The main aim is to present the set of tasks designed by the author to enable the production of a guidebook for use on school trips to the UK. This project included not only the participants but also those who were unable to go and shows how such students can be involved even so. This work presents the author's assessment of the practicality of such an approach.

The guide was written by first year gimnazjum students to help those in following years make the most of their trip, and to motivate all of them to add to their learning of English by using their own, and their fellow students', real experiences.

Trips to an English-speaking country

Travel agencies have recently been developing in many ways and one example is the organising of school trips to a foreign country. There are lots of advantages to such trips, if they are well organised and properly prepared. One of most important is that they are highly motivating when students discover that it is not only possible but also pleasant to use English in the real world. What is more, learners can see, feel, taste and touch the culture which they had learned about. Places mean more than they meant before the trip and students can find proof of what their teachers had told them about during English lessons. Finally, magnificent experiences and the unforgettable memories which are brought home will give students a great amount of pleasure for a long time. It is not rare that they start planning another trip just after coming back from the previous one.

However, there are disadvantages, too. A real problem is the cost. There should be at least forty participants on a trip to reduce the price therefore it may be necessary to organise a group by inviting students from other classes or even other schools. This causes additional work for the teacher who is responsible for the trip.

Guidebook project objectives

Two parallel aims are present behind the idea of preparing a guidebook. One was directed at the participants of the trip to England to motivate and produce a longer-term activity. This starts by putting learner’s expectations connected with the places to be visited into words before the trip, through enjoying every moment of the stay in England, to recalling the most memorable events and places after.

The second aim was to awake in the other students cultural awareness and a desire to go on a trip next time, dispel any anxiety of the unknown and help them be prepared to take all the advantages and pleasure which such a trip can give them.

Participant description

The guidebook project involved a group of sixteen 14-year-old girls who are first-year gimnazjum students. All of them had been abroad before but none in an English speaking country. This group was chosen as ten of them were to be participants on our trip to England.

Most of the girls are rather good students at an intermediate level of English, but there are also a few weaker ones. They have been learning English for six years now and since the beginning of this school year they have had three English lessons a week. Probably many of them attend some extra courses or take private lessons as well.

This semester we have started the third book of “0pen Doors" by Norman Whitney. Some of the recent topics which could be associated with the project were: the story of London, describing places and people, and expressing opinions and preferences. Some months ago they watched a video documentary about London produced by Longman. The teacher noticed that those who were participants on the trip found a lot of enjoyment in doing the project, whereas the rest of the group did it as regular class work.

Aim

The first task had been given to the students a few days before they left for England. Its aim was to put the students in a mood of anticipation, to elicit their wishes and identify their present knowledge of England to be compared with their impressions after having been there. The teacher was also curious what ideas her students had connected with Britain.

Procedure

All the project group, not only the participants of the excursion, were asked to write their answers to the question: “What would be the most interesting experience or thing to see while visiting England?"

No prior information was given in order to use the students' own knowledge as the source, and therefore, get their first thoughts on the topic. In order not to copy somebody else's ideas the teacher stopped students each time they wanted to ask the others.

As a second task the students who were going to England were asked to keep diaries or notes during the seven days of the journey.

Observation

The first striking thing which was noticed was the fact that for all of the children England meant London, and London meant famous places. Madame Tussaud's Gallery, Tower Bridge and Oxford Street took the three top positions. Unfortunately, most names were misspelled as the students knew them only by hearing.

Evaluation

The way the writing was done seemed to be reliable as the information was written individually. It could be a bit stressful especially for weaker students and mistakes in their writing could have been avoided by giving students more time or assigning it as homework. However the outcome would not be authentic because of the possibility of using different sources and not their own knowledge, as the learner-based method demands.

The preparation phase was of great importance for producing the guidebook. The students knew the reason for making notes and were able to visualise the whole structure of the project. They could compare the pieces written in this stage with their actual experiences on the trip and after it. This way they were finally able to decide what should be included in the guidebook and what was of real value for use by the next generation of participants.

Aims

• to re-introduce the idea of the project to the students
• to recall experiences from the trip
• to share them with those who stayed in Poland and to exchange views on the impressions of the trip.

Objectives

• to define the project objectives and to form project groups
• to help students to develop intercultural skills
• to develop language in a natural way

Procedure

The activities in the lesson were fully learner-based. There was time for memories while showing and discussing the pictures which the teacher asked the trip participants to bring to the class. Some of the pictures and events needed more detailed commenting on to make the setting more clear or to share students’ impressions with those who had not been.

Afterwards, students discussed the form of the guidebook. They decided that it would be an A4-sized booklet printed on a computer. Then, remembering all comments on the photos and looking at their pieces of writing from the preparation task done before the journey, the students decided the following sections:

Aims

• to produce a piece of useful writing by means of collaboration, selection of ideas and materials, agreeing on choices, interpreting and synthesising observations to create descriptions or pieces of advice.
• to arouse greater cross-cultural understanding by selecting experiences and facts which could be unknown to somebody who is going to Englad for the first time.
• to let students know how much 'culture' they gained during the trip and the work.
• work to be done both in class and at home

Procedure

There were three stages to the work:

1. The lesson started with students taking their places in their previous groups and getting all materials ready. Then they wrote their own sub-topics on the sheets in front of them. The teacher reminded the learners of the writing objectives once more and they started working.

