British Studies is one of the subjects falling into the category of Cultural Studies. It is taught in colleges and English Institutes throughout Poland under different names and with different curricula. Probably the adopted methodology and approach to the subject area vary as well. What is going to be presented below is the philosophy of teaching British Studies at Katedra Neofilologii, University of Białystok. Perhaps the word ‘philosophy’ is too grand to describe seven basic rules which determine the teacher’s approach, but the rules are of utmost importance, hence the use of the biblical term in the title - ‘commandments’. Each of the rules adopted will be discussed with reference to the examples taken from my classes.

Commandment I: adopt a cross-cultural approach

A cross-cultural approach, to put it simplistically, means that the students learn to understand a foreign culture by comparing and contrasting it with their own. However, it is not just seeing similarities and differences. To use Beth Edginton’s words, in a cross-cultural approach ‘(...) the emphasis is on exploring Polish views of Britishness in conjunction with British views of Britishness, rather than simply attempting to replace Polish viewpoints with British ones. This kind of approach (...) necessitates reflecting on Polish views of Polishness too (...)^1. As an example let me refer to one particular class conducted at the beginning of the course - the lesson about the notion of self-identity. The students are asked a question: ‘What is important to your sense of self-identity?’ They have to grade as important or most important such factors as: principles and values, emotions and feelings, interests, circle of friends, being Polish, coming from a particular region. Once they have done that, they share their ideas and discuss them, coming to realize at the same time (at least this is what happened repeatedly in my classes) how different their answers are, how different they are as people and how their nationality is seen by some of them as not very important and by others as important. Afterwards they are asked to predict what kinds of answers are given by the British when asked the same question about the sense of self-identity. Only then do they get the results of a DEMOS survey from which it is clear that being British is less important (according to the survey) than one’s principles and values.

Commandment II: teach cultural studies skills rather than facts

Facts get outdated rather quickly. In most textbooks used at colleges and universities the number of MPs in the House of Commons is given as 651, and yet in the last election it was 659. Most textbooks have fallen behind with their information on the reform of the House of Lords and the British Constitution. Undoubtedly, it is much easier to teach facts than skills and it is also easier to test students later on if they were taught facts. But what is the use of remembering the number of MPs if the students do not understand the controversy surrounding the ‘first past the post’ versus ‘proportional representation’ electoral systems and the debate about the Upper Chamber of Parliament? Cultural studies skills involve an ability to differentiate between fact and opinion, reading between the lines, and recognizing culturally loaded terms. In other words, it is training them in ways of looking and seeing, analysing and interpreting. If two British newspapers publish on the same day an article about mosquitoes in New York City and one of them chooses the title ‘The Bug Apple’ while the other one states ‘Tropical Diseases Spreading North’, it is rather unlikely that a first-year student will recognize the link between the two. It is first necessary to explain the mechanics of grammar and vocabulary use in the headlines of the British press and, above all, to show the students the difference between a popular daily and a quality one, with all the consequences of implied readership and the background cultural knowledge of the British reader. To understand the pun in the ‘Bug Apple’ the student must know the meaning of the Big Apple.

As examples of culturally loaded terms that my students find problematic I would like to mention ‘The Green Wellie Brigade’ and ‘an old enemy’. Even though some students know that ‘wellie’ comes from ‘wellington boots’, they fail to associate rubber boots with aristocrats and landowners. Similarly, not being familiar with the history of English-Scottish relations, the notion of the ‘auld alliance’ and the importance of football in most male Britons’ lives, the students may not guess that ‘an old enemy’ is the England team.

One must be careful, however not to fall into the trap of forcing upon the students terms that are no longer relevant for a contemporary inhabitant of the British Isles. If we refer to T. S. Eliot’s famous list in Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, which was for a couple of decades regarded as the essence of Englishness, we may find terms, which after more than fifty years still define the English (at least as understood by some sections of society), for example: Derby Day, Henley Regatta or a cup final, but also notions which have lost their significance completely. Who knows today what a pin table is or why the twelfth of August (known as Glorious Twelfth) is such an important date? Computer games and television are much more popular today than a pin table ever was and shooting grouse (or any shooting for that matter) has been getting some bad press recently.

