Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: We wanted to create something that, that would suit our particular circumstance. Kate was very strict, actually. I remember her once saying, this is not up to the English vowel standard. Suddenly I said to Kate, I can't do this. It was for all of us. It was for our colleagues and our friends. I think that as you want English for anything more than translating a text or whatever it is, then I think you do want the sort of material that English Bio has.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Welcome to this special edition of Talking elt. Today we're diving into the minds behind one of the most loved ELT coursebooks from around the world, the course renowned for getting students talking English Files. I'm joined by Christina Latham Koenig and Kate Tsumaki, two of our wonderful authors of the English File series. Now, in this episode, we're going to find out more about our authors, including their backgrounds, what motivates them and what makes them tick, as well as finding out a bit more about how English File came to pass and the launch of the fifth edition this year. Right, well, let's kick off. Christina, how did you get involved with English File?
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Well, I was teaching English in Spain at the British Council School in Valencia, and one of my colleagues there was Clive Oxenden, who was also teaching.
And he and I were friends, we were colleagues, we very much liked the way each other taught. So we sort of. We had the same attitude to teaching. And Clive, in fact, was the person who got a contract from Oxford University Press with another teacher who was in fact our director of studies at that time, Paul Seligson. And he and Paul got a contract to write a two level beginner and pre intermediate course.
But after a few sort of a slightly complicated period where they were sort of finding their way, it turned out that they needed a third person. And Clive asked me to get involved. And I'd always been very keen on the idea of writing because I did a lot of. Well, like all teachers, I did a lot of materials creation and also because the material that we were using in Spain at that time didn't really work for us. And we wanted to create something that would suit our particular circumstance, which was teaching in a monolingual classroom.
And so Clive asked me to join the project and I joined the project. And that was a long time ago. That was the first edition of Englishphile. And I've just carried on ever since.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: How fabulous. There's so many things to unpack in what you've just said there, Christina, but I'll come back to you in a moment. Kate, what about yourself? How did you get involved in English File?
[00:03:17] Speaker C: Well, I started.
I'm an editor, basically. That's my sort of career, my career experience. So I did a little bit of teaching, having done a modern languages degree. And then I went into ELT editing and I started work for Longman, which is now Pearson.
And then after few years I got a job at Oxford University Press specifically to be the first editor on a new beginners course that was going to be called Englishphile.
So I was sort of there right at the start, working with Clive and Paul in the very first instance to sort of help conceptualise the material.
And so we worked together for a little bit and then very soon Christina joined the team and, you know, we started that working relationship.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: My God, that must be going back a long time ago then.
[00:04:10] Speaker C: Yes, it's.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: How does this relationship then work?
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Well, I mean, Kate and I have known each other a long time.
We were quite scared of her at the beginning. You were always a bit scared of your editor and Kate was very strict, actually. I remember her once saying, this is not up to the English file standard. And she was quite right. And she made us completely rewrite a whole unit. I can remember exactly what it was, but anyway. But she absolutely knew what she was doing, so we respected her very much. And then I think very early on our relationship developed into friendship as well. And I remember some work trips, particularly one work trip actually, where Clive and I were doing a tour of Italy and we had a sort of a. We had to stay somewhere over the weekend and we were very lucky to be staying in Padua, which is very near Venice. And Kate came out to do some work with us in a nice place and we had a wonderful day in Venice, which is one of those memories that I always have of a mixture of work and pleasure. We've always known. We've always been very good at working very hard, but allowing ourselves treats from time to time to make the whole experience more enjoyable. And that has carried on over the last 30 years.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: I think it's a little bit about. You know, it sounds a bit frivolous in a way, but I think it's important to have that sort of bonding so that you really understand how somebody works when you're working very closely with them. And that editorial role is very engaged in helping the author write their best content. And I think you have to know how somebody thinks a little bit. And you don't really get to know people when you spend time with them, don't you? On work and off work as well.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: I absolutely Agree. But I just wonder, I mean, did you know that they were a little bit scared of you?
[00:06:14] Speaker C: Yes, I wanted them to be, yes. Yeah, it was important, I think. Yeah.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: But I think the other thing that's important here is that maybe partly because Clive and I were both living in Valencia, the editorial team always used to come to Spain for meetings. And so you'd come to Valencia several times a year. And that means that you're not just working together, but you're having meals out in the evening, you're doing a lot of socializing together. And I think that the whole experience, either with your co author or with your editors, does involve a lot of socializing. And that's where, if you become friends, it makes it that much more enjoyable.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: You know, I couldn't agree more. And particularly when you. When you think about an English file through the editions, I mean, one thing that really sparks my thought process is how creative it is and how in touch it is with sort of modern society, culture. And I suspect that all is part and parcel of you being able to get out there and understand, enjoying different landscapes, enjoying different ways of working and living through different cultures. And I wonder if that was encompassing part of that thought process of how it was conceived and how it's been adopted through those years and editions.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: I think it was very much so. And I think particularly it comes back to this business that we tended to feel that the course books that were being used at the time had been written by authors who were working in the UK with multilingual classes. And we found that, and this is particularly to do with getting students to talk that questions, you know, personalization questions, which would probably work very well if you had people from different countries talking about, you know, what's a good place to go in your town in the evening, what you like doing in your free time, talking a bit about your. Where do you live? All those questions are fascinating if I'm talking to someone from Japan, but if I'm sitting next to somebody in class who not only speaks my language, but lives in the same town, is about the same age, a lot of these questions were just really boring because you already knew the answer. And so we were very influenced, Clive and I, by the fact that we were teaching in Valencia and had previously also taught in other monolingual societies. And we wanted very much to be able to create speaking activities that would be fun for people who were from the same town speaking the same language. Because at the end of the day, that is what so many English language classes are. They're not the lucky people who happen to be learning in London or wherever with people from countries all over the world. They're in their classroom in Spain, Italy, Poland, Brazil, wherever, with a whole group of people who are often not only from the same place, but also more or less the same age and doing the same thing.
