Interview

David Paul

David Paul is a veteran teacher, teacher trainer and author. Among his best-selling titles are the Finding Out phonics series for children. He recently wrote 'Teaching Children in Asia,' which is quickly becoming a standard reference for teachers in the region and elsewhere.

Paul is founder of David English House, an 'English Education Center' based in the city of Hiroshima in western Japan. He is also founder of English Teachers in Japan (ETJ), a grass-roots, volunteer organization that aims to bring together English teachers from all fields and all parts of Japan. He spoke with ELT News editor Mark McBennett in September, 2003.

David English House Web site | ETJ Web site

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ELT: When did you first think of yourself as a teacher?
DP: I was head of the mathematics department at a public school in England for a short time, so I suppose that was when I first saw myself as a teacher. I then left teaching for music for a while, and then returned to being a teacher at a language school in Cambridge, focusing on intermediate and advanced adults.

You are perhaps best known for the popular children's series Finding Out. Do you see yourself as primarily a teacher of children?
My MA was in Social and Political Science, focusing on social psychology, and my particular interest was child development, so I've been interested in how children learn things for many years.

It was only after I came to Japan that I started teaching English to elementary school children. I was teaching many other age groups at the same time, but had the most questions about standard ways of teaching children, and spent the next ten years in isolation in Hiroshima trying to find some answers to these questions. Finding Out was the result of those ten years.

Your recently published book, 'Teaching English to Children in Asia' has been a great success. Do you think it was a very timely publication?
It's something I've wanted to write for a long time, but it was painfully difficult to write! I wanted to write a comprehensive resource book for teachers of English in Asia. A pretty ambitious project which involved long hours at the computer.

Whether it's timely or not is debatable. I see it as a book for the future rather than the present. I especially hope it will be used as a teacher training manual. Sooner rather than later, local boards of education will have more focused courses in English language for elementary school children, rather than just giving the children a rather superficial taste of English. That's when the book will come into its own.

How do you think you and your teaching ideas and approach are viewed in the Japanese education mainstream? What does the education ministry make of your phonics-based approach in Finding Out, for example?
I've actually had more debate about this with education ministries in other countries in Asia, where English has been in elementary schools for some years. I think it needs more time for the government to accept the importance of reading and writing, let alone phonics. However, the real breakthrough will be when the government sees that it is phonics that make it possible for Japanese children to learn to speak, read and write in a balanced way while having fun and thinking actively, thus avoiding many of the problems that have plagued junior high schools in Japan for many years.

Have you ever envisaged having schools all over Japan, with teachers trained in your methods, applying your ideas and using your texts?
I have never wanted to have 'David English House' schools all over Japan. I would prefer a smaller 'business' rather than a bigger one. But, I spend much of my time travelling around training teachers. So, yes, I do like to try and influence teachers to use the student-centered style that I emphasise in my boooks.

How is it different writing various types of books, for example textbooks for children, reference books for teachers, and a title like Communication Strategies aimed at older students?
While teaching so many different age groups for many years, I developed opinions about where established methodology was failing, and it was those areas that I became most interested in writing about.

I felt there was a need for a child-centered course which worked with Japanese children, and I wrote Finding Out to fill this gap. Another was the need for a course that enabled Japanese intermediate teenagers and adults to break through to an advanced level, so I wrote Communication Strategies to fill this gap.

Of course, writing such diverse books were quite different experiences. However, they all come naturally out of teaching experience, and all the books are shaped by my views on how human beings learn things successfully. So the experiences also shared many similarities.

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