British ELT and the Mainstream

Rod Bolitho
The College of St Mark & St John, Plymouth, UK

[ Editorial note: HLT would like to thank IATEFL and the author for permission to re-print this piece from Iatefl 2005, Cardiff Conference Selections, edited by Briony Beaven]

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Introduction
Historical perspectives
Issues and problems for the interface between British EFL and the "mainstream"
Sociocultural perspectives
Political and economic perspectives
Methodological and linguistic perspectives
Illustrative case studies
Conclusions: some messages for the future
References
Comments from the follow-up discussion

This paper derives from my involvement as a trainer and consultant in public sector ELT in a number of countries since the mid eighties. It is an attempt to place the current contribution of UK institutions and agencies into the context of a historical, state sector perspective, and to consider some ways in which we could better meet the expectations of our overseas partners. It is premised on the belief that British ELT has, over the years, built up a deserved reputation for quality, but that this reputation, for a number of reasons, is now at risk. The 'mainstream' for me refers to what Holliday (1994a) terms TESEP (tertiary, secondary and primary state English language education), and also to our own state education system which has remained relatively untouched by developments in ELT over the years.

The reputation of British ELT began to grow in the early part of the 20th Century, through pioneering work like that of Palmer in Japan, Hornby in Turkey, and Gatenby and West in a number of locations (see Smith 2005 for a full account). Their interventions in state ELT were essentially practical and 'hands-on' in nature, and they also gave rise to a strong British publishing tradition which went from strength to strength in the later part of the century and remains intact to this day. Typically, they engaged with local institutions and responded to teaching and learning needs from a local as well as a British perspective. The British Council's involvement, initially from the date of its foundation in 1934, but much more intensively in the post-war years, added great strength and institutional presence to the earlier efforts of these individual experts, and resulted in the establishment within the organisation of an unparalleled pool of expertise and resources, focussed on libraries and resource centres both overseas and in the UK, and on the post of English Language Officer (ELO) in overseas representations. The Council played a significant part in the success of ELT Journal as the most respected organ of the profession, and was instrumental in launching the excellent ELT Documents series which became the principal means of presenting case studies of work in progress and for the exchange of professional ideas and good practice.

This post-war period continued the 'era of methods', which survived well into the final years of the century, a tradition which was underpinned by the establishment in the same period of the PGCE TEFL/TESL programmes, initially at the University of London's Institute of Education, but later also at Bangor, Leeds and other centres, which offered an initial teaching qualification accepted in many state systems worldwide and also conferring UK qualified teacher status on its graduates, thereby enabling them to find a position in the UK on their eventual return from postings overseas. A prime example of this trend was the British 'invasion' of East Africa in the sixties and seventies, in the heyday of Makerere College. It was in the course of this invasion that some of the most famous names in British ELT were able to cut their teeth and to return and make such a significant contribution - people like Chris Brumfit, Rod Ellis, Mike Wallace and Brian Tomlinson. Those PGCE courses were also the primary source of recruits for permanent and short contract posts offered by the British Council and the Centre for British Teachers. They were effectively closed down when Initial Teacher Training in the UK became sharply national-curriculum-focussed in the eighties, which meant the end of funding for ESOL/EFL in mainstream teacher education. This was the beginning of an increasingly inward-looking view of state sector teacher education in the UK, which remains with us to this day, and which has effectively deprived our state schools of the opportunity to employ well-travelled graduates with experience of teaching in state systems overseas. Put another way, it has accentuated the divide between state education and private sector ELT.