[00:09:15] Speaker C: And I think that, as well as that, I think something that you and Clive have always been particularly good at is putting your finger on the pulse of what people like to talk about. So it's being, you know, you're thinking about your students being people and you're often, when I'm working with you now, saying, well, what would I want to say in response to that question? You're definitely thinking about making it a conversation that would be a natural conversation that friends would like to talk about, which is motivating because it's something that the students kind of engage in and want to say as well as can say, you know.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: No, I completely agree. And I think also that it's a bit to do with the fact also that Clive and I had both had to learn Spanish. I think it's incredibly important to have had the experience of learning a language yourself. And in fact, over the years of writing Englishphile, I did advanced French class because I wanted to see what it was like being. I mean, I spoke French anyway, but I wanted to know what it was like being an advanced learner in the classroom. And then my greatest challenge was I decided to learn Polish because I had a Polish grandmother and there I was, a complete beginner.
And it was extremely difficult, but it put me in the situation of being a beginner and it made me think. It actually changed the way that we wrote the first beginner's book, because I remember the teacher giving me an exercise and saying, so these are the colors in Polish. Can you draw a line between the color and the word?
And I said, I have no idea, I don't know any Polish. And she said, come on, try. Which is exactly what we would always be saying to our students.
And it made me realise that actually, with a beginner, you just can't do that. You can't. We're always thinking about active learning and getting them to do things and getting the knowledge from the students, as it were. But if you don't have any knowledge at all because you're a complete beginner, that doesn't work. And then in the first beginner's book, in the vocabulary bank, we didn't ask them to match words and pictures, we gave them the words under the pictures, which they could then practice. But that all came from my experience of learning polish and realizing that it just.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Christina, that's so apt and relevant. And I'm gonna come on to talk a lot more about the process of how the methodology that sits underneath Englishphile. But before I get into that, I'm really intrigued by the thought process around how you were able to put new pieces of content, relevant content, to get people's engagement from the early editions and how, of course, we're now talking about the fifth edition. And I wonder if maybe you could contrast some of the content that maybe went into the. The older versions, which have now sort of changed through time to kind of make it right up to bang up to date to what's happening today.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Well, one thing that I think is very interesting, and I think that it comes from what Kate was just saying about that we were.
Well, Clive and I were always very much into reading newspapers and magazines. We always read a newspaper every day, in fact, two newspapers every day, because we wanted to get a balanced perspective. And that meant that we were very much in touch with what was, you know, sort of current things of interest and magazines. But one of the things. And so one of our criteria, actually. Sorry. Was to make sure that what we printed in what we had in the book articles would be things that students had to really want to read them. Because, you know, it's hard getting people to read at all nowadays.
But to get people to read in a foreign language, you've really got to be motivated. So we always would ask ourselves, if this was in their own language, would they want to read it? And you'd be surprised how often the answer would be no, in which case, don't use it. But thinking of material from the very first editions to now, I'd say that one interesting thing is that articles or topics that are of intrinsic interest get used again and again and again and reappear all the time. There are a couple of examples I can give. One of them is the best time of day to do things. The best time of day for your body, all this chronobiology or whatever it's called now. And we had an article of that in the very first edition of English File Intermediate.
And we've got an article much more advanced scientifically, I suppose, but an article along those lines in fifth editions, a recent article printed, you know, written in 2024.
[00:14:08] Speaker C: It's interesting how these things come up again. If you just. If where you're drawing your material from is. Is a whole range of contemporary Sort of sources like the press and magazines and kind of later on websites and podcasts and that kind of thing. Those topics come up again and again and again over 20 years, but they're updated, they're updating themselves. So you're, in a way, you're updating your content by just repicking something which is essentially around the same topic and then that updates the topic.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: And it's also because that topic is still relevant, is still relevant and particularly good for teaching present simple, because it's talking about your daily routine. And so it then works brilliantly for you after you've read an article about what, what the best time of day is to do things to, you know, to eat your lunch, to do exercise, whatever, then you talk about what you yourself do. It gives you a context for it. And another example where we, again, we thought it was a very good context for the language, which was comparatives and superlatives, was using transport and races.
And again, in the first edition, we had an article from the newspaper about a race across London where they used a bike, a car, a bus and the tube or something like that. I can't now remember the exact details. And they got them to race.
[00:15:34] Speaker C: Well, is that the Jeremy Clarkson thing?
[00:15:36] Speaker A: No, that was before that. That was in the first edition.
