ELT News Think Tank

Panelists: Peter | Marc | Chris
Date: September 2004

Topic: "Copyright - The Right to Copy?"

Peter Viney

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Photocopying in ELT accelerated in the early 80s when misguided teacher trainers on one month courses decided it was a good idea for trainees with no experience to prepare their own materials. Why? The expertise that goes into an ELT course can't be learned in a couple of weeks. You're invariably better-off following the logic of a course than mixing and matching. Instead of teaching people how to deal with given materials more effectively, they felt it good to have everyone becoming an author before they'd even started teaching. Forget the logic of a progression, forget the complex recycling that any good course provides. Choose whatever takes your fancy and compile a set of photocopied greatest hits. A lesson here from Streamline, add one from Headway. Slip in something from Interchange. It makes a nonsense of the care that went into writing any one of them. One French government body photocopied bits of Streamline, Strategies and Headway, assembled them into a so-called "course", had the audacity to add their own copyright line and then SOLD the compilation to students without paying a penny. Theft.

The 'Greatest Hits' approach for hastily assembling a course is ludicrous to any professional course designer. In teacher training I've seen so many greatest hits ragbags of material. Invariably they are based on what someone likes to teach, not a coherent progression through what needs to be taught. We all know that some areas of the language are easy to teach and practise and produce lists and tables of achievement that satisfy students, at least on the surface. That's why comparatives are awarded far more space in textbooks than they need or deserve. They "teach well". I don't think I've seen a greatest hits collection that delves into defining and non-defining relative clauses. Students end up with a ring binder full of selective badly copied grubby dog-eared pages which are difficult to review and unappetizing to browse through.

Nowadays a course like IN English provides free photocopiables for class use doing what only photocopiables can do, not just photocopying pages from a book. That is providing something that can't be read in advance, that can be cut-up (sometimes) and reassembled, classroom games and activities.

Video
We suffer even more with video. When Grapevine video came out a European school chain wrote to complain that it was copy-protected. They wanted to buy just one copy and use it in ALL their one hundred plus schools. Bad luck. They couldn't. ELT video is not over-priced. If you could stand on the set of English Channel, you'd see twenty-five people working a twelve hour day. All need lunch, tea, coffee, dinner. A massive catering cost before they even pay wages. Yes, the video in the shop costs more than a feature film. A feature film sells in hundreds of thousands. We sell in hundreds. If you price it per student who watches it, it's cheap input. We also have to expect a high level of copying and price that in. If the copying passes a certain point, the publisher simply can't afford to do it.

If copying really could be eradicated (there are always ways round any protection) the cover price would drop significantly. The honest purchaser is subsidizing the dishonest user.

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Panelists: Peter | Marc | Chris

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Peter Viney, Freelance ELT Author

Co-author of New American Streamline & Grapevine. Peter's Web site

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