The British Council's influence on mainstream ELT overseas in the immediate post-colonial years of the fifties, sixties and seventies was immense, whether it was through innovative projects, such as the Madras 'Snowball' Project in India (for ever associated with Lionel Billows), or through the kind of serendipity which created centres of excellence such as the ones in Iran in the seventies, which spawned the Nucleus ESP materials through Martin Bates, Tony Dudley-Evans and their team, the powerful group of trainers and materials writers in Yugoslavia, which included (among others) Alan Maley, Alan Duff, Patrick Early and David Jolly, or the Ain Shams team in Egypt which counted Adrian Doff, Roger Bowers, and Andrew Thomas among its members and Teach English and Talking about Grammar as its published outputs. All of these people went on to make a significant contribution to the profession, at home and overseas, and all cut their teeth in British Council or ODA funded posts. During this period, too, ELOs were present in almost every Council representation overseas and were required to make highly sensitive and significant judgements about where to focus support for ELT whether within or beyond the confines of state education in each host country. What is indisputable is that ELT professionals in those countries knew exactly where to turn for professional advice and support, and that they could do so knowing that this advice and support would be freely given by fellow professionals who were not distracted by the need to take on commercially-focussed activities.

This post-colonial period was also characterised by a drive towards projectisation in ELT overseas, especially in the developing world. With the backing of the British Government's Overseas Development Agency (ODA, now superseded by DfID, the Department for International Development), The British Council identified needs and set up projects in many different areas of ELT, usually under the Key English Language Teaching (KELT) scheme, which was generally serviced by British 'experts', most of them with a PGCE TEFL qualification, working on contract, together with local 'counterparts' who offered local knowledge and a long-term perspective. These counterparts were often trained on postgraduate or tailor-made courses in the UK, supported by ODA funding and many of them are now in influential positions in ministries and academic institutions in their own countries, and often have a hand in decision-making about educational contracts and other initiatives. Higher education institutions and the best of the private sector language schools were frequently called on for support with consultancy and training. This project model had many flaws (see below), and was very demanding on resources, but it did provide a context for much excellent and innovative work, a great deal of which is reported in thematic issues of ELT Documents, as well as significant career development opportunities for key personnel. KELT officers and ELOs congregated annually at the powerful Dunford House seminars to exchange ideas and plan the next phases of their work.

All of these developments helped to establish ELT in Britain as a profession with a recognisable career structure, and to cement the British Council's reputation as the main overseas purveyor of support and expertise in the field. Things began to change in the late eighties and early nineties. Doubts began to be raised about the project model, with evidence mounting, particularly in developing world contexts, about its viability given the poor levels of sustainability attained by some projects (not only in ELT of course), usually evidenced by a huge drop in commitment and motivation among local project personnel once the funding dried up. What British project designers seem to have almost stubbornly failed to understand is that the speed of change laid down in project time scales (which is in turn dictated by the finite availability of funding) seldom if ever corresponds to the speed of change which can realistically be managed by the in-country project partners. This problem was to some extent addressed by the introduction of a 'process' dimension in many projects, allowing for changes of priority and direction within the life of a project. However, in my experience there has always been a tendency on the donor side to look for results sooner than the partner is able to 'deliver' them and this has sometimes had a negative impact on quality. In any case, in the late eighties and nineties, ELT dropped down the scale of ODA/DfID priorities in favour of wider issues like poverty relief, health, human rights, equality of opportunity and basic education. The British Council gradually began to reduce the number of its specialist ELT posts and the KELT scheme was wound down. ELT Documents as it was went into terminal decline, along with the Dunford House seminars. Libraries and resource centres around the world began to be closed down as the British Council became more and more reliant on generating its own income in the wake of cuts in its grant-in-aid funding. Scholarships for higher level study in ELT in the UK were also gradually phased out to the present level of 16-18 Hornby Scholarships per year, and Australia, New Zealand and the US began to mop up the demand.

1989 and the years immediately thereafter saw a temporary revival in the fortunes of UK involvement in state sector ELT overseas, but this time in a new priority area, Central and Eastern Europe. Again, the British Council was centrally involved. Feasibility studies were carried out, projects were set up, new appointments made and new regional networks established. This development was welcomed in British ELT circles though there were misgivings about the way in which ELT initiatives in francophone Africa were dropped or phased out in order to release funding for this new and challenging theatre of operations. Once again, instances of good practice emerged in some of these 'new democracies': the materials projects and the establishment of a vibrant ELT community in Romania, the fast-track training courses for teachers of English in Poland and Hungary and the establishment of associations of English Language Teachers in many countries in the region, to mention just a few. But, as we shall see in the next section, these achievements have not all been consolidated, and the nineties, despite the surge of activity I have just described, may come to be seen as a brief high point in a long-term downward spiral in the engagement of British ELT with mainstream education overseas.