Then that morphed into Jeremy Clarkson and one of the Top Gear ones. And now in the fifth edition, we've got, including with authentic content from the video of the people who did it, a travel company who did. When the Elizabeth Line opened, this new London transport line, they set up a race to get from Central London to the airport to Heathrow, and they used the Heathrow Express, the Elizabeth Line and the Black Cabin. And so it's exactly the same idea and as what we were using. But this time we've been able to do it with all the prediction stages that we did before, but we've also been able to very conveniently to get hold of the video so that they can actually see the people doing it.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: I'm intrigued as to who won the Black Gab, the Elizabeth.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: Oh, well, you'll have to do that.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: But we actually even thought there that that might even be relevant to students at some point in their lives. They now know the cheapest way, the quickest way and the great.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: You know what provoked my thought there was around. How do you judge compelling content? How do you judge what's really going to work for students all around the world?
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Well, it sort of comes partly from instinct, I think of. I do think that now, particularly after all this time. I mean, bear in mind, when we started writing, we'd been teaching for a long time, so we had a very good feel of what worked. We'd been using course books with exercises, texts in them. We could spot a boring text from a mile away, and we knew we had a good.
A good eye for that. But it did tend to be the sort of thing that you would find in the magazines and newspapers of the time, and the sort of things that people would print, particularly maybe in magazines, you know, is what they would think that youngish people would be interested in reading. So there was a lot of that.
[00:17:48] Speaker C: It's often related to what humans are interested in, not necessarily to where you come from or what context you're living in as well. It's something that's a common thread that, you know, regardless of where you're learning English or.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: You know, I do find that really interesting, and particularly because, I mean, English file is such a global phenomenon that in some respects it's. I would almost imagine that it's quite difficult to put your finger on what could work in different places and spaces.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Well, I think that it's because it's so based on human interest. That is precisely why it does work. And it's true that, you know, in the beginning we had a lot of knowledge of Spain and Spanish students. We really knew what made them tick, and so that was relatively easy. But I once. Sort of the most remote place where I ever tried out English file material was in Mauritius, where I was partly for family reasons, but also I was doing some teacher training there. And I was very concerned that the material would be too Eurocentric. It would not really work for them in the way that it did that it did in Europe or in South America, you know, the places that I'd been to, it worked in exactly the same way. And the same material that students got interested in in Spain or Italy or wherever they got interested in Mauritius, and they got talking animatedly about exactly the same topics. And so I think it is. It's human interest. It's.
[00:19:23] Speaker C: I'd also say that whenever. And this is something I've discovered, not so much that I understood when I was working as an editor, but working alongside Christina and trying to learn how she thinks when she's writing things that you. You've always got your classroom in mind. So whenever you're thinking about writing anything, you've always got a Spanish student or a particular class or how that's going to work in the classroom. It's coming from you imagining Yourself being a teacher, teaching each stage of the material as you choose it, as you write exercises for it, and deciding whether it's going to work or not at any stage. And because it works for then, for that Spanish student, that Spanish class say, because it's got that human interest element too, it's then very transferable to any situation, I think. But you've always got to focus when you're writing something. I thinking about how I'm going to teach it, I think that's why it's so successful.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: But I think also one of the things that, again, made me and Clive slightly different as authors at that time was, first of all, that we were not teaching in the uk, we were teaching abroad. And secondly, that we had never become.
We'd never got promoted into managerial positions. We never wanted to be directors of study or we wanted to teach. We wanted to be in the classroom. And between us, we must have clocked up hundreds of thousands of hours of teaching experience and we really enjoyed it. You know, we were very happy teaching. And so I think that, you know, and this is not true in general of all authors, and in fact, I always remember when we were just after we'd written English File, and we were at some OUP event, and somebody who was quite a successful author at the time said to us, you don't mean to say you're still in the classroom, because we were teaching and writing at the same time. But we felt that that was what gave us the edge in the sense that we did. We took material as we were writing it, we took it into the classroom and tried it out. And so the first editions were piloted by us. You know, we'd go into the classroom, photocopy the articles or whatever it was, chop them up, try them out, and then come back and talk to each other and say, yeah, this worked a dream, or we need to tweak this or we need to tweak that. But so we had lots of teaching experience. And it's true that in a way that never leaves you. I can still see the faces of some of the students that I, you know, that I worked with or that I spent a lot of time with.
[00:22:09] Speaker C: Yeah. So you're not just writing in a vacuum. You've always got that, who am I doing this for? Which I don't think is, you know, having worked with an awful lot of authors over my career as an editor, it's quite rare, actually, surprisingly enough, to have that focus about who you're writing for.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: I think it's so great to Hear and ultimately it, you know, that it shines through in English file than what you've been able to produce, you know, just being completely learner, centric. And when you say having that teaching hat on in everything that you do is just, it really does make a huge difference. And I wonder perhaps if you've got teachers out there listening in right now, how would you say is the best way to help them use Englishphile for the benefit of their students?
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Well, I mean, number one, I would say is adapt, because I think that every classroom situation is different. So I think that you're always adapting. However, for me, using a coursebook is a bit like a new coursebook. For example, it's a bit like when you're using a recipe the first time. The first time I use a recipe or I read one that I like, I do it exactly, I follow the instructions exactly, I use the exact ingredients, I don't really change anything because I want to find out it works.
