On the Road with Gary … in Austria

I just came back from my last trip this year – a week-long tour in Austria from Vienna to Graz to Innsbruck. (By the way, what do you do if you’re travelling with four other people and you all miss the last train from Vienna to Graz where you have an event the next day and it’s too late to cancel the hotel booking there? Well, you rely on your local colleague to call the Vienna airport for a reasonably priced ‘people-carrier’ to take you and all your bags there to get in at around 2 o’clock—a.m.) I was doing the opening plenary talk at Cambridge Days in those three cities, speaking on the English Profile programme and particularly on the English Vocabulary Profile.

Now, English Profile is — as I’m sure you know, especially if you read my earlier blogs — a collaborative research programme involving Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ESOL, the British Council, the University of Bedfordshire and English UK designed to enhance the learning, teaching and assessment of English worldwide by using corpora to create a ‘profile’ or set of Reference Level Descriptions for English lexis, structures and functions linked to the Common European Framework (CEF).

English Vocabulary Profile is the aspect of the programme which is the furthest along and with the Austrian teachers we looked at how it will show which words and phrases learners know from A1 to C2 and assign CEF levels not just to the words themselves but also to each individual meaning or ‘sense’ of the word.

I was touring Austria with entre autres Leslie Anne Hendra, one of the co-authors of English Unlimited, a course whose vocabulary has now been mapped to the English Vocabulary Profile and for which you can download wordlists, as well as Vocabulary Extra worksheets, with English Vocabulary Profile tagging to be used in class or as homework to revise, to practice and to extend lexical sets from each level of the course.

At the end of each talk in Austria I offered the teachers—and am also offering you— an end-of-the-year or a Christmas present from Cambridge and the English Profile partners: a free subscription (for a limited time only) to the A1-B2 English Vocabulary Profile. I also invited the Austrian teachers – and am inviting you— to give a present to Cambridge and the English Profile partners by becoming an English Profile Network Partner. Get involved in data collection to help English Profile develop its new corpus of both spoken and written learner English produced by students worldwide!

You can get much more information on English Profile at www.englishprofile.org and find out about both English Vocabulary Profile Free subscription and/or how to get involved in data collection.

Speaking of presents, I think I ‘m going to give myself a Christmas present from Cambridge: a copy of the new Duels and Duets: Why Men and Women Talk So Differently by John L. Locke which has apparently caused a lot of media buzz since it purports to reveal the real ‘evolutionary’ origins of communication differences between men and women. Maybe I’ll risk writing about that controversial subject in a blog post … next year.

Season’s greetings to those of you for whom this time of the year is special — and all the best to all for 2012!

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

I was on a long train journey last month between events for primary school teachers in the capitals of Slovakia and the Czech Republic reflecting on my talks on ‘Teaching Kids Inside—and Outside—the Box’ and ‘Ways to Play—and Learn—in English’ (on Kid’s Box and Playway to English courses and on supplementary materials for teaching Young Learners – see a recommended reading list at the bottom of this blog) but also thinking about teaching languages to young children in general and particularly about something that happened at my wife’s school at the beginning of this school year.

My wife teaches in a French primary school in the centre of Paris—right next to the Place des Vosges in the 3rd arrondissement, if you know Paris—and at the beginning of September her school was inundated with publicity from organisations such as ‘Babylangues’ and ‘Baby-speaking’ to be put on the school announcement board and made available to parents about English classes for young learners from…0 years old!

Now, I know there may still be some conflicting views, but the recent articles and research I’ve read seem to agree that in general the earlier the exposure to foreign language input, the more beneficial for the child down the line. (Although some Ministries of Education—and teachers and parents—prefer postponing reading and writing in the foreign language until after children have learnt to read and write in their mother tongue). And when I was in charge of the language program at the former American Center in Paris, we had classes for children, including one for very young learners called ‘Tiny Tots’—but the infants had to be toddlers and potty-trained at least! I also remember doing some market research a few years ago with our primary ELT editor for the pre-school course Hippo and Friends and visiting classes given by a private teacher in her apartment in Paris and it was wonderful watching the kids leave their parents or caretakers and gather to sing songs, play with puppets, listen to stories et al. But starting classes at a very young age!? Before the children are even one-year-old!?