As Holliday (1994a and b) and others have pointed out, the whole basis of expertise in British ELT is now significantly different in character from that in the 'mainstream' overseas. Much of the British output in terms of coursebooks and teaching materials in the last two decades had its origins in the private language school sector. Series of textbooks such as Streamline and Headway have been hugely influential and have seen wholesale adoptions in state systems around the world, regardless of the fact that they contain topics and social situations which are often of doubtful relevance to learners in TESEP contexts. This has in some countries resulted in a loss of local textbook-authoring capacity. There are, fortunately, signs that this problem is being addressed in some countries through robust national textbook project initiatives (see below).

There has been an all-too visible shift in British Council priorities in recent years. The emphasis in many of their overseas operations has shifted from grant-in-aid funded support for state ELT to income generation through selling courses and examinations through their Teaching Centres. Sadly, it is often only the rich and privileged that can afford these services, which means that state sector teachers and learners are often neglected. It also means that public perceptions of the British Council are changing. Where it was once seen as a source of support for hard-pressed state sector ELT professionals, it is now increasingly regarded as just another commercial operation, one which is often at the elite end of the market in terms of affordability. But there is another, more pernicious, problem associated with this. Teaching Centres are usually staffed by teachers with Cambridge Syndicate qualifications at CELTA or DELTA level. The significant letter in these acronyms is the 'A', which stands for 'adults'. It means that many of the teachers have a profile which prepares them well for work in a language school where adults form the majority of learners. Yet there is evidence now that some of these teachers, in the wake of the massive loss of mainstream ELT expertise within the British Council, are being asked to take on training roles in support of local state sector training programmes. In contexts where there is a strong ELT tradition, this will be perceived as short-changing local professionals to the detriment of the Council's reputation. This comment is no less applicable to private language schools in the UK, many of which offer training and consultancy services to overseas state sector teachers without the benefit of any kind of inside knowledge of the context in which their participants live and work.

There is also a persistent economic problem for teachers in many contexts. This has long been evident in developing world contexts but I have recently heard it articulated most clearly in Central and Eastern Europe. In the projects set up in that region in the nineties, there was often a British trainer or adviser, paid at a level which enabled them to maintain their assets in the UK while abroad and also to focus exclusively on project objectives. Their local counterparts and partners, however, were (and still are) very poorly paid and usually have to take on extra jobs just to make ends meet and support themselves and their families. This has meant that they couldn't give their full attention to project priorities and has once again resulted in lack of sustainability and, inevitably, to disappointment on both sides. For exactly the same reasons, but also because of the strength of the pound, most teachers in the region are unable to afford trips to English-speaking countries, either for recreational purposes or to attend either short courses or longer award-bearing programmes. A side effect of this development has been the closure of a number of ELT centres of excellence in UK Higher Education and thus a gradual erosion of capacity. In the almost total absence of British support for this purpose, teachers can either (in Europe) choose to apply for Comenius funding, with at best a one in ten chance of success or to turn to the US, which still has a scholarship programme, albeit a limited one. Are we really no longer interested in offering professional support to our colleagues and peers overseas?

