Our next very special April  guest in St.  Petersburg was Tonya Trappe who had been invited by Longman and the British Council. Those of us who teach Business English had a great pleasure to attend her two sessions: (1) Business Reading: the Forgotten Skill and (2) Using "Insights into Business".

Tonya Trappe is one of the authors of the business course book, "Insights into Business" (Longman). Before completing her TEFL diploma, she obtained a degree in economics from the Trinity College in Dublin. She has been teaching in France for 15 years. She is currently teaching and developing materials for the Leonardo da Vinci University in Paris and is working together with the other two authors of "Insights" Michael Lannon and Graham Tullis.

After the two sessions held in the Seminar-room of  Mayakovsky Library Tonya Trappe agreed for an exclusive interview for our readers taken by Tatiana Ivanova.

 Q: Thank you for giving your consent to answer some questions. I represent SPELTA, a professional association of teachers and my first question is: Are you a member of any professional association?
Trappe: Well, yes, I am a member of the BE SIG association.
Q: What is the role of professional associations?
Trappe: I think, the role is to provide teachers with a lot of back-up that we don't always get from other sources. We are just teachers, we are depending on our pedagogical advisors, to help us to plan programs and make them interesting and motivating. From the association you should get much more ideas and that's very helpful. I think, it provides us with a place to meet our teaching colleagues and it's a real way to exchange our experiences and we learn from our colleagues. We feel much more confident ourselves when we realise they have the same problems as us. It is very, very important. Otherwise we are isolated. It is a very lonely job. We can be very isolated as teachers, only working with our students, of course. But if we don't have the same time-table, in our university we don't meet our colleagues every day.
Q: The majority of our association are women as you might guess.
Trappe: Yes, it is everywhere with  language teachers.
Q: And women are very curious about backgrounds and personality. Please, tell us a few words about yourself.
Trappe: I am living in Paris now, because I am married to a Frenchman, that's probably the reason for my stay in Paris. I've also worked in North  Africa, in Algeria, as a teacher when I was a single young woman. I have two children, two small children, the eldest is six and the youngest is three. That's why I always like to say in my seminars: "Now, look, I know what your life-style is like, because, it's true, we're teachers at the moment, we're often in the universities, in companies as well, in private institutions as well, bringing up children... we do understand".
Q: Are your co-authors from France?
Trappe: American and English, Michael is American, Graham is English and we are all three teaching in France, we are a teaching team.
Q: What do you think are the main problems of teaching business English at a modern level?
Trappe: The problems facing the business English teacher today...The first one is that we have to realise that we are the experts, we are not business experts necessarily, but we are still language experts, we are still important. And what we have to do is we have to read regularly the business press, we have to take any interest in business, even if we are not at the start interested, we have to develop a genuine interest in business and find the parts in business activities that genuinely interest you and concentrate on that. And not be afraid,  I think we do lack confidence, because we are not business people. But I don't think that's important because, even if we go to teach business people in companies we should never feel inferior.  That person needs us more than we need them. Their whole future, professional future depends very often on what we can give them if we can improve the level of English, they need to get promoted. I think we should realise that we are important and we don't have to feel inferior or lack of confidence, because we are not business people, we are a very important element in that link between business people and the rest of the world.
Q: That sounds very optimistic, I should say. In what way in your opinion  is business English different from general English?
Trappe: Obviously it's a whole different set of concepts and vocabulary and it's  evolving and changing a lot more. If you are teaching general English,  you can teach, I don't know, any subject that interests you, if you are teaching business English you have to constantly update your information and even language is evolving, what you call buzz-words they have to be fairly understandable. With general English you can use the same materials for years and years and when it works, it works, but with business English you have to change the materials every single year. You have to have the basic course and then, I think, you have to supplement that course because your can't design the course that would be forever good you have to supplement that with texts that have just come out. When you take them interested  students you can get maximum.
Q: Are the tapes for your book authentic or a combination of authentic and non-authentic materials?
Trappe: Every single main listening exercise is with an authentic speaker, for some of the lead-in, or short listening exercises we've used actors. Because it is  so hard to disturb a professional business person and say: "Could you talk for two minutes?". For a short listening exercise it would be very embarrassing to ask them to give up their very precious time. But every single long listening or main listening exercise is  with professional people from business world.
Q: You mentioned earlier talking to the seminar participants that you sometimes lose control over your students. Do they often use their own language and what do you do then?
Trappe: First of all let us decide when they use their native language is it a very negative or a very positive thing, OK. Sometimes they use French (their native language) to try and understand what the task is and if it happens to understand the concept, I am not too strict on only using English. I think I let it happen sometimes. What I also do is I pretend I do not hear it, because I can't prevent them, but that is not what I call losing control. Not if they do the task even using French. I lose control when they stop doing the task and start socialising about some program on TV.
Q: So, you think it is still useful for the students to do the task even if they are doing it in their native language?
Trappe: I think yes, they do think properly, their native language is not dramatic if then they do the activity in English. It also depends on the level of the class you are teaching. If the students have a very good level of English, and you know they have, they are just being lazy. But some weaker students, I think,.. they need their own language to prepare for the activity.
Q: Do you use video as a part of your program?  There is no video com-ponent in "Insights into business".
Trappe: Yes, I do it a lot.
Q: Do you find it effective?
Trappe: Yes, I do, and I find it effective not necessarily because it is, first of all, but only because the students like it and motivation is the key element for this age group. If they want get a lot they do get a lot from it. But I think that if they liked listening to audio-cassettes as much, they would get more out of it, would pay less attention to video.  I think listening gives more for pro-nunciation and comprehension, ob-viously, but they do love video and it is difficult to compete with it.
Q: However sometimes students only think about video as about pleasure and don't find it very serious...
Trappe: Yes, of course. Well, the problem with video is that it requires hard preparation. You can't do video without your video work sheets. And you cannot even plan video work sheets without listening to, watching that is, the piece for twenty or twenty five times, and by the time you have done your worksheet you get sick  and you cannot bear watching it again. These are  time-consuming things to prepare. But if you don't do some, and some other teachers do it, the students say "Aha! they are watching video! ". So we have to do video these days. Have you tried "Business challenges"?
Q: No, not yet. I use Leo Jones "International Business English"
Trappe: Some of the units are excellent. Some of it, not all of it.
Q: What would you wish to our readers?
Trappe: Good luck with the new generation! The new generation of business students are very dynamic, are very ambitious, and we have to run to keep up with them, and they are more and more demanding. We used to think that teachers knew everything or students at least believed we did. Nowadays we have to prove our credentials,  because they have high ambitions and as business language teachers we have to be ready to answer that challenge.