Michael Swan and Catherine Walter, the two world famous ELT authors and lecturers were in St. Petersburg on the invitation of Cambridge University Press and the British Council and lead three sessions, on 20-21 April, 1998, dedicated to their book The New Cambridge English Course.

The first session of 20 April was on communicative grammar teaching and was held in the Seminar room of Mayakovsky Library. The second one, in the late afternoon, started with a panel talk "Teaching speaking and listening with New Cambridge English Course", was followed by a reception given in honor of the renouned couple by the organizers in the British Council Resource Center and was concluded by a round table discussion  with the Course users from secondary schools and universities of St. Petersburg,  where the Course authors received feedback on their books and heard various suggestions and comments from the teachers.

On Tuesday the 21st  there was a session devoted to teaching vocabulary with NCEC. Regretfully, a lot more people would have been happy to attend, but could not do so because of their own teaching classes.

At the end of the first, very busy day, Michael Swan and Catherine Walter greed to give an exclusive interview for SPELTA Newsletter readers. The following is a transcript from tape written by Tatiana Ivanova, SPELTA Vice-President, who was also the interviewer.
 

 Q: Your books and this course in particular have started a new epoch in language  teaching methodology: they have been revolutionary, they have made people realize the undeniable advantages of communicative approach; there is an army of your followers today. Obviously, this approach is at its peak at the moment. What do you think is to be the next stage?
M.Swan: It is a very difficult question, really. When something is at its peak I am a bit concerned, since I realize nothing can stay long. Are we going to pay the same attention to fluency, accuracy, all the other things we have been talking about today? What is next, your guess is as good as ours, I think. I am sure there won't be very much progress in language teaching until we know more about what goes on in people's heads when they learn languages. We don't know very much about that yet, and perhaps we need a breakthrough in psycholinguistics before we get a serious breakthrough in language teaching methodology or
Catherine Walter (continues): several breakthroughs in several areas of psycholinguistics. I think psycholinguistics is liable more and more to inform.
M.Swan: But, actually, although in a sense our books have seemed like a big step forward for many people but there isn't a lot in them that wasn't already around in one way or another. What we tried to do is to put together into the main course material ideas we had developed ourselves or had met around the world which already existed but often in supplementary material in one form or another or in teacher's practice. What happened yet, we integrated it sensibly and restructured in a sound way into course materials.
Q: As far as I know, Level 4 is the last one until now. Are you going to continue, to publish Level five one day?
M.Swan: In France when somebody comes up to you in the street with a charity collection box the correct answer is "I have already given. We gave at the office". We have done what we feel able and willing  to do, and we both are moving other directions. We certainly wouldn't want to write another level of the course. We would leave it to somebody else.
Q: When you mention the development of other areas of psycholinguistics, like neurology or psychic research, do you feel prepared to take all that and  integrate it into something quite new?
C.Walter: I am at the moment doing research in psycholinguistics on certain aspects of how the memory is used in reading. I am looking at the same people reading in their first language and reading in their second language. I am looking at quite a technical level of memory functioning, and seeing if I can find out some things that will help, that will have application in second language learning. That's the sort of things I was talking about.
Q: Has anything of your research  been published yet?
C.Walter: Not yet, but watch this space.
M.Swan: And as far as teaching materials are concerned we have recently published what must be something like our twenty fifth book, How English Works and enough is enough.
Q: Is it the name of a new book?
(Everybody is laughing)
M.Swan: That will be a possibility for our twenty sixth book!!!
Q: What do you think is the role of professional associations of teachers? Can they be of help? Are they needed?
M.Swan: I got a great deal of my training from attending meetings of different professional associations. For me as a consumer, yes, they have been enormously valuable and gave me a lot.
C.Walter: I think, they are extremely valuable not only for the links they can forge, in the communications that they can facilitate among teachers in the same area, but also because of the links they can establish between teachers in one area and teachers in another area, teachers in one country and teachers in another country. Professional associations are enormously useful to teachers all over the world, I have seen so many ways in which they help people out, and often unexpected ways. The more links you make, the more unexpected benefits you derive.
Q: Are you both IATEFL members ?
M.Swan, C.Walter: Yes we are.
Q: How do the Russians speaking English sound to you? What is the most peculiar thing?
M.Swan: No, nothing sounds peculiar. How you respond to an accent is a very personal thing, I think. Individuals like some accents and don't like others. We both like the sound of Russian accent. The thing that strikes one most is the vowel glides, I suppose.
Q: Yes, we are weak with vowels. It's floppy speaking.