My own experience in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the states of the former Soviet Union has made me aware of another problem which is still far from resolution in some contexts and which can only be addressed through a dialogue between equals. There is no doubt that our ELT interventions in many commonwealth countries in the developing world, where the whole state education system was often modelled on that of the UK, were seen as part of a more general process often associated with forms of imperialism ( Phillipson 1992). This went hand in hand with an 'aid' mentality to promote an attitude which was often seen as patronising, and which contributed to a backlash expressed through changes in language policy in countries such as Malaysia and Bangladesh. The resultant declining standards of English are only now being addressed in state education in those countries. When these attitudes were replicated, often by ex-KELT officers, in projects in the 'new democracies', they were greeted with disbelief. Most of these countries had, and still have, strong language teaching traditions of their own, and attempts by British 'experts' to import methodological innovations have been treated with suspicion if not outright hostility. The notion that British = good has plainly had its day and rightly so. In fact, my experience has been that there is a great deal to learn from teaching and learning traditions in a wide region which has given us Lozanov and Vygotsky (to name but two) to set against western educational thinkers. And I have almost always had to argue the case on the soundest of bases with my partners for any innovation that I have proposed. I have never failed to learn from this. More on this tension between tradition and innovation in the next sections.

It is only in recent years, thanks to Holliday (1994b) and others, that we have become more overtly aware of some of the socio-cultural dimensions of language teaching and learning, in particular as they are revealed in encounters between practitioners from different contexts with different traditions. In particular, we have begun to understand classrooms as micro-societies which need to relate to wider societies outside, within and beyond the immediate communities in which schools are located. This realisation ought to have a profound impact in a number of respects:
- in the way we think about methodological and educational issues and propositions such as introducing task-based learning, learner autonomy or communicative language teaching
- in the way we think about innovation at classroom, institutional and systemic levels
- the nature of cultural content in teaching materials and the need for intercultural awareness-raising as a language teacher's responsibility
-understanding that the English class is necessarily a window on a wider world, with values and beliefs that may or may not sit comfortably with those of teachers and learners in a given context at a particular time, and that it may therefore be seen as a kind of 'Trojan horse' within a curriculum that is otherwise under close central control.

By 'problematising' and looking more closely at these and other related issues, we begin to understand better some of the factors that have caused British-funded and British-led projects and change initiatives to fail in the past.

Language policy has always been a powerful and emotive tool in the hands of politicians. In the post-colonial era, countries such as Malaysia and Bangladesh, intent on nation-building, went through a phase of rejecting English as an official language in favour of the national language, and this had a significant effect on attitudes to English and motivation to learn it. That both these countries are now having to turn back to English in significant ways in order to make up for years in which it slipped down the priority list is of course a matter of interest to us in the UK ELT community, but we need to understand that they are now 'inviting English back in' on their own terms and not on ours, as was previously the case, and with an understanding, as I heard one Malaysian stating proudly at a conference in Kuala Lumpur in 2002, that 'English is as much our language as yours now'. This notion of English as everyone's property is one which we in the UK seem to have some difficulty in coming to terms with.

The situation pre- and post-1989 in Central and Eastern Europe was rather different. Romanian ELT colleagues reported to me that they had been singled out for special surveillance by the security forces in the Ceausescu era, on the assumption that as English teachers they were ideologically suspect. Slovakian teacher friends reported that they had listened to BBC World Service 'under the bedclothes' so as not to be heard and denounced by neighbours. Understandable, then, that they were both overjoyed and bewildered by their new-found popularity after the collapse of the communist regimes. As a Brit running programmes in Hungary in the early nineties, I remember being struck by the intellectual robustness of my postgraduate students, and commenting on this to one of them. Her reply was a big contribution to my understanding of the region: 'Of course we know how to think; for most of our lives, the only real freedom we had was in our minds. Now, at last, we can voice our thoughts.'

The 'promise' of English as a route to a better life and economic salvation for the poor in developing countries has been extensively discussed elsewhere (see Rogers (1982) and Abbott (1984) for example) and I will not rehearse the arguments here. However, there is little doubt that this perception of English persists in the era of globalisation, and that language schools, private teachers and publishers are among many whose livelihood depends on sustaining it.