And up to a point I'd say with Englishphile, if you're using a level or whatever or the course for the first time, I think it probably is really helpful to read the teacher's book. A lot of courses the teacher's book is less, is more, just a collection of keys. But we wrote the teacher's books trying to make, to put in every single idea that we had to make the teaching of that lesson more enjoyable. Extra ideas, photocopyable activities, how to actually stage the listening or the reading or whatever it was. And so we spent a lot of time on our teachers books or guides, I think they're now called. And so I would say that the very first time, it's absolutely worth it. From then onwards, do what you wish with it, you know, change it and reorder it, etc. But I think that the first time and also you'll sort of see better where we were coming from. I think it sort of explains sometimes the teacher's guide, why we did something in a particular way. So I would say do that first and then change the recipe, make it your own.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: I love that. And Kate, what are you most excited for about the fifth edition?
[00:24:47] Speaker C: Well, I think, I mean, I'm loving the video.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:24:52] Speaker C: That was well new for Englishphile to have it so integrated and the whole process, we've said many times when we've been sort of discussing how much we've been enjoying working on the fifth edition, that the video is new for me and it's also brand new for Chris. So you've got A sort of something new to kind of get engaged in that you didn't know about before either. So I'm sort of learning how Chris writes more by working with her, but also we're working together on sort of brainstorming ideas and thinking about how we can make this new integrated video part of it fun. And that's really fun for us to be excited about, actually. You don't just feel you're working your way at doing an awful lot of exercises and doing the same thing again. It's brand new for you.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: No, we've been learning something new. And there is nothing more fun than that, actually. Because if you think from my perspective, I'd written English File now four times, and although we changed it every time, and there was always new things, new ideas, new material, etc. Even so, that's quite a long time of, you know, writing a book with audio and with articles and with a little bit of video, but not that much. And with this edition, there's so much, not just new material, but new ways of doing things because of the use of the video. And we've learned an extraordinary amount from it.
[00:26:23] Speaker C: I mean, it's new processes, and not only new processes in terms of actually how physically to make little videos and lots and lots of different kinds of little videos, different genres of videos and all the different ways of using those, but also sort of trying to understand how to exploit them in a way which really maximizes what the students are seeing. So, you know, very, very different. Instead of listening material, there's often video instead now, but you're having to learn how to give that to the student in a way that's really going to maximize the. The point of having a video at all. So using a lot of activities which involve them looking at what they're seeing, remembering what they're seeing on screen, as well as just understanding the audio.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Is there a particular example, perhaps, that you could.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Well, I think, you know, one of the things that we've learned is that. Well, I think a lot of teachers of my generation, we started using video a bit with great difficulty because they didn't have a video in the classroom and you had to sign it out and wheel it in or whatever. But we saw video as a replacement for audio. We'd been writing audio scripts for years. We'd been writing audio activities. We knew a lot about teaching, listening and exploiting it, etc. But we sort of treated video as if it was glorified audio. And we didn't really think of it as being something Completely different. And I do remember that. And another thing is that with this video, Kate and I, apart from writing all the briefs, have been massively involved in the filming of it all. We've been to every single thing that's been filmed and made sure that it's exactly as we'd envisaged it. But we went to the filming right at the beginning of elementary, one of the first bits of video that were being filmed, and we were sitting somewhere with a monitor because they were filming in another room or whatever, and we had the script. And so we thought when you go to audio recordings, you've got the script and one of your jobs is to make sure that they're saying exactly what you'd written.
And suddenly I said to Kate, I can't do this. I can't read the script and look at the video at the same time.
And then I thought, how often have we written a gap fill exercise for video where students are supposed to be watching the video and reading the sentences and getting the right words in? You can't do that. True, you can maybe the second time you watch something, but you cannot the first time you watch something. It's got to be based on just watching it. Now, that hadn't really occurred to me until that moment.
[00:29:12] Speaker C: What we've got actually, is a lot of new types of exercises, in a way. I mean, they're not sort of new in that nobody has ever heard of doing them, but the way that the exercises now work with the video, they're much more varied, I think, and sort of much more.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Because there's so much more you can do, and you've got images as well, and things to look at, but I.
[00:29:31] Speaker C: Think fresh elements, not just in terms of having a piece of video to look at, but in the way that they're exploited as well, which is kind of really.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: No, that's why I feel that the fifth editions are much newer than any of the previous editions that we've done. Even though some of the material may be being reused from time to time, even sometimes where we're reusing material, we've transformed material that when we wrote it, we knew would be much better as video. Like dialogues. Yes.
Sometimes it was a really good dialogue. We love the dialogue. But now let's. Let's dramatise it. And they've absolutely come alive, some of them, I mean. And again, we've sort of tweaked them. Because then when you watch it, you realize some things work, some things don't. But some of the sort of Classic lessons of English viol, which we kept from teachers asking us, please, please keep the murder mystery lesson or whatever it is. We've kept them, but we've dramatized them and they're now transformed. And so I feel that the new editions are. I mean, these fifth editions with all this integrated video are way newer than, let's say, the difference between fourth edition and third edition.