C.Walter: No, it's not floppy. It's charming. The thing is that some accents strike the wrong cord with English speakers because some accents sound like something that carries meaning in English, for example some accents have a certain intonation pattern, which sounds abrupt in English and when people perfectly innocently use their intonation and stress pattern in English they sound to a native  English speaking person like if being arrogant and bossy, this doesn't happen with any aspect of Russian accent.
M.Swan:  As we were saying earlier this day, we both like the sound of the Russian accent
Q: Have you heard anyone today who speaks without an accent?
C.Walter: Nobody in the world speaks without an accent at all. I was on the train the other day and one man started to talk to me and said he was surprised that I haven't lost my accent since I have been living in Britain for seventeen years. And he was speaking as if there was English with an accent and English without an accent. But it doesn't exist. Everybody has an accent. Michael has an accent. I have an accent, you have an accent.
M. Swan: But you probably meant: have we met anybody here who sounds like a native speaker?
Q: Yes. A Russian that sounds like a native speaker.
M.Swan: In the one day that I have been here - no.
C.Walter: But I have met Russians who did speak as if they were native  speakers, surprisingly.
M.Swan: Yet, it is very unusual...
C.Walter: It's unusual. The thing is I think you must make a distinction when you are learning a language...Someone was talking to me about pronunciation only today. I think it is very important if you are a language  teacher. They were asking me about teaching pronunciation to their students and what can they do to help their students have the better accents especially with "th" sound. I said: Well, let us look at your students. What are their aims of learning English? Are they planning to be spies? She said no. And I said well, then they don't need a perfect accent.
    I think you have to distinguish between model  and target in pronunciation. Obviously when you give them a good English language textbook and you play the tapes you are giving them as a model good British English or good American English depending on which textbook you are using. But that's a model, that's not a target.
    Your target for your students is to speak like an educated Russian speaker of English and that's not only good enough that's perfect.
M.Swan: That's what they are. Your accent says we are from where we come from.  And there's something rather strange about a foreigner, whose accent says, "I am from Manchester" or "I went to an English public school," or "I am from Boston", because that is not true. Whereas somebody whose accent says, "I speak English well and I am from Hamburg" or "I am from St. Petersburg or Madrid" is using English honestly and realistically  and appropriately.
Q: Aren't you afraid  that the tendency of using various multinational accents in English books may lead to confusion? I mean learners would not know what to imitate. Of course there must be a way to listen to various accents, but students tend to imitate what they hear, they might be confused and imitate the wrong accent.
C.Walter: Well, I can not speak for other books, I can only speak for our book. In our book the model is British English and we make a very clear distinction between exercises that are for receptive use and exercises that are for imitation, for productive use. All of the exercises that are there to help teach students to speak are in Standard British English.
M.Swan: And  certainly with our courses  I would be surprised if people got confused because I think it's very clear what they are supposed to imitate and what they are only supposed to understand.
I can add a short anecdote. When I was running a language school in Oxford we needed a new beginners teacher and we got an application from a Canadian. She was terribly good, she had wonderful credentials, exactly the right kind of experience, obviously a brilliant teacher, but we thought: "My God, how can she teach our students! They come to Oxford to learn British English - how can we give them a teacher with a Canadian accent?" Then we decided that  we would try and experiment and see whether her students will speak with a Canadian accent after six weeks. Actually, after six weeks  the Greeks spoke with a Greek accent, the Germans with the German accent, the Spanish students spoke with a Spanish accent just as before. I can exaggerate, but accents are not a problem.
Q: What are your impressions of St. Petersburg teachers?
M.Swan: It is hard to sum up the long day's impressions. Enormously enthusiastic, interested, dynamic, constructive, very, very concerned with the quality of their work and anxious to improve the quality of their work. It is lovely to work with an audience which starts so positive. We have traveled to a lot of countries around the world. In some places everybody sits there expecting to have a good time and you really have to work to make them hate you, in other countries they tend to sit there hating you at the beginning and you have to work to make them love you.
C.Walter (adds):... in some countries you cannot tell... It is nice when people react quickly, there is a lot of spontaneity and a lot of thoughtfulness too. That last session (feedback discussion) was enormously useful to us, and everything else we did during the day.
Q: What would you recommend to our organization for our professional development?
M.Swan: I think, your association is better able to judge than we are, in what directions it would be most useful for it to develop, but whatever those directions are, your association goes down that way with our very best wishes and hopes for the future.
Q: Thank you very much indeed. And all the best for the rest of your stay.