Of course when I read the publicity more closely and looked on the websites, I saw that for very young learners the offer was mainly more for bilingual babysitting and childcare than for real teaching or language classes—and that sounds reasonable and right-headed to me. In fact, I was recently visiting friends in the country whose daughter has had her first child who’s now six months old. And as I picked the baby up and started to take him walking around the garden, the parents heard me speaking French and said ‘Gary, why don’t you speak English to him?’ Indeed, why not? ‘OK,’ I said, ‘Look Edgar, three trees!’ etc. In fact, that’s what I plan on doing with my own grandchildren if/when they come. Of course, that’ll be their parents’— i.e. my kids’—decision…

Do you teach pre-school children? How old is your youngest student and what would be your advice to other teachers of young learners, and indeed young parents?

If you’re interested in the psychology of learning languages by young children, you may find the article by Professor Paul Bloom of Yale University on How Children Learn the Meaning of Words interesting.

Other recommended reading:

‘The Bilingual Family Second edition’ by Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley, Cambridge University Press

Teaching Children English by David Vale and Anne Feunteun, Cambridge University Press

Teaching Languages to Young Learners by Lynne Cameron, Cambridge University Press

Very Young Learners by Vanessa Reilly and Sheila Ward, Oxford University Press

Recommended resources:

‘Primary Communication Box’ from the photocopiable Cambridge Copy Collection

Primary i-Dictionaries

Cambridge Young Readers Storybooks and Factbooks

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

Gary at teacher training session in Hungary

 Now, I always read the articles by ‘Dr. Rose’ (as she signs her regular column) and I usually agree with her. But this time something she wrote had me shaking my head in a slight disagreement: ‘A powerful technique for encouraging interaction is that of personalisation: giving students the opportunity to share with others aspects of themselves as people—their likes and dislikes, feelings, personal experiences, knowledge, opinions and so on.’

 Yes, of course…but, well, maybe not always. Seems to me it’s different when teaching teenagers than when teaching adults. In fact, that difference is exactly something I mentioned in my separate talks in Budapest and Strasbourg: on teaching adults with English Unlimited and on teaching teenagers with English in Mind. Let me explain and see if you agree—with me.

 In my experience, adults usually like talking about themselves and sharing their experiences. Ask an adult ‘What did you do last weekend?’ (although you might want to phrase your question as a ‘two-step question’ since data from the Cambridge English Corpus of spoken English shows that is how native speakers often ask typical questions, e.g. ‘What did you do last weekend? I mean, did you go out or stay at home or what?’) and he/she is usually ready to tell you—and the rest of the class. And, yes indeed, adults are usually ready and willing to express their opinions and share their knowledge on most matters. (Of course you must be careful bringing up topics concerning politics, religion or sexual matters…)

 But it’s a whole different ballgame with teenagers! Ask a teenager in front of the class on Monday ‘What did you do last weekend?’ or on Friday ‘What are you doing this weekend?’ and the teenager is probably first of all thinking,’ Hey teacher, it’s none of your business!’ And also ‘I don’t want him to know because he didn’t invite me to the party’ or ‘I don’t want her to know because she’s on the volleyball team and I didn’t make the cut.’ Also, some teenagers may not have informed opinions, knowledge or experience on a lot of topics. So, no need to potentially put them on the spot and in the difficult position of trying to formulate a personal response—and in a foreign language!—while they are also perhaps thinking inside ‘I don’t want everyone to look at me and see my spots (Br)/pimples (US)—or messy hair.’ Adults joke about having a ‘bad hair day’; that’s not necessarily a laughing matter with teenagers. No, there’s a lot going on in a typical teenager’s mind-set.

 Anyway, that’s my personal opinion and experience. What do you think? Can you ‘personalise’ as easily and in the same way when teaching teenagers as when teaching adults? I’d love to hear your comments.

 Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

 P.S. Rose Senior has a good book on The Experience of Language Teaching in the Cambridge Language Teaching Library. And you can read her regular column in the English Teaching Professional or online at www.etprofessional.com

Well, I got back from summer holidays and immediately jumped back in the saddle…er, seat belt again with three trips before the start of the 2011/12 school year: to Serbia for a weekend with Cambridge residential summer school in Kovacica outside Belgrade; for a four-city tour around Bosnia–Herzegovina; and for the Fischer International conference in Bucharest. I was giving lots of different talks, including a new talk on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)which is the subject of this post.

Gary with Serbia English Language Teachers Association (ELTA) vice-president Danijela Serafijanovic

The title of my talk—CLIL Won’t Kill —alludes of course to the Quentin Tarantino films Kill Bill Parts 1 and II.  Now, although Tarantino is my son’s favourite film director, I personally am not a big fan of his: a wonderful stylist, yes, but I don’t find a lot of feeling or emotion (except violence) in his movies.

Anyway, I changed the sword to a nice bouquet of flowers that language teachers can offer to both subject teacher colleagues and to their own language students when involved in what I call either ‘real’ CLIL, i.e. teaching a subject and a foreign language together (as is happening in a lot of countries), or CLIL ‘lite’ which for me means the language teacher bringing topics and activities from other subjects in the school curriculum, e.g. geography, maths, science, history et al, into the language classroom.

Since my audiences were language teachers, we first looked at how language teachers can help their colleagues teaching a subject in a foreign language to, if you will, ‘ride a bicycle built for two’ (That very nice analogy for ‘real’ CLIL comes from a teacher in Novi Said, Serbia, who agreed to let me use it.): choosing and adapting materials, helping with assessment and techniques such as eliciting vocabulary and scaffolding language. We looked at practical examples from the forthcoming (in spring 2012) CLIL Activities in the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series.

CLIL: Activities with CD-ROM (forthcoming 2012)

For CLIL ‘lite’…Well, you know that all of your students are not going to be future English teachers (although let’s hope some of them will!) and may not be interested in languages.  But they might be interested in math or geography etc.  As an English teacher you of course are not supposed to know a lot about those other subjects. But if you bring into the language lessons some matter and materials from other subjects in the school curriculum, then those non- verbal/linguistic learners can sit up and shine—even in English class.

Good for individual motivation and also for class dynamics seems to me. We looked at examples of how this is achieved in Kid’s Box for Young Learners, More! for tween-agers and English in Mind for teenagers as well as supplementary activities from various Cambridge Copy Collection titles and, of course, extensive reading opportunities in both Cambridge Fact Books for Young Learners and ‘Fact Books’ strand of the Cambridge Discovery Readers series for tween- and teen- agers. Plus secondary school students, who are already thinking about their future university studies and professions, can well profit from a dictionary such as the Cambridge School Dictionary that offers them curriculum words in other subjects for, say, report writing and presentations or just for simple information and interest.

CLIL won’t kill—au contraire! Don’t you agree?

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

PS CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning by Do Coyle, Philip Hood and David Marsh gives a comprehensive look at the subject. And you’ll find some interesting ideas in The TKT Course: CLIL Module by Kat Bentley—even in you’re not taking the Cambridge ESOL Teaching Knowledge Test.

My last trip before the end of this school year (well, at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere) and before my

Gary Anderson presenting on teaching teenagers

upcoming summer holidays was to Russia for ‘summer schools’ for (mainly secondary) teachers in St Petersburg and Kazan organised by our Moscow office in collaboration with Britannia Books and the Ministries of Education.

I really like Russia and I’ve been there five or six times. This time I was doing a number of different talks: on teaching tween-agers with More!, teaching teenagers with English in Mind and Interactive, and on using supplementary materials for ‘tweens and ‘teens. I also presented  on the range of Cambridge Classware – digital course presentation software for Interactive Whiteboards or mimio® – a technological device that allows you to turn any surface into an interactive whiteboard.