The perceived mission of many British ELT 'experts' posted overseas has traditionally been to carry messages about our language and culture into their designated contexts. This has often gone hand in hand with the export of ideas about teaching and learning, most notably the theory and practice of communicative language teaching, and more recently the 'lexical approach' (Lewis 1993) and task-based learning (Willis 199?). This stems to a great extent from the way in which BANA based applied linguists and methodologists have established a kind of hegemony in the wider world of ELT, with the help of the major publishing houses and the growing influence of the international conference circuit. Holliday (1994b) has dealt comprehensively with the dangers associated with attempts at this kind of 'technology transfer' and the 'tissue rejection' which all too often ensues. My experience with partners in Central and Eastern Europe has constantly reinforced the need for dialogue in areas like these. Educationalists there, with their own robust and long-established traditions and beliefs, do not take kindly to any implication that we necessarily have something better to offer. Seen another way, these traditions and beliefs are actually an integral part of any nation's identity. I have found that I need to listen and learn first in order to earn the right to offer an opinion, and even then to be prepared to argue it through down to the last detail in order myself to be listened to and understood. Part of this process has always been a painstaking search for a common language, a kind of linguistic Euro, to 'do business' with. The discourse of BANA 'experts' is not automatically appreciated and accepted in the 'new democracies' and this has certainly pushed me to re-examine many of my own assumptions about learning, teaching and even the nature of language itself.

It would be misleading in a paper of this scope to give an impression that we in Britain are getting it all wrong in the various ways in which we still relate to state sector ELT in our partner countries. There are examples of good practice as well as of mistakes. One lesson that seems to have been learned at last is that real change can only be achieved through 'joined-up thinking' and full involvement of all key stakeholders. This calls for a thorough baseline study before any project is launched. We also seem finally to have become aware that the key triggers of change in any system are examination and textbook reform. Attempts at curriculum innovation or methodological change that do not take full account of examinations (the prime source of motivation, for better or worse) and teaching materials (the tools of a teacher's trade) are likely to fail. The British Council has also been extremely active in establishing professional networks, often electronically mediated, such as ELTECS (the English Language Teaching Contacts Scheme), with funding for professional events usually led and co-ordinated by strong overseas professionals, and there are several examples of web-based discussion forums, such as the one operated by the Council in Brazil. (Sadly, though, there are still many teachers, and not only in the developing world, for whom access to a computer, let alone owning one, is still a distant dream.)

These examples from my own experience over the years may also be useful as illustrations here.

Textbook Projects.
A textbook project is by definition product-oriented and thus carries the potential to self-sustain both financially and ideologically in the long term. This distinguishes it in an important way from other educational initiatives. My involvement in projects in Romania, Belarus and Russia since the early nineties has confirmed the following principles and precepts:
- classroom teachers can, with the right training and support, become skilled textbook writers. This should no longer be seen as the exclusive prerogative of university-based academics or of professional authors who seldom enter a classroom,
- there is every reason to train and support local writers, thereby contributing to in-country capacity-building; the widespread adoption of British-produced textbooks in state systems only eats away at local capacity and results in widespread deskilling. To the best of my knowledge, this is happening in Poland and Hungary, for example.
- textbook projects offer many opportunities for bottom-up change through the direct involvement of teachers as authors and of schools, learners and teachers in the process of piloting.
- there is a clear formula for partnership, with a British institution or individual supplying training, language support, workshop facilitation and critical reading services for the local team of authors.
- within this type of partnership, final decisions on all key content and methodological issues rest with the local team. In practice, this has commonly resulted in a healthy balance between tradition and innovation in methodology, an appropriate view of language and a genuine intercultural dimension in the materials.
- many of the writers I have worked with have gone on to make significant further contributions to ELT and educational initiatives in their own countries; they have almost all developed professional and interpersonal skills far beyond their initial authoring brief, as trainers or as educational administrators, for example.
- the Russian project, in particular, has been characterised by the kind of 'joined-up thinking' mentioned above, with careful co-ordination between the textbook project, national curriculum and examination reform and the regional INSETT projects initiated in the nineties by the British Council.
For more on textbook projects, see Popovici and Bolitho (2002).

