Page 6 - ELG1601 Nov Issue 441

Page 6 ELpeople November 2016

Six things we wish we’d known
Discipline

We hesitate to simply say it’s important to work
hard, because so much of what we do with both our
writing and our school is massively enjoyable. That Well-known ELT authors Hugh Dellar and Andrew Wakley have
said, there are some aspects of the job that can be a
bit tedious, but which are essential. opened a language school – what have they learned along the way?
In writing, this might be getting the rubrics right,
writing your review units or checking and re-checking
work, while with the school it may be admin and finance
or arranging and dealing with extras beyond the class.
What you have to realise is that all these things need to
be done – and done well!
It’s easy to get distracted by the nice things in a job,
or drift off on a tangent, but these boring details are
actually equally important. If a teacher can’t understand
the instructions for your brilliant text or exercise or the
explanation of a grammar point, then they will probably
get annoyed and won’t do it. If a student doesn’t get the
right information before they arrive or if you fail to sort
out their accommodation problem, the great teaching
they get may be forgotten.

Be interested in people

English classrooms are not only a place to learn English,
they are also spaces for conversation and sharing of a
kind that you don’t necessarily get anywhere else. One
of the great joys of our work is meeting a huge range
of people and getting to know them. We have put that
into a lot of our writing – by sharing stories we’ve heard
over the years or making use of the National Geographic
resources we have access to. It’s also central to how we
try to encourage students to be themselves in English.
But being interested in people is not just about
students, it’s also part of forming good relation-
ships with all the other professionals you work with
both in and outside your organisation. In fact, we’ve A WAY WITH WORDS Hugh Dellar (left) and Andrew Wakley champion the lexical approach to language learning
also learnt this from teaching business English. So
often when discussing their needs and constructing
their courses, you realise that business people want You need other professionals Have clear beliefs about
intelligent conversation or networking skills – for success language and learning
essentially getting to know people better – but based
on their own lives and their business contexts. It’s easy to think of writing as a solitary task, but As anyone who has seen us talk or has read what we
to get a book published you rely on a host of other have written will know, we have strong beliefs and a
professionals – editors provide valuable insights passion for what we do. Our writing has always been
and different perspectives that shape your work, grounded in our ongoing engagement with students,
publishers and project managers coordinate the and writing often leads us to think more about our
complex parts of a coursebook series, designers help teaching. At the heart of our beliefs about language is
to make clear the route through the material and make the idea that vocabulary is central to communication,
it look attractive, and so on. and that words work in complex ways.
Once the book has been produced, it then needs to In terms of learning, it’s therefore important to give
be sold! Salespeople and distributors are essential to useful natural examples of the words you teach and
writers in the same way that agents are to schools. draw attention to the grammar that goes with them.
Finally, you need teachers to interpret your material This is why it’s important to encourage conversation
effectively. Obviously, with a school there are an equal in the classroom, so students can exchange thoughts
number of professionals that make or break you – from and feelings and practise the everyday business
cleaners to accommodation providers, from agents to of life in English. As well as generating useful
teachers. language, this also means common words and
What we’ve learnt is that it’s important not just to grammar come up more often – and to learn a
respect these roles, but also to understand what language, you need to revise a lot over time, and this
people need in their jobs and how to help them. For is best done in varied ways.
salespeople and agents, that might be providing These beliefs inform everything we do. When we write,
tailored tasks in response to a school request or being we try to represent natural common conversations, and
available to talk to clients. And it means being clear in we choose the vocabulary and grammar we want to
your message and making sure that the ideas you’re teach from them. And for the school, this helps clarify
promoting match the product you’re selling. how long and short courses serve different needs, it
helps us source teachers who share a similar approach,
and it affects how we talk about the quality of teaching
and how we write new material for our courses.
Light and shade
When we started out writing, we were once told we
had too much ‘serious stuff’ in our material and that Be patient, be persistent
we needed to have both light and shade. I think this
might, in part, have been because the commentator Judging by its commercial success, it seems only a
missed our sense of humour. However, it was also an few people really liked using our series Innovations,
attempt to push the idea of fun games and activities to while a few more found it interesting – meaning they
accompany the focus on learning language. photocopied the odd page every now and then! But
For us now, we take the idea of light and shade then we also wrote for a small company with a small
to mean embracing the whole of human life in our sales team and very few people ever actually saw the
writing and in the classroom. Sometimes this is a bit books. The company grew and wanted us to write
more difficult when writing material because people another series – Outcomes.
can’t always judge what is humorous, for example A bit more success followed as we had more sales
– as noted! – and because publishers don’t always staff and did a lot more travelling and talking at
grasp how students may interact and lessons pan out. conferences. People got to know us. More people saw
If given the opportunity, students can easily drift off our books. The second edition of Outcomes seems
into discussing, say, the serious issues of old age, but to be getting more interest and our methodology
then end up laughing about it because that’s what they book, Teaching Lexically, has added to the mix.
do in their own lives. Perhaps your time comes – people tire of one kind of
For us as a school, as well as encouraging intelligent book and see the value in another. We’ll see.
conversation and humour in the classroom, it’s also about What is clear is that when you start something new
how we construct our social and cultural programme and and try to offer something different, it takes time to
how we integrate it with our courses. We enable students gain traction and you need to do a lot of work to get
to experience the whole of our city – visiting bits tourists yourself seen. That’s what we’re trying to do with
often don’t get to as well at the sights. It means helping our social media offerings like the Word of the Day
people follow their interests in London, whether they are feature on our blog. In writing we’ve found
academic, religious or sporting. It means having activi- persistence has paid off and we hope the same will be
ties for people who like to go to a pub and for those who true of the school – and, of course, if there is anyone
prefer to see a film or bake cakes. out there who’d like to help us, do drop us a line!

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