Commandment III: combine language work with cultural studies

The debate whether culture and language can be taught independently has been going on for some time. Most language teachers would agree today that whether you like it or not language is culture. My point is not to argue that culture must be included in every language lesson, and of necessity, in every British Studies class. In many ways such authoritarian approach often leads to artificial binary divisions - ‘for the first twenty minutes we practised grammar, so now we are going to have some cultural input and let’s talk about British film’, for example. The point I am trying to make is that our students should realize that every text that they read, every fragment of a video film, be it news bulletin or a commercial, is a ‘cultereme’, a unit of culture. So even when they think they are doing some language work, what they are doing is language and cultural analysis work. As an example, again I would like to refer to one of my classes. When we study the media, we devote a considerable amount of time to the language of newspaper headlines - specific uses of grammar and vocabulary. Students learn that a ‘bid’ means an ‘attempt’, a ‘blaze’ means a ‘fire’, a ‘blast’ is an ‘explosion’ and to ‘wed’ is to ‘marry’. They also realize that if in a headline you read ‘fails’, it means in fact ‘has failed’ and if a newspaper announces ‘MP to quit’, you should understand it as ‘a Member of Parliament is going to resign’. Learning all this is not just memorizing synonyms or interpreting the use of tenses, it is also appreciating the way a language can be manipulated so that shorter words, taking less space on a page, convey the same meaning. Incidentally, it is also understanding that words may be chosen for their dramatic effect rather than informative value.

Newspapers often use puns, based on homophones or words with a double meaning. If the students can work out the two meanings of such sentences and phrases as ‘Prostitutes Appeal to President’, ‘British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands’, ‘soul survivor’, The Treasure I Land’, or ‘misdirected male’, that means that they have not only learned that ‘mail’ is a homophone of ‘male’, they have understood and appreciated the humour, and they have experienced culture.

Commandment IV: treat the word ‘text’ as a broad category

A text does not have to be written. A picture, a caricature, a film, a fragment of a TV programme can be treated as texts - to be studied and analysed. One of my favourite ways of ‘covering’ the subject of Parliament and Government in Britain is watching with the students fragments of PMQ - Prime Minister’s Question Time - recorded from Sky Television. A short clip (ten to fifteen minutes) is enough to see the sitting arrangements in the House of Commons with the Cabinet facing the Shadow Cabinet and the Opposition, to understand the terms ‘front benchers’ and ‘back benchers’, to recognize the faces of the leading politicians and to hear the terms of address (e.g., ‘My Right Honourable Friend’, ‘Madame Speaker’, etc.). What is being discussed and what kinds of questions are asked may be of less significance than the atmosphere in the House, the political culture and behaviour of the MPs - so strikingly different from our own. Even if the recorded fragment is not very recent (PMQ is broadcast live every week) it is still a valuable source of information and a wonderful illustration of the topic of Parliament in Britain. Ministers may have changed, different issues may have appeared on the political agenda, William Hague (or the new Tory leader for that matter) may be cracking different jokes but it will still be possible to watch British politicians addressing the Speaker, expressing their approval / disapproval noisily, the Speaker silencing the House, or even ... yes, yes, ... some of the back benchers biting their nails.

Commandment V: use authentic materials

In the paragraph above it has been shown how a fragment of a TV programme can be treated as a text. It is important, however, to bear in mind that whether we decide to work on some television or radio coverage or focus on the written word or simply choose a visual, these materials should be authentic. Teachers often claim that using authentic materials is time consuming and difficult because you need to do a lot of planning and preparing. It is of course true that it is not enough to show a fragment of a film or a commercial and then ask the students ‘So what do you think?’ Authentic materials should be worked on before they are brought to the class. The pre-reading (or pre-watching) stage is extremely important. If you want your students to notice certain things, you must tell them what to focus on. If you want them to understand the materials fully you must anticipate their problems. So it is absolutely true that planning and preparing a lesson with the use of authentic materials is not easy. But it is certainly worth the effort. Once the work has been done, such a class can be repeated later on with new students. Some teachers claim that authentic materials age quickly, especially newspaper articles. I claim this can be also used to their advantage.