Curriculum Development
Curriculum development is often seen as an important lever for educational change. My experience is that it is seldom sufficient in its own right. It is by definition most often top-down in orientation, which means that there is often involvement of academic 'experts' and politicians in various stages of the process. It also usually involves a broader view of the educational process, with subject-based objectives and outcomes referred to whole-curriculum aims and priorities. My own experience of major curriculum reform projects in India and at university level in Ukraine has only served to reinforce the need for full baseline study data, the highest possible level of involvement from all key stakeholders, and ultimately linkage to examination and methodological reform, without which a new curriculum is likely to remain a paper product with little real-world relevance or impact. In both of these projects, the involvement of the British Council and of my own institution has added to the face validity of the reforms as well as financing and facilitating the development of the end-product through training and consultancy support.

Methodology and INSETT
On the whole, this has proved to be the least effective trigger for change, partly because methodology projects are based in beliefs and theories about teaching and learning, which change slowly if at all and which differ so much from one context to another, and partly also because they are generally process- rather than product-oriented, which means that ideas are often passed on face-to-face rather than in a more lasting medium. As indicated earlier in this paper, to stand any chance of achieving a significant impact, a methodology project would need to be seen to be linked to parallel initiatives in examinations, curriculum and/or teaching materials. Yet British methodological traditions and expertise have been at least superficially influential in many countries largely because of the reputation of its main proponents, which is built largely on their publication and conference speaking record, but also because of the fact that so many ELT professionals from overseas have at various times attended courses either at British institutions or provided by British institutions in their own country. In this way, my own College had a significant short-term impact on the development of initial teacher training for ELT in Hungary in the early and mid-nineties, when around thirty Hungarian trainers passed through our hands on specialist Masters Courses.

Examination Reform
This most powerful area of influence in educational reform is at the same time probably the most difficult to penetrate and influence from an outside perspective. While there have been considerable success stories involving British input and expertise in countries such as Russia, Latvia and Slovenia, there have also been frustrations. The reasons for this are not difficult to understand. There are vested interests to consider in any examination reform: in Russia for example, attempts to introduce a unified school-leaving and university entrance examination have been met with howls of protest from local academics who fear that they will lose their influence and control over the acceptance of undergraduate students. The development of public examinations of any sort demands rigorous research field-testing and validation before they can be safely introduced on a wide scale, which means that any change is sure to be slow and extremely unlikely to keep pace with other reforms. In such circumstances, teachers will adopt a conservative line and teach to the existing examinations rather than according to new trends in methodology or textbooks. The widespread adoption of the Common European Framework of Reference (2001) has at least internationalised the debate about standards and given those interested in examination reform in ELT a benchmark to hold against jealously guarded national and local ways of measuring proficiency.

So what have we learned from over fifty years of experience? What messages can be passed on to the next generation of well-meaning British ELT 'missionaries'? Here are a few well-meant thoughts on a take-it-or-leave-it basis:

- change can only happen at the pace which is dictated by local circumstances and not at a pace determined by change agents, wherever they come from
- as Brits overseas, now more than ever, we have to earn the respect of our colleagues, and thereby the privilege of playing any sort of role in their professional lives.
- we need to examine our own discourse and approaches and match them to the needs and expectations of our partners, for example by moving from 'telling' to 'listening', from 'delivering' to 'sharing' and from an aid mindset to genuine partnership with a much stronger sense of reciprocity
- in all our dealings with partners overseas, we need to understand and start where they are in their priorities, traditions and beliefs.
- We need to focus more and more on helping our partners in the process of professional capacity building. We'll know we've done our job well when and if they say to us, "Thanks for your help. You can go now. We'll take it from here ourselves."
- in almost all the contexts I am familiar with, whether in the developing world or in Europe, ELT is still seen as a priority, now more than ever in some countries. The British Council and DfID seem to be persisting with broader-based approaches to their respective supporting roles overseas. Many ELT communities overseas still need the kind of targeted professional support which they used to be able to turn to the British Council for. Isn't it time for a rethink?

