Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

Problems in teaching Advanced English
Most learners of advanced English are adults, and they require
a different teaching strategy from that used with younger age
groups. On the whole they will learn more quickly as they have
been trained in learning for many years. Less demonstration is
called for, and more explanation, since an adult mind demands
reasons for things and a clear formulation of the principles
involved. Hence the constant requests from an adult class for
the ‘rules’ of English grammar. New knowledge and skills are
integrated into his personality rapidly, although there is often
the much greater rigidity which comes with age and mature
thought patterns and habits to take into account. An adult

---

Teaching English to Adults
196
learning a language from scratch will always have an accent, a
child may not. The danger in a predominantly explanatory
approach is that the adult might quickly pick up what he needs
to know about English, but his actual skill in using the
language falls far behind. This must not be allowed to happen,
unless he intends to become a theoretical linguist or
grammarian! Again, the teacher’s problem is to present his
material in varied and challenging ways. The following notes
deal with a limited selection of the difficulties widely
experienced by advanced learners. Most of them in fact are
problems of spoken, conversational English, and much of what
is said in Chapters 5 and 6 is relevant in dealing with them.
Register
Nearly all advanced learners have been schooled in standard
and formal English: very few in the informal registers. This is
all very well in the classroom, in business or any other fairly
formal situation of everyday life. But it is less than useful in
talking to a native speaker at anything beyond the most
polite level, and in listening to native speakers talking to each
other. If the student is not aware of this already, it is worth
playing a tape (e.g. that accompanying Crystal and Davy’s
Advanced Conversational English) of Englishmen talking
naturally together to demonstrate how useless the book
English acquired over so many years of painful study really is
in actual practice. A major task of the teacher is to develop
an awareness of different styles of English. This awareness
must then lead to sensitivity to appropriate use in different
social situations.
The feeling for appropriacy can only be developed over a
considerable period. There is no short cut. Students should be
encouraged to question as words arise and to assign style
labels to them. The teacher also must ask where a new
expression might normally be found and how it is used. Apart
from developing in his students a general sensitivity to the
register of words, the teacher will have to spend a good deal of
time plugging the gaps in his students’ knowledge. This will
often mean, for instance, teaching colloquial English and
contrasting it with the standard or formal, which will be

---

Teaching English to Adults
197
already known. One way to do this is to take a text with a high
incidence of colloquial lexis and structures (a play, or
transcript of a conversation) and read it through first for
general meaning. Then, by judicious questioning, the meaning
of the new vocabulary can be elicited from the class, and
explained where necessary. It is always useful to compare what
other modes of expression the author or speakers might have
used in a contrasting situation (an office, a school, a formal
reception, a lecture, a church) to put across the same meaning.
It is valuable then to give other contexts where the new lexis is
used, to build up in the learner’s mind its meaning and
associations. Practice is very important, so an exercise to
rewrite the passage being studied in more formal style and
writing natural dialogues using the new words are both useful
devices. A more difficult exercise is to attempt to rewrite a
formal passage in familiar and intimate style.
A sense of appropriacy is not of course restricted to
informal/formal language. There are many other varieties of
English which exhibit their own peculiar characteristics.
Newspapers, particularly the more popular ones, use a
distinctive variety of English of their own, ‘journalese’.
Sentences are short in length and not very complex in
structure, the vocabulary is concrete and direct. Quite the
opposite is the language of the Church and the Law, with its
antiquated flavour expressed by unusual words (oblation,
genuflection, tort, etc.) and complicated syntax. At the more
advanced levels, the student needs at very least an awareness
of these varieties and others. A basic book for the teacher is
D. Crystal and D.Davy’s Investigating English Style.