But I also talked about ‘Which comes first: language development or exam preparation? The chicken or the egg?’. Or maybe you can have both—if you’re using good language development materials (for example from Cambridge ELT) which also prepare for recognised exams (for example from Cambridge ESOL), i.e. Cambridge books for Cambridge exams. (You can share your opinion on the subject by voting in our poll at the top of this page.)

And that’s the idea of ‘Cambridge English’, the new joint partnership between Cambridge ESOL and Cambridge University

Cambridge English

Press: bringing together expertise in exams and in publishing. The two ‘Cambridges’ have already been collaborating on, for example, English Profile and the Cambridge English Placement Test. You may have already seen the new ‘Cambridge English’ logo on the cover of the Cambridge ELT 2011 catalogue.

In Moscow, we have launched the Cambridge English Solution for Schools project developed through a partnership between the Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ESOL and Britannia Books. And there are plans to roll-out the project to other cities across Russia next school year.

So look out for ‘Cambridge English’ events in your country in the near future.

Have a nice relaxing and reinvigorating summer break! As I hope to do here in France before my next trips to Serbia and Bosnia in August for…summer schools and back-to-school events.

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

Gary presenting at the LKPA conference

So what do all of the above cities have in common? Well, they are all places where I attended and presented at conferences in the last two months. Yes, I’ve been doing lots of travelling! (Maybe too much, says my family).

The best? Well, that’s impossible to answer as each conference was special in its own individual way. But I must say that the annual HUPE (Croatian Association of Teachers of English) conference held this year from April 7-10 in the lovely town of Opatija on the Adriatic coast was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended: impeccably organised; a great selection and range of talks (including my plenary on ‘ELT in(to) the Digital World’ and my workshop on ‘Teaching Adults ‘real’ English’ with English Unlimited); civilized half-hour coffee breaks on the terrace for networking and discussion; a Pecha Kucha evening; and a gala dinner and DJ 80’s Party (I hadn’t been forewarned about the party’s theme so just wore my HUPE t-shirt and had a great time!).

The biggest? The annual Cambridge-Pons School Association Day on Saturday, April 16, in Sofia, Bulgaria, which started with a wonderful ceremony during which the student winners of primary and secondary school competitions received prizes followed by local entertainment from members of the Cambridge—Pons School Association and then over 400 teachers attended four (!) talks by me and by Cambridge ESOL representatives. 

The most northern? The Lithuanian Association of Language Teachers (LKPA) 5^th annual conference on Saturday and Sunday May 20-21 in Vilnius where about 80 teachers of all

On the Riga-Vilnius coach on my birthday

languages and from all over the Baltics, Russia, Kazakhstan and Europe met to debate and discuss ‘Languages for Work and Life: A Challenge for Teachers and Learners’. I gave a plenary on ‘Language Teaching in(to) the Digital Age’ and a workshop on ‘Teaching Teenagers’ with English in Mind 2^nd edition and Interactive. (On my birthday the day before the start of this conference, I had been giving talks in Riga, Latvia, and then had a four-hour bus ride (USA)/coach journey (UK) to Vilnius. 

The most unusual—for me? The 1^st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics held on May 5-7 at Burch University in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where researchers from all over the world read and gave papers on a huge variety of subjects and where I gave talks on English Profile and English 360.

And I was also in Prague on Saturday, April 30, for the Cambridge English Day for teachers of adults where I gave three different talks—including a workshop on using Cambridge Classware with mimio (a USB that turns white surfaces into interactive whiteboards) and in Amsterdam on Friday, May 13 (it wasn’t unlucky), for the Cambridge Business/ESP Day where I gave the final talk on (yes, again) ‘Teaching Adults ‘real’ English’ with English Unlimited.

Phew! Glad my travel is winding down now… Perhaps you also attended a conference or two (or six!?) these last few months as spring is the time for conferences (in the Northern hemisphere, at least). In any case, hope to see you at one of these or another upcoming conference or Cambridge English event in the future.

