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In demand, complete, flexible, varied, easy to use, personal, successful
... This is not a list of adjectives taken at random from the Cambridge
International Dictionary of English. They are the words that come to
mind when we think about The New Cambridge English Course, one of
the most successful English courses used by teachers in Krasnoyarsk.
 In
demand
For many years Russians used to learn English according to the LENOR
principle(Learning English for No Obvious Reason). Because of the Iron
Curtain any communication with English speakers was hardly possible some
ten years ago. After its fall, all of a sudden, we realised that we knew
a lot about the language but were not prepared to use it properly. Students
were more accustomed to doing a lot of grammar and translation exercises.
Everybody could easily explain how to form and use tenses in English rather
than answer a simple question: 'What do you do?' People clearly started
to feel the necessity of changing our traditional approaches in ELT. The
new purpose was to focus on teaching communication, especially on listening
and speaking. There arose another problem: the lack of communicative ELT
materials. The textbooks we had didn't satisfy our learners' requirements.
We needed an authentic course incorporating interesting, true to life
activities, tapes, videos, socio-cultural materials. This is when The
New Cambridge English Course appeared. In a very short period of time
it gained an audience and became very popular.
Complete
It is The New Cambridge English Course's completeness that many
teachers like so much. As a rule it takes time for a teacher to get used
to a course structure, just as it does for students. With The New Cambridge
English Course you quickly get used to how material is presented,
to the order of the tasks, and the general design. The course is complete
in itself, although each level may be used separately. Functions, Phonetics,
Grammar and Vocabulary are presented gradually in each unit, which helps
students develop their skills equally unit by unit. And this makes work
fruitful and effective.
It is a great relief for a teacher to have a complete set of material
ready to use. The essential set of Teacher's Book, Course Book, Practice
Book, Tests and Cassettes is completed by Readers and Video Sets for Levels
1 and 2. With all these components at your disposal you can start teaching
English with elementary students and work with the course through all
four levels right up to upper-intermediate.
Flexible and varied
These features are very important. Students are all different. So sometimes
you work really fast doing all the exercises easily and move rapidly through
the course. But sometimes you are stuck somewhere and realise that your
students need more practice on this or that. This is when either supplementary
material or extra time is needed. With The New Cambridge English Course
you need not worry about that. It is organised so that you may always
choose to follow the course without changing anything, or you can adapt
it to your learners' needs. So you may be as creative as you want, and
still stay within the syllabus. Such an approach is especially important
when you are dealing with complete and false beginners. In the early stages,
translation exercises may be of great use.
Another reason why we prefer to start with The New Cambridge English
Course is because Level 1 (elementary) is actually starter and elementary
combined. (The supplementary teacher's notes Teaching Real Beginners
by Peter Bereza make this even more obvious.)
No doubt it is rare to be teaching a homogeneous group. Some students
always know a bit more and learn a bit faster than others. It is very
important for the students to have topics which interest them, and this
is what The New Cambridge English Course offers. Teachers may choose
the pace which is suitable for individuals within the group.
Another reason is that it suits learners of various ages. The variety
of topics and richness of content engage the interest of young adults
of 14 as well as adults of 50 or so. So from the point of view of students'
age and abilities the course is universal.
Easy to use
I have never heard so much praise about any other Teacher's Book in my
life. One needs to be a teacher to understand what teachers want from
a manual, and The New Cambridge English Course Teacher's Book deserves
all the praise it gets. We appreciate the spiral binding and the combination
of the Student's Book with Teacher's Notes. Sections like Possible Problems,
Cultural Differences, Test Administration are of great help especially
for young and inexperienced teachers.
The New Cambridge English Course is also easy to use for students. The
new material is always presented gradually and in a variety of different
situations so the students pick up the words without any effort. The principle
of Ôno new material at home' also works wonderfully with all sorts of
students. It also develops responsibility for studying. Students have
a special homework set, including: Student's Book, Practice Book, Readers
and Student's Cassette.
Personal
I would call The New Cambridge English Course a personal course.
This is another thing which makes it so special and popular among the
teachers here. The authors' personalities may be traced through the whole
course. You may find them in nearly every task, on every page. It may
be their son's voice recorded in a listening task, their likes and dislikes
in a reading section, and of course that particular sense of humour they
have. It makes working with the course feel as if you are communicating
with real people rather than a featureless textbook. So, while working
with the course, you are getting to know its authors in their absence.
I guess that was why I had a feeling I already knew Michael Swan, when
in February of last year, thanks to the effort of Cambridge University
Press and the British Council, he gave seminars in Krasnoyarsk. I guess
I was not the only one who felt the same. Two hundred teachers attended
the seminars which were a great success!
Successful
It takes just 4 hours to get from Krasnoyarsk to Moscow by plane and
then another 3 hours to get to the UK. The New Cambridge English Course
covered this distance within 3 years. It was the first communicative
English course to arrive in Siberia. It happened in 1994. Since that time,
it has been used, loved and cared for by dozens of English teachers all
over the region. On behalf of all Krasnoyarsk teachers who work with The
New Cambridge English Course we would like to give many thanks to
Michael Swan and Catherine Walter for the joy and satisfaction we have
working with the course, which has become one of the most precious gems
in the crown of Cambridge University Press. We have been working with
The New Cambridge English Course for five years. Within this time
it has become a good old friend, and old friends are the best.
Maxim Agahanov and Olga Kuznetsova, Krasnoyarsk Teacher's Teaching University
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