[00:30:46] Speaker C: And I would say the whole process of doing this, it has been a lot of fun, hasn't it? It's been such fun. We have such a laugh sometimes, trying to, you know, coming up with an idea. Real excitement when you come up with a good solution for something that was a bit tricky or, you know, even just at the very basic stages of making some of these activity videos, which are vocabulary practice or grammar practice videos, you'd think, oh, it's just a grammar practice video, but actually just choosing all the bits to go into it. I mean, it's just such an enjoyable process that I hope that comes through in actually the material as well, that it's kind of, you know, it's been quite a thrill sort of going on the journey, if you like, and feels.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: Very different from anything that we've done. It's exciting, yeah, because, for example, we have used a lot of video for listening and so things that, like documentaries or whatever are now video documentaries and not this sort of thing or dramas, but we've also created all this new video material to help either present or practice grammar and vocabulary and to work on pronunciation. And that's something that we had never seen anywhere else, put it that way. And so we were really inventing all this for the first time. We were coming up with ideas of how can we make a really great grammar practice game using video? And so that's it. I mean, it's been very new, very fresh for us and I think it's been very motivating, particularly with the video, seeing the end result and thinking, oh, gosh, you know, this works so well.
I mean, it makes me want to go back into the classroom, which, you know, I'm not going to do, let's face it. But I certainly think I'd love to teach this.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: And, you know, going back or going to that point, it's all, all of this, all this excitement is. Is in service of genuinely making a difference to someone's language journey to help them progress in that journey. And I just, to that extent wonder if you've seen a shift in motivation in terms of how learners want and why the why behind they're Looking to learn English through these number of years and these editions, has that evolved and has that then sort of almost fed into your thought process as you've been developing these newer editions?
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Well, I think that we've seen it. What's been quite interesting in the history of English File is how we've seen the areas of the world where English has suddenly become important move. You know, when we started Spain and Italy, where the courses were the countries where everybody was learning English, you know, and then it shifted to Eastern Europe. This was after the, you know, when they were becoming more integrated in the west and they all wanted to learn English. And then it moved to the Middle east or Latin America. So we've seen it sort of traveling around the world. And I think now it's.
The big question I would say that there is today is to what extent is technology going to make learning a language unnecessary? But I think precisely the way English File works, which is that it is so human, and talking about yourself and discussing and communicating with other people, I think that makes it.
I think that is the sort of thing that machines are never going to replace. And so that. I think in that sense it's going to constantly be something that people want to be able to do. Because it's a bit like with business English courses, for example, people often used to say to me, it's not really the English for business that we need. What we need is the English to be able to talk when we go out for a meal afterwards with our clients. It's not the technical language, because actually we all understand that anyway. And in that same way, I think that as soon as you want English for anything more than translating a text or whatever it is, then I think you do want the sort of material that Englishphile has.
[00:35:07] Speaker C: Yes. And another aspect I think, is the sort of, you know, sort of move towards working remotely and having this sort of technological facility to have remote classrooms to study by yourself, that kind of thing, where actually it's quite boring working on your own. And so being able to use material which is interesting, which is fun, which makes you laugh, which really gets you involved in the content, where you want to sort of respond to it is important for that as well. If you're working away from a group or you're having to spend quite a lot of your contact hours on a screen, the content itself, you know, however it's delivered, the content has to be interesting. And I think that's why it's evolved with.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: And actually, that's another very good reason for why video is even more important because if you are doing an online class using great video material in your classroom is in your online class is going to make it. That really is going to sort of draw you together. You're remote and you're separate, but you're together. You're all watching the same thing at the same time. There's something very sort of unifying about that.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: I think that's such a wonderful point, quite frankly, you know, the thought that the format in which learners are embracing English file and various versions of content to learn English is changing. And I mean, it was that part of the thought process as you were evolving the book and behind the methodology to account for in classroom experiences as well as those.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: Because we weren't really aware of it before. I mean, we were aware, we knew that there was blended learning taking place and whatever, but not to this extent, of course. The COVID pandemic was something that made us all learn a huge amount about working remotely, about remote meetings, you know, who'd even knew about zoom calls before then, and chat, chat rooms in remote classrooms and whatever. I didn't know anything about it. And of course, now in these editions, we have constantly been aware of the fact that this is how it might be used and making sure that. So to give you an example where we were teaching classroom language at the lower levels, you know, can I have a copy, please? Or, you know, sorry, I can't see the board, this sort of language, we've now included a section on, you know, turn on your microphone and your, you know, mute yourselves, please, and etc. Because we're aware now that that is just as much a part of language learning. But we. But it probably was already before.
[00:37:43] Speaker C: I think it's a natural evolution, actually. I don't think anybody at any point has said, okay, we know that the course is going to go in this direction or that direction, and therefore we're going to push it that way. I think it's more reactive so that the course moves along, drawing on the resources and making sure that it's in touch with the students and teachers who are going to use it as a natural process of updating something, really. So all these sort of new things have come in as a result of people needing them.
And, you know, when, you know, you need something in your normal life, you realize that everybody else is going to need it when they're learning or whatever they're doing. So we incorporate these new things. You know, I think that is kind of natural evolution of doing a new edition, really. It sort of becomes aligned with the technology of the time. Really?
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: And we've been very lucky in the sense that all this new video was very much our own idea. It did not come from OUP saying, oh, you must do this or you should do this or whatever.
We wanted to do it. And we put forward a proposal to rewrite the fifth editions, including all this new video. And we were very lucky that OUP went along with it and said, yes, we think it's a good idea. We're prepared to help you to allow you to create it. But that was very much our own perception. And it was our perception because we could see how it would, particularly with the grammar and vocabulary and pronunciation that integrated video. There were so many aspects of language that we realized could be taught or communicated so much more easily through video.