One of my students’ favourites is a political party programme of March 1997 prepared by the Scottish Labour Party before the 1997 general election. It shows John Major with two faces and lists all his broken promises. It is a very powerful short film with carefully chosen images and music. At the end of the film Gordon Brown, then Shadow Chancellor, appears and encourages the viewer to phone him or the Scottish Labour Party. I believe it will be possible to show the film for many years to come, regardless of the fact which party is in power. As an example of political propaganda, as an illustration of how the visual can be combined with the aural to produce the desired effect it is timeless. It can even illustrate a point that sometimes accent is more important than the actual content of the address. Gordon Brown was a Scot talking to his compatriots. The Conservatives did not win a single seat in Scotland in the 1997 general election.

Commandment VI: be sensitive (in other words, do not treat your students as idiots, they have a right not to know)

I have found in practice the problems that students encounter in understanding a foreign culture are very often connected with a ‘lack of shared knowledge’, and not a lack of intelligence or willingness or curiosity. The background cultural knowledge of a British writer is of course different from the background cultural knowledge of a Polish student. The teacher, usually though not always, has more of this background knowledge than their students. My claim is that the teacher should not ‘show off’ or just because he / she knows something expect the students to know the same. Let me refer to some examples again. An area causing many problems for my students is the understanding of political cartoons and caricatures. This stems from many sources. First of all, Polish students are not accustomed to bold, very open, seemingly crude representations of leading political figures. Such cartoons do not appear in the Polish press. Drawings of naked politicians, allusions (not veiled) to their sexual preferences, hints to personal problems are common in the British press (and it is quality not popular press that I have in mind). Polish students may find it shocking and in bad taste. Another problem is connected with an ability to recognize who is who. In a political cartoon it is essential to recognize the face in order to understand the point of a joke. And thirdly, cartoons often operate on contrast or juxtaposition and in doing so they refer to a plethora of materials - myths, legends, nursery rhymes, famous quotes, other cartoons, etc. But not knowing a nursery rhyme or a quote, the student is bound to miss the point. That does not mean that we should give up the whole idea of bringing such difficult materials to our classes. My point is that we should anticipate the problem and tackle it before it arises.

One way of doing this would be familiarising the students with some techniques used by caricaturists. It does not take long for the students to notice that Tony Blair can be easily recognized by his grin and ears, Mrs Thatcher by her nose, Gerry Adams by his beard and John Major by the glasses. They will still have problems with some personalities with less obvious characteristics (How do you teach them to recognize Peter Mandelson or Michael Portillo?) but that is not important, they will learn to look for something striking in one’s appearance, like William Hague’s receding hair line. Another step is to start with a reference that a cartoon is making, the source not the outcome. For example if in a cartoon you see Tony Blair portrayed as a spider and in a corner there’s a picture of a little girl ‘eating her curds and whey’, the students should get to know about Little Miss Muffet before they attempt to understand the joke. Or, if in the cartoon entitled ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ there is a picture of a stag with the Queen’s face, first the students should be shown the famous painting by Landseer.

Students have a right not to see little hints and allusions; they have a right not to understand. The teacher’s role is to facilitate the process by structuring the lesson and grading the materials to be used.

