ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Curtis Kelly

Panelists: Marc | Curtis | Peter
Date: July 2004

Topic: "What can be achieved through English camps/intensive courses?"

Peter Viney

Following Marc's article, my thoughts on intensive courses. There is no better way to learn English. If you consider that students can take 15 to 20 minutes to tune-in properly to English in a single lesson, there are huge advantages in having 4 or 6 or even 8 hours straight in one day. After lesson 1, there is no tuning-in time. They will make faster progress. They will make leaps in being able to listen, speak and even 'think in English.' Even low-level students report dreams in English after a four-week intensive course.

“Companies could discover that giving people a week on an intensive course has better returns than 20 lessons spread over several months.”

The disadvantage of an intensive course is the lack of sinking-in time, time for reflection and self-directed study between lessons. We've been very conscious that students need materials to fill in the gaps between lessons in extensive situations (which is why our latest materials contain a Practice Pack with CD, picture dictionary, puzzles, reading pieces and exercises for use between the lessons).

There are (at least) five ways of doing an intensive course:

1. Do an 'intensive course' in your own country, often called a 'crash course'. These are usually narrowly aimed at business people, often focussed on minor languages and usually just a week in length, at (say) six hours a day. This is often done with beginners, the aim being not so much to teach the language, but to break through a barrier of hesitancy and total incomprehension so that students are set up to continue studying either in their travels or more slowly by other means. At higher levels it's designed to reawaken passive knowledge in one jolt. I'm always surprised at how few intensive courses are run. Companies could discover that giving people a week on an intensive course has better returns than 20 lessons spread over several months.
2. Travel in a large group to an English-speaking country for a course. Downside: most people will stay in the group. They might not exercise more than a few reading skills on beer bottle labels. Not actually intensive so much as 'abroad'. Upside: safety. Teachers travel with the group from home and can monitor what's going on.
3. Travel to an English-speaking country, but not in a group. Enrol on a course at a specialist year-round ELT school (NOT a summer school with temporary teachers). Downside: culture shock, possible loneliness, the need for independent decisions. Upside: It works.
4. There are some interesting case studies, like Turkey, where some schools have instituted an "English year" at 12 or 13 when for a year (after 4-5 years primary / middle school English) virtually every subject is taught in English, and in any case other subjects get slimmed down and English swells to over half the curriculum for a year. The idea being that after that year the kids have "cracked it" - and it works brilliantly too. It does need a feeling that fluent English is a highly desirable goal for your kids of course, but in countries like Greece & Turkey that's a near universal belief. I think this is something we can only admire from a distance.
5. On a simple practical level, you can set up an English "week" or even "day" in a secondary school or college in the home country. This is popular in European secondary schools, often during a week before the end of term. You have to try to recruit other teachers who can speak enough English or at least try yourself to (say) teach a little maths or science in English. It requires massive administrative input.

Private language schools can set up an "English weekend", Friday night to Sunday afternoon, or a special Saturday, even a Saturday morning. I don't know why so few attempt it. I have never heard of a school offering this as the start of an extensive course, which I'd love to do. Say begin with a six-hour crash Saturday, then continue with the normal number of lessons per week.

I live in the Bournemouth / Poole area which is the UK's biggest centre for language schools outside London, and is certainly the most concentrated area of all. Summer has started and as I write I've just returned from a town centre thronged with students of all nationalities. Sadly, they are mainly in national groups. There were literally hundreds of Spanish kids, all hanging out together.

I spent years working in this sector, and there are a few simple rules about travel.

Group travel is fun. It's a positive socialization experience. It's a holiday. It benefits individual development. You will not learn that much English, but you might have your interest aroused. You'll often be in a monolingual or near-monolingual group and you'll socialize together.

Home-stay is a lottery. In big centres, it's a source of income for families, not a cultural sharing opportunity. When the language schools slump in Bournemouth, Oxford, Cambridge or Brighton, so do local plumbers, carpenters and electricians because the student rent largely goes into home improvements. The dream of the family who take you around places of interest and talk to you every evening is not total fantasy, it really does happen sometimes, but it isn't the norm either. If you are the twentieth Japanese student in a family, they have already heard it all before. On the positive side, I once met a local taxi-driver who had flown to Japan to attend the wedding of an ex-student guest from years ago. I had first met him when the teachers were invited to the house for a farewell dinner (which has only happened to me half a dozen times). The family were Scottish and wore kilts for the evening, and the students played us the bagpipes which they'd been taught and sang Scottish folksongs. They stayed in touch for years afterwards and came back on holiday. Sadly, that is the exception. I have heard that the Americans are generally more hospitable in these cases than the British.

While Bournemouth, Brighton, Cambridge and Oxford are highly attractive destinations they all have huge numbers of foreign students. A smaller or less popular city will have advantages. Locals may still find foreign visitors novel and fascinating, which is unlikely in the major ELT centres. I must say I'd have my doubts about launching my own kids into the French or Spanish major centres with the equivalent concentrations of student-dominated bars and clubs.

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Panelists: Marc | Curtis | Peter

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