We were, in fact, one of the times where we first thought about it. We were writing the highest level of English File Advanced plus, which Kate and I wrote together. This was the fourth edition, and we were going for a walk and chatting about it.
And we'd just written an exercise teaching different ways of movement.
So, you know, stride, stroll, creep, crawl, all these different verbs of movement.
And because there's no room in the book to have, you know, maybe we're teaching 50 items to have 50 different photographs. And anyway, a photograph doesn't really communicate movement in the same way. And we just. And so sometimes we'd have to use a definition. So stride means, you know, walk with large steps purposefully or whatever. And we just looked at each other and we said it'd be so much easier if we could just film somebody doing it.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: And that was one of the moments.
[00:40:40] Speaker C: It was kind of pivotal moments of where I thought actually that could work as the feature of the fifth edition.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: So I must say, let's go down memory lane for a few minutes here and even go back right to the beginning of the English File journey. Did you ever believe and think it was going to end up being such a powerful resource for so many people around the world?
[00:41:05] Speaker A: No, I had no idea. I mean, I didn't. All I knew was that I wanted to write. I really enjoyed writing. Clive and I worked very well together, and we did. You know, we thought what we were creating was good, and we knew it worked for us and for our context, but it was a learning process. I was an experienced teacher, but I wasn't an experienced author. And there were lots of aspects of writing that were completely new to me and that I had to learn. And so that I would say that throughout the years of writing English File, I've always been learning how to do it better with the help, I must say, of feedback from teachers. We've had loads of feedback from teachers and we've traveled out and we've done focus groups and we've talked to people and the sort of combination of what we've learned ourselves and the feedback that we've had at the way the world's moved on is what has allowed us to carry on creating new editions. But no, I had no idea in the beginning that, you know, I didn't. I think that most people have no concept of an educational book becoming a best seller, as it were, of its kind, because you just don't think about it in that way.
[00:42:25] Speaker C: It does work in a similar way, though, to a sort of, you know, word of mouth success, then becoming a, you know, snowballing a bit. I think it's a very classic shape, if you like, in terms of sort of sales and marketing that you. If you get a really good product that is sort of endorsed from the, from the, from the beginning by the. Those genuine users, you're building on something that's really sound. You're not simply giving a marketing message around something that's a bit average. So having, you know, having got Clive and Christina there and knowing that the product was good, the challenge really was to kind of make sure that the publisher invested in the right way at the right time to really capitalise on that really excellent project that teachers were all saying, God, have you used this course? It's great. And not many people have heard of it at that time. And then Clav and Christina and then, you know, over the editions, it's refined and refined and refined the formula without losing what, what is really at the heart of what makes it so good, which is this sort of, you know, huge amount of teaching experience that underlies every decision that's in it. But, but I think it's, you know, it's sort of. It's grown by an awful lot of hard work from a really good but very unknown product into something that everybody at OUP and the authors and so on have refined to make it better and better and better each time.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: So it must be an amazingly proud moment to walk into a classroom and see, see the program being used in all its glory.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: Oh, it is.
[00:44:01] Speaker B: It must be a fantastic feeling.
[00:44:03] Speaker A: And it's very moving to get feedback from teachers saying that, you know, that English trial has helped them to.
I mean, I got an email, a message on LinkedIn the other day from a teacher in Turkmenistan. Now, I wasn't entirely sure where to. I mean, I knew vaguely where it was, but it's certainly not a country that I have any knowledge of or any experience of.
And it was a really moving letter where he said that it had transformed the lives of English teachers all over his country. And I thought, gosh, you know, we've had so much more of a reach. I mean, I would never have believed that anyone had even heard of it in Turkmenistan, let alone be influenced by it. And I have had a lot of feedback from teachers where they have.
They've said that they felt that their teaching improved as a result of. And obviously, hopefully the language of the students had improved as a result of using the course. And that has been, for me, one of the most motivating things about writing it in the first place, to feel that you helped teachers to give better classes. Because there's nothing more satisfying as a teacher than to walk out of a classroom at the end of a class and think, gosh, that was a really good class.
[00:45:36] Speaker C: A good course book is a teacher training manual, really. And I think to have a course book that people come back to because it helps them be a better teacher is a really massive thing to be proud of. Because, you know, it's not just you're selling a book to someone, it's that you're helping them to do better what they really want to do, and they're learning as they're using it. And you're coming back to the teachers book that you mentioned earlier. I mean, teachers books, people who use the teacher's book, I think will get an idea of what it's like to be Christina, for example, when they're using the fifth edition, because all her expertise is in that teacher's book. And it says, you know, do it in this order. Here's an idea. You could add this in. You don't need to worry about that. I'd do this if I were you. That's the sort of tone of it. And using that, I think it is really. Because I think it's your voice, really. And you're saying, you know, I would advise you to. To do it this way. That's really what it.
[00:46:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:32] Speaker C: What it's getting across. But I think that's what actually comes through to your. Your very. You know, that lovely letter from Turkmenistan where that person has got the message, you know.