Commandment VII: show the way and do not lead your students by the hand

Having commented above on how sensitive the teacher should be in not making the students feel idiots if they happen not to grasp an idea fast enough I would like now to make a proviso. Being sensitive and not exposing one’s ignorance does not mean that the teacher should do everything themselves, e.g. explain new words, prepare background sources or highlight cultural references. There is a difference between letting the students do things gradually, taking certain necessary steps before they arrive at the final point and telling them all the answers. A proper balance must be struck between the teacher’s input and the student’s input. The teacher should be demanding and should expect a lot, but not before explaining, showing the mechanisms, teaching cultural skills.

Let me refer to examples from my classes again. As has been previously said I devote a number of classes to studying the media. After a considerable time has been spent on realizing the difference between a tabloid and a broadsheet, after some work has been done on the language of newspaper headlines and after the students have worked successfully through a number of problems arising from ‘a lack of common knowledge’, I expect them to be able to deal with newspapers. And in most cases they can. Working in groups they manage to pair two different headlines dealing with the same story, e.g. ‘Millennium Wheel Fails to Rise to the Occasion’ and ‘We Can’t Get It Up’ naming The Sun as the source of the second one. They know that ‘Seaman Sinks Armada’ must be about a football match between England and Spain and ‘It’s the Ender’ is about a romance of one of the stars in the soap opera The East-Enders. Once I asked them to predict whether the article entitled ‘Gum Together’ is going to be about a new type of glue or Paul McCartney’s missing tooth and one student said, ‘It’s about his tooth because it rhymes with Come Together, which is the title of his song.’ She was right and pleased with herself. Let your students experience the joy of learning. That is what teaching is all about, isn’t it?

Notes

Beth Edginton, Jastrzębia Góra Keynote Paper - September 1996 (British Studies Web Pages,

http://elt.britcoun.org.pl

References

Edginton, Beth. Jastrzębia Góra Keynote Paper - September 1996, British Studies Web Pages,

http://elt.britcoun.org.pl

Eliot, T.S., Notes Towards a Definition of Culture. In Writing Englishness 1900-1950, an

Introductory Sourcebook on National Identity. Edited by J. Giles and T. Middleton.

London and New York: Routledge, 1992.


The Seven Commandments for Teaching British Studies (not to be confused with the seven deadly sins) by Anna Maria Tomczak Katedra Neofilologii Uniwersytet w Białymstoku