One girl in group IV, who was responsible for conducting a survey on the best places visited in England, wrote all the names of the places on the blackboard. She asked the trip participants individually and they marked three places allocating one, two or three points. The girl prepared a report on the survey. The person responsible for designing the cover was making some draft copies. The teacher was monitoring the work and each paragraph was shown to the teacher before writing the next.

2. Having finished their writing one group after another read out their pieces to the class, discussed the layout of the pages in groups and in particular cases between groups. Then, by a class vote, the best cover was chosen.

3. Finally, the students arranged appointments to have their works printed and decided on a sensible deadline for collecting them to bind into a booklet.

Observation

The teacher noticed that some of them had their books open on topics relevant to their piece of writing. There were a lot of mistakes. Most of them concerned word order, spelling, and prepositions as the students found it difficult to choose the right one, even using a dictionary. But this time, in contrast to the preparation stage, almost all proper names were written correctly. There was a lot of peer help and personal involvement during the group work. The weaker or more lazy were supported by their partners to get involved in writing and finally they co-operated successfully.

Some difficulties occurred at the last stage of the work. Not all groups kept to the deadline for reasons of health and holidays. As the end of the school year was near the group and the teacher decided to put all the pieces together in September and wait till then for the end product.

Some students, before printing their work, made some changes, probably influenced by listening to others. Several ideas were put forward by the students after the teacher's correction as the learners were not willing to follow her suggestions as far as the content was concerned. This is a consequence of learner-centred teaching.

Evaluation

Thanks to the work on the project the students had the opportunity to learn how to co­operate successfully as they had to hand in a complete piece of work to the teacher.

The guidebook, the product of the project work, will be very useful for the next trip to help avoid the problems and misunderstandings described in it. The project group, as planned, once again were in contact with different aspects of English culture and life. They could learn the spelling of places situated on the route while their work with a dictionary enriched their vocabulary and improved their skill in finding appropriate words.

At first the teacher was disappointed with the balance of English and Polish spoken because she was sure that the students knew enough language to have done all this better. Then she realised that it happened because there were emotions involved and it was too embarrassing to express the feelings in a foreign language. Students' personal input while producing the guidebook gave them a lot of satisfaction.

Taking students on a trip to England and following it up by writing a guidebook was a great opportunity for students to develop many cultural skills in one complete cycle. Working on the guidebook the students felt as if the trip was much longer than it was in fact. The culture which they encountered and experienced was also multiplied through involving in activities those students who were not on the trip. Apart from the cultural aims the writing enriched the students' language skills.

Choosing project work as the way of discussing memories, impressions and intercultural aspects, in association with learner-based methods while working on the project was a good idea. This allowed children to use the trip and their experiences as a productive source of knowledge of the target country. The autonomy they developed made the guidebook authentic and gave the students a lot of pleasure and sense of achievement.

The author is convinced that trips to target countries have to be associated with a series of tasks preparing, accompanying and following the trip itself to get the maximum of the opportunity of going abroad.

All these enable learners to be prepared for finding differences and similarities, to avoid miscommunication and to develop tolerance and sympathy towards other societies. In such a way learners become interculturally competent and the trip participants showed this competence when they discussed the topics for the guidebook with the other students involved into the project.

The teacher is planning to expand the guidebook after the next trip. Also an idea for writing a similar guidebook for an English group of students coming to Katowice has recently been introduced to another group of students.

Here are some pieces of advice for teachers who are going abroad with their groups based on the author's experience

Preparation

• make your students list the most strange things they expect to find, as well as those they look forward to
• tell your students what kind of follow-up activities they are going to do after the trip, what materials to bring for the activities, what sources of knowledge they can encounter while in the UK and how to use them
• do not show your weak students your concern about their language, make sure that there are people who will help them to communicate, and that culture is the major aim
• prepare your students; apart from common cross-cultural situations there are those which do not match routines or the language functions that the students know
• the preparation should be undertaken by all teachers whose students are going for such a trip

The trip itself

• while on the trip, tell them to produce pieces of writing to compare after coming back to school
• give the students every opportunity to use the language and improve at least the three skills of listening, reading and speaking
• make your students keep a short diary of the trip, as some impressions vanish quickly.
• ask your students which aspects of the trip they were well prepared for, and which they would like to have been different, e.g. clothes, food, guides, maps, making notes …

Follow-up

• let your students compare their views on the target country which they had before the trip, with those after it, discuss the differences, point out the importance of confronting reality
• if not everyone took part in the trip, get all your students involved in follow-up activities and have fun while discussing the trip, try to make all of them eager to go to other places
• make the activities or their products useful for other groups of students