[00:46:43] Speaker A: Yeah. No, but I mean, say, for me, that was just. I couldn't quite believe it, because I couldn't quite believe that it was it was a particularly lovely letter, but it was also, I say, so remote from anything.
[00:46:57] Speaker C: I think that is what it comes back to what I was saying about sort of the brand, if you like. It is a bit like any successful brand, you know, Google is in Turkmenistan.
[00:47:04] Speaker A: You know, I'm not equating the two.
[00:47:06] Speaker C: Do you know what I mean? It's sort of something that sort of spread its fingers out and now has become almost a norm for people. They're sort of one they'll reach for because they've heard of it and it sort of worked its way into their particular environment.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: But also the teacher training, sorry, the teacher training side of it was also something that we were incredibly conscious of ourselves because we were both teaching 24 hours a week, which was quite a lot. We were teaching, I mean, I was teaching from 3 in the afternoon till 10 at night, non stop. So you had this very short period of time in between classes to rush out, get your next set of books, remember where you were, what you were doing, get your register, rush back into the classroom. And so a book that really helped you to teach, it wasn't just aimed at inexperienced teachers, although we did very much have less experienced teachers put it that way in mind. But it was for all of us, it was for our colleagues and our friends who simply because of the way that teaching of English was organized in those days in our context and probably hasn't changed very much since then, meant that you just didn't have enough time in between different classes, different levels to have necessarily got everything at your fingertips. And a book that really helped you do that and a teacher's book that really helped you with that was gold dust for us. I mean, it really was. And so we were very much, you know, apart from having the students in mind when we started, we had our colleagues in mind.
[00:48:48] Speaker C: Something else I think is quite interesting actually, and I think it's something that's kind of invisible really for users of the book is all the different little decisions that go into making such a complex book, you know, and now with this set of extra videos, because if you're not familiar with the process of writing something and then the process of putting that into an illustrated textbook, I don't think you have any sort of real understanding of how complicated it is. I mean, it's a long process. It involves so many different decisions, doesn't it, on all the different bits and what goes where and then how to get those things. The choosing of every picture, every little clip in a video has all been done.
You Know step by step by step, every decision about every way that every line in the recording studio is delivered is supervised by editors, by authors, and making sure it absolutely is right in an incredibly meticulous way. And I'd say that OUP in particular puts an awful lot of energy into allowing those things time to be good and allowing us to spend time getting them right from our end at this level. And that level of complexity and devotion to getting everything really, really good, I think is really important to get across actually from the point of view of understanding what being an author means.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: Because I think that people think writing a book, I mean, they may think that all we do is write the expertise exercises, but we choose every single photo, we write the video scripts, we write the audio scripts, we go to the filming, we go to the recordings.
[00:50:35] Speaker C: Change a lot of things during that process. So look at something, if it's not right, it gets changed. You know, things will be re recorded, re filmed, tweaked all the time if there's something that's not quite working until it works. Which is why I think again, you've got a really quality book because.
[00:50:54] Speaker A: Because there's a huge amount of work in it. So that, for example, if you think of one video activity that is, let's say, for the sake of it, teaching the present continuous. And so we want 10 little video clips of people doing things in order to get students to say what's happening. And so then we've briefed and we've said, number one, somebody having breakfast, number two, people playing tennis, whatever. For each one of those, we get sent a choice of 10 clips, maybe, and we've got to choose the one that works best. So that means for that one little activity, we've had to look at a hundred video clips to choose the absolutely perfect video clip for our purpose.
It is hugely time consuming and in fact, one of the challenges with this fifth edition has been the amount of work which we hadn't predicted. I have to say that choosing all the video material has been because it's been massive. I mean, taken hours and hours of.
[00:51:56] Speaker C: Time, but a bit perfectionist as well.
[00:51:59] Speaker A: We were the only people who knew exactly what we wanted the video clip for. And a video clip researcher is not going to know exactly what the teaching purpose was of that clip.
[00:52:10] Speaker C: I can give you an example of that, which is the phrase going for a walk, right? Okay. So going for a walk, if you ask for a video clip, can mean hiking in the mountains or strolling in the park with your dog. Now, the meaning of going for a walk is actually really walking in the park with your dog. Going, walking is going for the hike in the mountains. So you can't get a video clip. That means one if you're teaching the other. And it's that kind of little niggly decision. It happens all the time. And if you're not really, really careful, it'll be wrong. But actually for Englishphile generally, I think, because we're kind of.
[00:52:51] Speaker A: I generally hope it is. All the things that you've gone through.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: Do you know what you're describing here is you're giving teachers a massive head start in the classroom because you're giving them this resource that you've literally spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds hours on perfecting every nuance so they get it right. Exactly. Isn't that amazing?
[00:53:13] Speaker C: That is absolutely right, yeah.
[00:53:15] Speaker B: And I love that thought about how much hard work and how much of your hearts have gone into actually this whole entire end to end process.
[00:53:23] Speaker C: Because that's the satisfying part of it, isn't it? Getting it right. And until you. Until you. And I've sort of learnt a lot of that meticulousness from working with Christina. I mean, I'm a meticulous person with an editorial hat on.
[00:53:35] Speaker B: I was gonna say there's an irony.
[00:53:36] Speaker C: There, but, you know, I think it's a different kind, isn't it? Sometimes I think something's okay. And Chris will say, well, actually that's not because it's not quite right for what we're trying to teach here. And so I've learned actually to, you know, to get better at what to spot, actually.