British Studies is one of the subjects falling into the category of Cultural Studies. It is taught in colleges and English Institutes throughout Poland under different names and with different curricula. Probably the adopted methodology and approach to the subject area vary as well. What is going to be presented below is the philosophy of teaching British Studies at Katedra Neofilologii, University of Białystok. Perhaps the word ‘philosophy’ is too grand to describe seven basic rules which determine the teacher’s approach, but the rules are of utmost importance, hence the use of the biblical term in the title - ‘commandments’. Each of the rules adopted will be discussed with reference to the examples taken from my classes. Commandment I: adopt a cross-cultural approach A cross-cultural approach, to put it simplistically, means that the students learn to understand a foreign culture by comparing and contrasting it with their own. However, it is not just seeing similarities and differences. To use Beth Edginton’s words, in a cross-cultural approach ‘(...) the emphasis is on exploring Polish views of Britishness in conjunction with British views of Britishness, rather than simply attempting to replace Polish viewpoints with British ones. This kind of approach (...) necessitates reflecting on Polish views of Polishness too (...)^1. As an example let me refer to one particular class conducted at the beginning of the course - the lesson about the notion of self-identity. The students are asked a question: ‘What is important to your sense of self-identity?’ They have to grade as important or most important such factors as: principles and values, emotions and feelings, interests, circle of friends, being Polish, coming from a particular region. Once they have done that, they share their ideas and discuss them, coming to realize at the same time (at least this is what happened repeatedly in my classes) how different their answers are, how different they are as people and how their nationality is seen by some of them as not very important and by others as important. Afterwards they are asked to predict what kinds of answers are given by the British when asked the same question about the sense of self-identity. Only then do they get the results of a DEMOS survey from which it is clear that being British is less important (according to the survey) than one’s principles and values. Commandment II: teach cultural studies skills rather than facts Facts get outdated rather quickly. In most textbooks used at colleges and universities the number of MPs in the House of Commons is given as 651, and yet in the last election it was 659. Most textbooks have fallen behind with their information on the reform of the House of Lords and the British Constitution. Undoubtedly, it is much easier to teach facts than skills and it is also easier to test students later on if they were taught facts. But what is the use of remembering the number of MPs if the students do not understand the controversy surrounding the ‘first past the post’ versus ‘proportional representation’ electoral systems and the debate about the Upper Chamber of Parliament? Cultural studies skills involve an ability to differentiate between fact and opinion, reading between the lines, and recognizing culturally loaded terms. In other words, it is training them in ways of looking and seeing, analysing and interpreting. If two British newspapers publish on the same day an article about mosquitoes in New York City and one of them chooses the title ‘The Bug Apple’ while the other one states ‘Tropical Diseases Spreading North’, it is rather unlikely that a first-year student will recognize the link between the two. It is first necessary to explain the mechanics of grammar and vocabulary use in the headlines of the British press and, above all, to show the students the difference between a popular daily and a quality one, with all the consequences of implied readership and the background cultural knowledge of the British reader. To understand the pun in the ‘Bug Apple’ the student must know the meaning of the Big Apple. As examples of culturally loaded terms that my students find problematic I would like to mention ‘The Green Wellie Brigade’ and ‘an old enemy’. Even though some students know that ‘wellie’ comes from ‘wellington boots’, they fail to associate rubber boots with aristocrats and landowners. Similarly, not being familiar with the history of English-Scottish relations, the notion of the ‘auld alliance’ and the importance of football in most male Britons’ lives, the students may not guess that ‘an old enemy’ is the England team. One must be careful, however not to fall into the trap of forcing upon the students terms that are no longer relevant for a contemporary inhabitant of the British Isles. If we refer to T. S. Eliot’s famous list in Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, which was for a couple of decades regarded as the essence of Englishness, we may find terms, which after more than fifty years still define the English (at least as understood by some sections of society), for example: Derby Day, Henley Regatta or a cup final, but also notions which have lost their significance completely. Who knows today what a pin table is or why the twelfth of August (known as Glorious Twelfth) is such an important date? Computer games and television are much more popular today than a pin table ever was and shooting grouse (or any shooting for that matter) has been getting some bad press recently. Commandment III: combine language work with cultural studies The debate whether culture and language can be taught independently has been going on for some time. Most language teachers would agree today that whether you like it or not language is culture. My point is not to argue that culture must be included in every language lesson, and