From Susan Holden
1.
The debate about the lack of awareness and knowledge of the UK educational systems, and those of other countries and regions, is especially important at a time when CLIL is being discussed so widely. This posits a coming together of other subjects and the/a FL within the school system. So the ELT profession (teachers/teacher trainers/materials developers) need to find out more about the realities of that full time education context at both practitioner and curriculum design levels. A few days spent in 'ordinary' schools observing not just English lessons but the whole pattern, stresses and priorities of a school day within that community can be very informative and eye-opening.
2.
British ELT seems to have been developing in the last decade from a starting point of how to teach the language (and in some cases an interest in intercultural concerns). It does not often seem to have looked at 'education' first - and the place of the FL as one of many school subjects within that system - albeit maybe one (in the case of English) that can permeate other school subjects. The day-to-day realities of any practising classroom teacher in full-time primary and secondary schools are perhaps 'educational concerns' first and 'subject objectives' second.
3.
There is often a presumption that ELT methodology is in some way 'ahead' of that of other subjects and can pave the way. That is dangerous, especially in cases where an education reform programme goes across all school subjects (c.f. Spain and Brazil). Discovery techniques, group work, project work may all be familiar to the students from their other subjects. Looking at the current textbooks for these subjects can be an eye opener!

From Susan Davies
I welcomed your comments about the UK being 'isolationist' themselves. The UK ELT community is not integrated into mainstream TESOL and MFL and the impact of UK expertise in ELT is negligible. The evidence for this is that the UK government have ignored all the work of the Council of Europe when developing the ESOL Curriculum for the UK and in the testing and teaching of Modern Foreign Languages in the UK.

From Dr Liesel Hermes
I asked a question which went back to your idea in the plenary that English might be taught with a view to the learners' own country and culture: Do English publishers that develop learning materials for teaching English as a foreign language world-wide take into account the differences in cultures and learning styles in other countries? It was answered by two ladies from two publishers: The two ladies pointed out that they try to do just that, however they are often asked to develop their materials in a way that introduces students abroad to the British culture.

From Elana Katz
My point was one that, as a publisher for school texts, I have been occupied with for some years now. This concerns the need to reassess traditional EFL methodology in the light of the school environment. I have long felt that most of the initiatives in EFL methodology grew out of an awareness of the requirements of adults or even young adults learning in private language schools, extramurally as it were. The emphasis was on speaking and functional language for people travelling to English speaking countries or working with English as a lingua franca in the business world. Most of the courses for teaching qualifications had these kinds of students in mind. As far as I know, there are no courses in the UK for training teachers of English as a foreign language that take students learning in a school environment into account. Likewise, there is not much in the UK that looks at methodology that is appropriate for this setting. This would not be an entirely negative thing given that individual countries take on this responsibility themselves, other than the fact that so many countries have relied on the UK to provide consultants and teacher trainers to inform their EFL courses and teacher training for schools.

As publishers, we have spent hours in classrooms all round the world to help us formulate appropriate methodology and content for our primary and secondary courses. This includes information on the size of classes, the type of mixed level and ability that make up classes in particular regions, the kind of methodology that works best with different ages and types of learners, takes account of the kinds of interference caused by particular mother-tongue languages as well as different exam requirements in different countries. It also takes account of the content appropriate to students in a learning environment where the aim is to educate and inform and create effective independent learners who will have the skills to go on to tertiary studies. In some cases, we are able to tailor courses for particular regions and particular segments and in other cases, for financial reasons, we have to group regions with similar situations and needs for a particular course.

This process has meant working together with a new set of authors to develop skills more appropriate for writing for an educational environment and has generally required a significant change in approach from the kinds of skills for producing coursebooks for the adult market. It would be extremely useful to us were there to be a pedagogical framework for the study of such needs and the development of appropriate methodologies.