[00:53:55] Speaker A: I mean, I've been very lucky with my co authors because both with Clive originally and now with Kate and with Jerry, we've had very complementary skills. Clive and I were very different. I mean, we completely saw teaching in the same way, but as authors we were very different, wouldn't you say? I mean, you who worked with us as authors and I think I was a bit the big picture and wanting to rush ahead. And Clive was. He would get bees in his bonnet about particular things that we hadn't done quite right. And he was always right at the end. And the fact that he was like that was what made the book good because we didn't gloss over things, for example, and with Kate also, I think we've got very complementary skills in that. I have got obviously a huge amount of teaching experience, but Kate has a huge amount of editorial experience, which is another equally important skill. And not only editorial experience, but for example, is Incredibly, I was going to say is more literate than I am, but that's not exactly what I mean. But I think that she's probably got a much greater ability, I'd say, to adapt texts.
We've both got different skills.
[00:55:12] Speaker B: Yes, of course.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: But they really, really work well together, I think.
[00:55:16] Speaker B: I do. I love this thought. And as you say, it's this complementary skills of great teams coming together to really create the end to end package. And with, you know, we are absolutely, you know, the whole is the sum of the parts and actually it's all the richer for having a great, you know, level of people who get on together collegiate, working for the same goal but actually coming at it from different angles.
[00:55:39] Speaker C: Well, you're filling in gaps as well. I mean, I think where there are weaknesses in things is because somebody hasn't spotted that it needs sorting out. And the more different types of people you have on a team, I think the more you're likely to fill all the holes in and make sure that you've thought about everything.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: And also we've got a very nice mixture also, I would say, of common interests, which is great from point of view of enjoying our free time together. So we love going to the theatre and we like going out for nice meals and we like to go to concerts, so we have our little treats. But we've also got very different interests. So, for example, I'm much more interested in sport than Kate is, and Kate is much more interested in animals than I am. Do you know what I'm saying? But it means that there's always one of us who's prepared to take responsibility for a particular part of. So, for example, if it's choosing an image or a clip of sport, that will always be me.
[00:56:29] Speaker C: Yes. And Christina, I have to say that there is not a single spider in Englishphile because Christina has a terrible spider phobia. So if there's ever has to be.
[00:56:39] Speaker A: There is one very small spider, I.
[00:56:41] Speaker C: Can tell you in one edition, but I have to be the person who sort of does the checking for anything where there's a spider.
[00:56:47] Speaker B: Brilliant.
[00:56:50] Speaker A: No, that came up, in fact, very recently. We were working on something where there's a mention of a tarantula and I just refuse to have a video clip of a tarantula in it. No way.
[00:57:00] Speaker B: This has been a fantastic, really enjoyable conversation. So I'm going to come into the last question.
I mean, after all these additions and all this amazing hard work, what are you excited for next? Once this, the fifth edition, is out.
[00:57:19] Speaker A: There, well, Apart from having a bit of time to myself and spending more time with my children, with my grandchildren, what I would, what I'm looking forward to from in the point of view of English violin teaching is that I am hoping to finally, after all this period of writing and the period where we were not able to travel in the 2020, traveling and meeting teachers again and going and doing some, you know, not doing everything online webinars, etc. Because it's something that we, Clive and I used to do masses of. I mean, we traveled all over the world and did conferences and meeting teachers from so many different countries that we didn't have direct experience of teaching was so beneficial also to what we created. And so I am really looking forward to being face to face with teachers in real life meetings as opposed to on and out.
And so I'm hoping to be able to do as much of that as possible.
[00:58:29] Speaker B: Fantastic. And Kate, what about yourself?
[00:58:32] Speaker C: Well, I'm sort of a bit, kind of, you know, I'm just wondering what's going to feel like because it's been quite flat out for sort of four or five years doing this and it's very enjoyable having a sort of very busy schedule and having the these things scheduled in to sort of meet up and do things and have, have work. So I was slightly nervous about when it stops to be, you know, just to think what's going to, you know, I mean, there are plenty of things one, one could do. I don't think I'm going to go back to editing, I have to say. But yeah, no, I'm hoping that maybe.
[00:59:03] Speaker A: We can do some tramping together, talking to teachers and meeting teachers together because that would be great. That would allow us to combine work and pleasure as we've been doing over the last few years.
[00:59:15] Speaker C: However, not retirement, definitely not. Not doing nothing.
[00:59:18] Speaker A: No, I don't want to retire either, actually. I can't see the point. I enjoy what I do.
[00:59:22] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for both of you to come in today. It's been an amazing conversation and good luck with it all coming up soon.
[00:59:30] Speaker C: Thank you very much.
[00:59:31] Speaker A: Thank you very much, Richie.
[00:59:34] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to this special edition of Talking ELT podcast. The easiest place to learn about the big issues in English language teaching. Englishphile, the course renowned for getting students talking, is back with an enriched learning experience, including more video than ever before. With a proven methodology refined by continuous teacher feedback from around the world, Englishphile is at the forefront of English language learning.
To find out more about all the exciting new elements in the fifth edition and how it can help your institution stand out. Click on the link in the description below and get your free trial on Oxford English Hub. Thank you.