of necessity, in every British Studies class. In many ways such authoritarian approach often leads to artificial binary divisions - ‘for the first twenty minutes we practised grammar, so now we are going to have some cultural input and let’s talk about British film’, for example. The point I am trying to make is that our students should realize that every text that they read, every fragment of a video film, be it news bulletin or a commercial, is a ‘cultereme’, a unit of culture. So even when they think they are doing some language work, what they are doing is language and cultural analysis work. As an example, again I would like to refer to one of my classes. When we study the media, we devote a considerable amount of time to the language of newspaper headlines - specific uses of grammar and vocabulary. Students learn that a ‘bid’ means an ‘attempt’, a ‘blaze’ means a ‘fire’, a ‘blast’ is an ‘explosion’ and to ‘wed’ is to ‘marry’. They also realize that if in a headline you read ‘fails’, it means in fact ‘has failed’ and if a newspaper announces ‘MP to quit’, you should understand it as ‘a Member of Parliament is going to resign’. Learning all this is not just memorizing synonyms or interpreting the use of tenses, it is also appreciating the way a language can be manipulated so that shorter words, taking less space on a page, convey the same meaning. Incidentally, it is also understanding that words may be chosen for their dramatic effect rather than informative value. Newspapers often use puns, based on homophones or words with a double meaning. If the students can work out the two meanings of such sentences and phrases as ‘Prostitutes Appeal to President’, ‘British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands’, ‘soul survivor’, The Treasure I Land’, or ‘misdirected male’, that means that they have not only learned that ‘mail’ is a homophone of ‘male’, they have understood and appreciated the humour, and they have experienced culture. Commandment IV: treat the word ‘text’ as a broad category A text does not have to be written. A picture, a caricature, a film, a fragment of a TV programme can be treated as texts - to be studied and analysed. One of my favourite ways of ‘covering’ the subject of Parliament and Government in Britain is watching with the students fragments of PMQ - Prime Minister’s Question Time - recorded from Sky Television. A short clip (ten to fifteen minutes) is enough to see the sitting arrangements in the House of Commons with the Cabinet facing the Shadow Cabinet and the Opposition, to understand the terms ‘front benchers’ and ‘back benchers’, to recognize the faces of the leading politicians and to hear the terms of address (e.g., ‘My Right Honourable Friend’, ‘Madame Speaker’, etc.). What is being discussed and what kinds of questions are asked may be of less significance than the atmosphere in the House, the political culture and behaviour of the MPs - so strikingly different from our own. Even if the recorded fragment is not very recent (PMQ is broadcast live every week) it is still a valuable source of information and a wonderful illustration of the topic of Parliament in Britain. Ministers may have changed, different issues may have appeared on the political agenda, William Hague (or the new Tory leader for that matter) may be cracking different jokes but it will still be possible to watch British politicians addressing the Speaker, expressing their approval / disapproval noisily, the Speaker silencing the House, or even ... yes, yes, ... some of the back benchers biting their nails. Commandment V: use authentic materials In the paragraph above it has been shown how a fragment of a TV programme can be treated as a text. It is important, however, to bear in mind that whether we decide to work on some television or radio coverage or focus on the written word or simply choose a visual, these materials should be authentic. Teachers often claim that using authentic materials is time consuming and difficult because you need to do a lot of planning and preparing. It is of course true that it is not enough to show a fragment of a film or a commercial and then ask the students ‘So what do you think?’ Authentic materials should be worked on before they are brought to the class. The pre-reading (or pre-watching) stage is extremely important. If you want your students to notice certain things, you must tell them what to focus on. If you want them to understand the materials fully you must anticipate their problems. So it is absolutely true that planning and preparing a lesson with the use of authentic materials is not easy. But it is certainly worth the effort. Once the work has been done, such a class can be repeated later on with new students. Some teachers claim that authentic materials age quickly, especially newspaper articles. I claim this can be also used to their advantage. One of my students’ favourites is a political party programme of March 1997 prepared by the Scottish Labour Party before the 1997 general election. It shows John Major with two faces and lists all his broken promises. It is a very powerful short film with carefully chosen images and music. At the end of the film Gordon Brown, then Shadow Chancellor, appears and encourages the viewer to phone him or the Scottish Labour Party. I believe it will be possible to show the film for many years to come, regardless of the fact which party is in power. As an example of political propaganda, as an illustration of how the visual can be combined with the aural to produce the desired effect it is timeless. It can even illustrate a point that sometimes accent is more important than the actual content of the address. Gordon Brown was a Scot talking to his compatriots. The Conservatives did not win a single seat in Scotland in the 1997 general election. Commandment VI: be sensitive (in other