunch, rich Sardinian specialties, the croaking of the grass hoppers and the heat unite to close my eyes but I have the advanced class.

The campo director, trying hard to look dignified in his shorts and yellow t shirt passes and smiles deferentially, "Hello Professore"

He surreptitiously counts the students. The information is relayed to Milan who use it to decide whether the English course is worth the money. I slip my own surreptitious glance over to the animators. They have least fifty guests participating in an unspeakably silly quiz.

Across the beach I watch the sleepers arise from there torpors and plunge in the water.. As the heat turns my brain and I struggle with sleep. There are two serious and brainy students in the group. I spice up the lesson with a nugget of intelligence:

‘ The past simple also talks about the future’

Oh no it doesn’t’. Says one student, a retired English teacher

‘ Oh yes it does.’ I tell her

More asleep than awake I imagine a pantomime dialogue

‘Oh no it doesn’t’ they all say
‘Oh no there’s not.’

I mentally shake myself awake. The animators doing the quiz receive a big hand

Will you clean my shoes after the lesson?

No

If I gave you a hundred euro would you clean my shoes after the lesson?

Yes. The old lady gives a greedy smile

Make a sentence

If you gave me a hundred euro I would clean your shoes

‘After the lesson’ I prompt

‘After the lesson’

So you used gave, the past of give to talk about the future.

This sometimes leads to a fruitful discussion (i.e. one that will encourage the students to mark English down as a favourite activity on the end of holiday questionnaire ) but it doesn’t today they look as bored and sleepy as I am

They look at the story of Zeus and Hera in their books. Giovanni, a bespectacled retired doctor adjusts his spectacles

‘Zeus said ‘ because women enjoy sex more than men’

They are all awake now accept Grazie, she clearly hasn’t understood

‘Cosè significa ‘sex with a cow’

Not cose significa

I tap the basic phrases magisterially
‘What does sex with a cow mean?’

‘ Very good. ‘Grazie waits expectantly for an explanation

‘ Everyone knows what sex is’ we smile in understanding

‘And a cow?’

‘Mucca’

‘Right, sex with a mucca.’

We pass on. They love the story with its examples of the past used for the future and will for the past

After the adults advanced are the kids. The three girls who do the children’s animation all in their early twenties and dressed in bikinis they burst into wide smiles when I walk across the beach:

‘Bambini, now it’s time for English with Steve’

The girls love the English lessons They sit on either side of me and lean across to look at the pictures in my lap their breasts spill out onto the books. This is not some perverted attraction for men older than their father they are as distant as Timbuctoo with their young male colleagues. They think I am too old to be anything but safe The girls spend eighteen hours a day with the babies they are delighted to get rid of them to me for half an hour. and their enthusiasm transmits itself to the babies. The parents line up to watch their children

We begin by throwing the ball:

‘Hello my name is Stephen’

One of the small girls throws the ball back:

‘Hello my name is Stephen’

Her parents gush profoundly:

‘No my name is Stephen’

‘Hello my name is Stephen’

Repeats the little girl. We move on to Karate

‘Right leg’

They tremble their legs

‘Kick.’

They all shout and kick together. One of the toddler girls kicks a boy in the thigh. The animators descend and spread calm Their smiles seem fixed better than their bikini bras and often small queues of fathers linger after Mary Poppins to speak to the animator about their children.

One of our biggest successes has been English and football. One of our teachers, a frustrated would be football pro began organising football games in English. Telephone calls began arriving in our office from happy parents and delighted touring club Italia directors. Several teachers called to compliment me (nearly 700 kilometres north) on the brilliant lessons I had designed . I watched Phil standing on the side lines

‘You bloody wally’

‘No Phil he bloody wally’ says the student

Etc.

‘ He IS a bloody wally now kick the bloody ball.’

Of course, we spend hours learning how to create lifelike situations in the classroom so it shouldn’t be a surprise that a lifelike situation should be a good place to teach. The camps are a marvelous, exhilarating experience

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.