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

Talks to teachers, university students and VIPs—plus a (short) presentation technique/tip

Spent a week in winter-y Moscow at the end of last month before coming home to spring-y Paris for a week before heading off to, hopefully, summer-y Opatija on the Adriatic coast of Croatia for the national HUPE conference there.

I always like going to Russia because, for one reason, my colleagues there in addition to having me speak to teachers also always seem to organise a couple of presentations to university students and it reminds me of when I was teaching at UMKC (University of Missouri at Kansas City) in the States and at one of the elite engineering grandes écoles here in Paris, ESIEE (but I won’t bother you with the French that those letters stand for).

Anyway, this time in Moscow I was presenting to students—and their teachers—at both the prestigious Financial Academy and equally prestigious Russian Economics Academy on ‘Teaching and Learning English in(to) the Digital Age’ and on ‘B2 or not B2? Is that the question?: Balancing professional and academic exam preparation with real learner needs’ on preparing and taking Cambridge ESOL exams such as BEC, ICFE and IELTS.

Let’s see, I also did a talk to university and PLS teachers on ‘Teaching adults ‘real’ English’ with English Unlimited at the British Council on the left bank of the Moscova and near one of the 49 bridges that cross that river in Moscow and as well two talks to secondary teachers at a special Cambridge English Day in collaboration with our sister organisation Cambridge ESOL.

But the big event was at MISiS, the National University of Science and Technology, where last spring I had done an initial training for their teachers on using Touchstone. This time was for the launch of the ‘Touchstone @ MISiS’ partnership project to an audience of 100 university teachers from around Moscow and Russia and invited VIP guests who, before champagne and cake and my talk on ‘Profiling English Profile’, gathered to hear short, simultaneously translated speeches by first the Russian Minister of Education (!) and the Rector of MISiS, and then representatives of the US and UK Embassies, the Director of the British Council in Russia, Natasha Bochorishvili, Cambridge ELT Sales Manager for Russia, and, finally, yours truly also representing the Press.

I don’t often speak at such high profile events and was a little nervous beforehand about what to say in my five-minute talk. So I used a technique taught to me by my old Parisian friend Richard Cooper who worked for Pilgrims and NILE and is now based in Bombay from where he does presentation and communication training around the world to high-flying international business people and government, UN and NGO officials. Rick’s coaches them that when they have only a few minutes for a talk or, say, are going to be interviewed for the radio or television to make sure that all their main points, ’sound bites’ if you will, fit on the back of their business card. So I made sure my main points (highlighted) fit on the back of my business card:

• Honoured to represent Cambridge University Press, the oldest continuously publishing house in the world, which has published Newton (think Gravity), Darwin (think Evolution), Chomsky (think Language Acquisition Device), Murphy (think Grammar) and now McCarthy, McCarten and Sandiford (think Touchstone).
• ‘Touchstone ‘the word means an established standard by which something is judged, like a benchmark.
• Touchtone the course offers a total blended learning solution of print material and online independent practice and self-study so teachers and students can spend valuable face-to-face class time on the all-important skills of speaking and listening…
• …especially the unique ‘Conversation Strategies’ strand of the course to help learners prepare to communicate in English and interact successfully…
• …so that they can help all of us ‘Live, thrive and survive’ in our world where English (for the moment) is the International Language.

Voilà. Rick’s technique/tip worked for me! You might try it if you ever have to make a short formal speech or the next time you want to make sure your remarks at an upcoming teachers’ meeting, community event etc. are clear and succinct. And if you don’t have a business card, well, just jot down your main points on a Post It.

P.S. If you read Russian and/or just want to see some pictures of the ‘Touchstone @ MISiS’ event, have a look at http://www.misis.ru/ru/ctl/Details/mid/3539/ItemID/5205 And if you’d like to see some video clips of me presenting in Moscow, you can go to http://www.youtube.com/CambridgeUPELT.