words, do not treat your students as idiots, they have a right not to know) I have found in practice the problems that students encounter in understanding a foreign culture are very often connected with a ‘lack of shared knowledge’, and not a lack of intelligence or willingness or curiosity. The background cultural knowledge of a British writer is of course different from the background cultural knowledge of a Polish student. The teacher, usually though not always, has more of this background knowledge than their students. My claim is that the teacher should not ‘show off’ or just because he / she knows something expect the students to know the same. Let me refer to some examples again. An area causing many problems for my students is the understanding of political cartoons and caricatures. This stems from many sources. First of all, Polish students are not accustomed to bold, very open, seemingly crude representations of leading political figures. Such cartoons do not appear in the Polish press. Drawings of naked politicians, allusions (not veiled) to their sexual preferences, hints to personal problems are common in the British press (and it is quality not popular press that I have in mind). Polish students may find it shocking and in bad taste. Another problem is connected with an ability to recognize who is who. In a political cartoon it is essential to recognize the face in order to understand the point of a joke. And thirdly, cartoons often operate on contrast or juxtaposition and in doing so they refer to a plethora of materials - myths, legends, nursery rhymes, famous quotes, other cartoons, etc. But not knowing a nursery rhyme or a quote, the student is bound to miss the point. That does not mean that we should give up the whole idea of bringing such difficult materials to our classes. My point is that we should anticipate the problem and tackle it before it arises. One way of doing this would be familiarising the students with some techniques used by caricaturists. It does not take long for the students to notice that Tony Blair can be easily recognized by his grin and ears, Mrs Thatcher by her nose, Gerry Adams by his beard and John Major by the glasses. They will still have problems with some personalities with less obvious characteristics (How do you teach them to recognize Peter Mandelson or Michael Portillo?) but that is not important, they will learn to look for something striking in one’s appearance, like William Hague’s receding hair line. Another step is to start with a reference that a cartoon is making, the source not the outcome. For example if in a cartoon you see Tony Blair portrayed as a spider and in a corner there’s a picture of a little girl ‘eating her curds and whey’, the students should get to know about Little Miss Muffet before they attempt to understand the joke. Or, if in the cartoon entitled ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ there is a picture of a stag with the Queen’s face, first the students should be shown the famous painting by Landseer. Students have a right not to see little hints and allusions; they have a right not to understand. The teacher’s role is to facilitate the process by structuring the lesson and grading the materials to be used. Commandment VII: show the way and do not lead your students by the hand Having commented above on how sensitive the teacher should be in not making the students feel idiots if they happen not to grasp an idea fast enough I would like now to make a proviso. Being sensitive and not exposing one’s ignorance does not mean that the teacher should do everything themselves, e.g. explain new words, prepare background sources or highlight cultural references. There is a difference between letting the students do things gradually, taking certain necessary steps before they arrive at the final point and telling them all the answers. A proper balance must be struck between the teacher’s input and the student’s input. The teacher should be demanding and should expect a lot, but not before explaining, showing the mechanisms, teaching cultural skills. Let me refer to examples from my classes again. As has been previously said I devote a number of classes to studying the media. After a considerable time has been spent on realizing the difference between a tabloid and a broadsheet, after some work has been done on the language of newspaper headlines and after the students have worked successfully through a number of problems arising from ‘a lack of common knowledge’, I expect them to be able to deal with newspapers. And in most cases they can. Working in groups they manage to pair two different headlines dealing with the same story, e.g. ‘Millennium Wheel Fails to Rise to the Occasion’ and ‘We Can’t Get It Up’ naming The Sun as the source of the second one. They know that ‘Seaman Sinks Armada’ must be about a football match between England and Spain and ‘It’s the Ender’ is about a romance of one of the stars in the soap opera The East-Enders. Once I asked them to predict whether the article entitled ‘Gum Together’ is going to be about a new type of glue or Paul McCartney’s missing tooth and one student said, ‘It’s about his tooth because it rhymes with Come Together, which is the title of his song.’ She was right and pleased with herself. Let your students experience the joy of learning. That is what teaching is all about, isn’t it? Notes Beth Edginton, Jastrzębia Góra Keynote Paper - September 1996 (British Studies Web Pages, http://elt.britcoun.org.pl References Edginton, Beth. Jastrzębia Góra Keynote Paper - September 1996, British Studies Web Pages, http://elt.britcoun.org.pl Eliot, T.S., Notes Towards a Definition of Culture. In Writing Englishness 1900-1950, an Introductory Sourcebook on National Identity. Edited by J. Giles and T. Middleton. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.