Beginners

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First published 1994

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One of the most exciting things about teaching beginners is the feeling that one is learning more than they are. I vividly remember several groups who taught me more than I taught them. In particular, I benefited from working with Judith Baker on a beginners’ course at Pilgrims some years ago. Since then, Judith and I have shared many beginners ideas and together discussed what a book like this should contain. I had hoped to work more closely with her on the book itself, but unfortunately it was not to be. She remains a silent partner in this endeavour.

I also owe a great deal to two former MA students at Durham. One is Ian White, whose perceptive dissertation on handwriting planted a seed. His influence is acknowledged more fully at the beginning of Chapter 5. The other is Anna Korea, whose deep understanding of beginners, and particularly child beginners, was an inspiration to me. I have included some of her ideas in this book.

There are several others to whom I am indebted, including British Council Summer School colleagues and participants at Durham, particularly Melanie Ellis, Printha Ellis, John Morgan, Valentine Philip, and Valentina Toocheva, who all made valuable suggestions on drafts of parts of this book which I gratefully acted on. I have also gratefully accepted ideas from a number of others, who are acknowledged in the body of the book.

Finally, I owe a great deal to Alan Maley, series editor of Resource Books for Teachers, and to the English Language Teaching division of OUP, and in particular to Cristina Whitecross, Anne Conybeare, Julia Sallabank, and an anonymous reader. Alan, Cristina, and Anne gave me the confidence to pursue this project and helped me to translate it into a better book than it would otherwise have been. Julia’s extremely acute comments on the various drafts and meticulous desk editing turned a whimsical manuscript into the book you are reading now. The remaining faults are mine.

Peter Grundy has taught in schools in Britain and Germany, has worked in higher education as a teacher trainer, and from 1979 to 2002 was a lecturer at the University of Durham, where he taught applied and theoretical linguistics to undergraduates and postgraduates and English for Academic Purposes to the University’s overseas students. He has had considerable experience of language teaching and teacher training on summer schools and seminars in Britain and overseas stretching back over more than twenty years. He is currently Associate Principal Lecturer at Northumbria University. He is the author of Newspapers, in this series (OUP 1993), as well as Doing Pragmatics, Writing for Study Purposes