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

Travel = trains + cars + flowers + stars

Had back-to-back week-long tours in Austria and Poland earlier this

Gary with young learners in Lodz, Poland, March 2011

month and thought I would write in this post a little bit about my life on the road. Let’s see: in Austria (where I was talking about teaching and learning grammar as in previous trip there last November (cf. On the Road with Gary in Austria) we were getting up between 5 or 6 each morning to take a train for three, four or five hours to the next city for that day’s event. (Austrian trains are nice, clean, efficient and on time, but – how should I put this – well, not as fast as French TGVs.) Then we would do the event, check into the hotel, have dinner and … get up early the next morning for the train journey to another city. Innsbruck (great audience there!), Dornbirn, Klagenfurt, Graz and finally, the big event in the capital Vienna where I didn’t even get to have the (apparently) best and biggest schnitzel in Austria at the Figlmeueller restaurant behind St Stephen’s cathedral. Instead, I had to fly back to Paris in the evening to get ready for my next tour the following week.

Anyway, so one day back home to see my family and then off to Poland where the travel was just the opposite: drive for three or four hours in the evening to a new city, check into a hotel, have dinner and then in the morning get ready for and do that day’s event before driving to the next city: Wroclaw, Lodz, Warsaw, Kielce, lovely Lublin and finally Rzeszow for the weekend PELT (Polish English Language Teachers) conference where I had presented last year and was invited back.In Lodz (NB pronounced ‘Woodge’) the event happened to take place on 8th March which was International Women’s Day. Since about 90% of the audience were female state school teachers, I went out and bought six tulips, only 2zl each (in other cities I gave out chocolates). The flowers were for the six winners of my quiz on teaching teenagers while preparing Polish lower secondary students for the new gimnazjum exam with the Polish edition of English in Mind. We also talked about two forthcoming publications for Poland: Repetytorium Gimnazjalne, and the bilingual English-Polish Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary.

The event that day was held in the Grand Hotel on the main street which is lined with large, embedded golden stars as Lodz is the centre of the Polish film industry. The city is sometimes called, wait for it, ‘Holly-Woodge‘. There were stars in front of the hotel with names of the famous Polish film directors, actors and cinematographers: Wajda, Kieslowski (his The Three Colours trilogy is one of my favourite series of films), Polanski etc. But at the event we given a special performance by some younger stars: a class of local primary students using the Polish Primary Kid’s Box who sang and danced to two songs from the coursebook. The kids were treated afterwards to cakes and (unlimited!) hot chocolate and I went down to talk with them. You can see their picture taken with their teacher and me; I’m grimacing because I was trying to teach them to say ‘cheese’ as the photo was being taken.

Off to Russia this week and trust I won’t get stuck in Moscow again like last year because of another Icelandic volcanic ash cloud (cf. On the Road with Gary in Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia and Russia).

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

I was invited back to the annual International House Bratislava conference in Slovakia earlier this month. Last year

Gary Anderson presenting in Bratislava

at this same conference I gave the opening plenary (on the English Profile programme) and two workshops and this year I was again asked to give…the opening plenary and two workshops. Bratislava lies on the banks of the Danube River, borders both Austria and Hungary and isn’t that far from either Budapest or Vienna, the twin capitals of the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire. In fact, it’s only 60 kilometres from Vienna; they are the two closest European capitals. Anyway, last year my flight back to Paris from Bratislava was cancelled (it happens) and I had to get a shuttle bus to Vienna to catch another flight. So this year I decided to fly directly to Vienna and take the shuttle bus to Bratislava.

 As in most of the countries I visit, Cambridge English (previously Cambridge ESOL) exams are growing in popularity in Slovakia and for the opening plenary I was asked by the organisers to speak about exams. My talk was entitled—curiously? enticingly?—‘Which come first: the chicken or the egg? Language development or Exam preparation?’. We started off with what I call a ‘buzz’ activity (an open pair-work discussion) on ‘What are the most difficult skills for your learners?’. Of course it depends on the individual student or class, but, as in most cases/countries, the Slovak teachers voted for writing and speaking. This reminds me of an exchange I had with a Romanian teacher when I gave a similar talk in Bucharest last May:

Gary:   What are the most difficult skills for your students?   

Teacher: The productive ones of course!

Gary:   Why?

Teacher: Because cooking is more difficult than eating…

A nice analogy (I asked the Romanian teacher if I could use it) and I agree with her. For example, my wife cooks our evening family meals during the week, but when I’m at home in Paris for the weekend I do the shopping and am supposed to cook one of the weekend meals. And, yes, I must say that it’s easier (and better!) to eat her cooking than to cook myself.

 We then alternated between looking at coursebook activities from the Objective and Complete series and Cambridge English exam tasks (mainly for FCE and CAE) for both receptive (reading and listening; i.e. input) and productive (writing and speaking; i.e. outcomes) skills. We finished with an ‘interactive’ speaking activity. (NB: The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages actually identifies five skills as speaking is divided into spoken ‘production’ and spoken ‘interaction’; Cambridge exams cover both parts in the speaking paper.) I gave the teachers a picture of various foods as a visual stimulus and asked them to plan a picnic together, a typical exam-type task and class/real life-like activity. Now, as one could expect (and I hoped!), some of the teachers took fried chicken on their picnics and some took boiled eggs—but they of course didn’t really care which came first (the chicken or the egg) when they were planning their picnics. Similarly—and my point—if teachers are using coursebooks such as Objective or Complete, they can both achieve their objective of developing the language skills of their learners while also satisfying what is often the (extrinsic) motivation of their students for exam training, tips and strategies. In other words: language development and exam preparation; ‘Cambridge ELT books for Cambridge English exams’; the chicken and the egg.

BTW: After my talk, a Danish English teacher in Bratislava told me that apparently some American scientists investigated the quandary of ‘Which comes first: the chicken or the egg?’ and came up with an answer. Guess I’ll have to do a Google search to see what they found…

What are the most difficult skills for your students? Are you able to develop their language while also preparing them for exams?

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

My first trip this new year 2011 was in and around my hometown, Paris. (I guess I can call Paris my hometown now as I have lived here longer than I did in either Kansas City where I grew up, or Boston where I studied.) Paris, by the way, as you may know or remember if you’ve been here, is made up of 20 arrondissements, or districts, with the 1st in the city centre (think: Notre Dame de Paris, kilometre zero and from where distances to and from the French capital are measured) and with the other arrondissements radiating outwards and around, sort of like a snail’s shell, from the older, inner parts of the city to the newer, outer parts.

Anyway, I had a busy week doing seven talks on seven different topics and travelling around the big city: from the 3rd arrondissement (where I used to live) to La Grande Arche at La Defense, the business district outside Paris where all the skyscrapers are (except for the Montparnasse Tower in the 14th where I used to work) to events at Librairie Attica (conveniently located for me in the 13th arrondissement next to the 12th where I live now).

The big event at Attica attended by about 70 teachers was billed as a ‘Dynamic Breakfast’ and featured Mark Powell, author of Dynamic Presentations, the first title in the new Cambridge Business Skills series, giving, well, a dynamic presentation entitled ‘Dynamic Presentations: A Performance-based Approach’. Then, after coffee and croissants, I gave a talk on English Unlimited, the new general English course for adults now complete with six levels from Starter (A1) to Advanced (C1). And then the event finished with a champagne cocktail. (Ah, France…)

You know, I really believe when you’re giving a presentation you have to first and foremost be yourself and let your personality come through – sort of the same as you do when you’re teaching, right? Of course there are certain presentations – and teaching – techniques to learn, practise and teach your students (structuring the talk/class; having a good beginning and ending; using clear visuals, slides, board work) and good habits to make (speak naturally and remember to pitch and pause your voice) and bad habits to break (not too much hmm-ing and uh-ing). Mark was demonstrating those as well as using YouTube clips of good and bad presenters. If you’d like to see Mark in action, you can go to his YouTube site, Mark Powell, to view parts of his plenary at the last November’s BESIG conference in Germany.

I don’t know if my Parisian presentations were ‘dynamic’ – if you attended one, please comment; and if you didn’t…well, you can tell me after one of my presentations when we meet on my upcoming travels.

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer