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Editor's note: Linda Werbner, a former ABE teacher based in Lynn, MA, is working as a teacher trainer in Russia.
There was a time in the not-so-distant Soviet past when it was boasted that on any given day, school children from Moscow to Vladivostok would be working out of the same textbook, on the same page. Certainly a staggering and dubious achievement of synchronized pedagogy!
Whether this is merely a Soviet urban myth or fact, it's impossible to know now. What's certain, however, is that such a feat would have been a point of pride and how this strange little anekdotii illustrates the once near-mythical importance of the textbook in Russian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. Mind you, I wrote once.
In the new Russia, the textbook still has a respected place in the language classroom, especially in public schools. But there is a new breed of teacher, particularly in higher and adult language education, who relies more on her own personal resource pack than a standard, one-size-fits-all textbook, like many American ABE/ESL teachers.
State of Teaching in Russia: Some Background
As a Senior English language fellow (yes, I'm an ELF!) for Northwestern Russia with the US Department of State I am in constant contact with teachers-both green and seasoned, from elementary schools and technical colleges all the way up to the elite St. Peters-burg State University (President Vladimir Putin's alma mater), from the provincial hinterlands to the twin metropoli of Moscow and St. Petersburg. I am privy to their classrooms, lesson plans, and the sobering socioeconomic challenges that Russian teachers face. I see how they somehow manage to make ends meet (by interpreting, translating, and giving lots and lots of private lessons) with their salary that rarely jumps to the double digits.
I am also familiar with the monumental changes teachers face as the Ministry of Education begins to implement a massive high-stakes testing program-the Unified General Exam or "YeGE"-in the thousands of schools throughout this, the largest country on the planet. This exam-which has echoes of the SAT in that it will be a tool to determine entrance to university-will have a dramatic impact on the way teachers teach and the materials they use. The YeGE is an attempt to standardize the curriculum and raise the standards-in a sense, to ensure that "no child will be left behind" in Russian schools. For public school teachers, it will result in a stronger allegiance to the textbook and, unfortunately, a tendency to "teach to the test." Sound familiar? For the most part, higher education will be blissfully exempt from the YeGe furor.
Over 10 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the tidal wave of change that perestroika and glasnost ushered in-some of it good and much of it not so good-I was curious to see if the textbook was still a touchstone for Russian language teachers. I asked several movers and shakers in the English language teaching community here in St. Petersburg-one of Russia's largest student towns-their thoughts on teaching without the book. Here are their varied responses and musings on teaching without the textbook.
Necessity of Teacher-Made Materials
Tatiana Kholostova, an innovative and tireless veteran teacher at one of the city's most esteemed lycees (like a very specialized, post-high school college) teaches ESP (English for Special Purposes) for students in the travel and tourism and hospitality courses, many of whom are already working at the city's best hotels like the Europa and the Radisson. They need to know English to help people make reservations and arrange conferences and respond to questions and complaints.
Kholostova is working with a group of students in the food service sector and one of the most important tasks—indeed, one that they are tested on—is to recite the ingredients, in English, for a cocktail, she says with a laugh. There are very few Russian-authored textbooks out there for this sort of thing, she acknowledges. As a result, she generates her own materials and over the years, has compiled her own de facto "textbook" replete with menus, plane tickets, and hotel receipts from her travels, lists of practical vocabulary words (i.e., different types of plates and silverware) as well as grammar exercises, dialogues and role plays. Kholostova admits she supplements her homemade textbook with select excerpts from a Heinemann ESP textbook for the hospitality industry. "Someday I plan to write my own textbook," she says, between classes. Like most Russian teachers, she teaches from the early morning to the evening, "That is, if I can find the time."
Triumph of DIY
Creative and enterprising teachers like Kholostova are quite common in Russia, I have found. They relish the task of creating their own materials and some have even gone so far as to self-publish their homemade, photocopied textbooks. Not surprisingly, students prefer teacher-made textbooks to glossy and expensive books published abroad, according to a baseline study report conducted last year by the Russian Ministry of Education and the British Council. The survey, covering 5,000 respondents and over 100 institutions of higher learning throughout Russia, revealed that over 90 percent of students find teacher's personal resource packs more effective and motivating to course books published in Russia or abroad.
These days, the Russian EFL market is glutted with textbooks—Russian, British and American, primarily—and teachers have a much richer choice. At professional development workshops and TEFL conferences representatives from book publishing companies are a common sight and they will bend any available ear to wax excitedly about the merits of their textbooks.
Textbooks and Teacher Training: I Pledge No Allegiance
In my work at the teacher recertification academy, where I conduct methodology workshops for English teachers who are brushing up on their skills, I claim no allegiance to any particular textbook. Of course, there are certain ones that I borrow from more than others (i.e., Diane Larsen-Freedman, Penny Ur, Martin Parrott) but I am more or less a "free agent."
The fact is, there simply aren't any textbooks out there—or maybe I haven't found them yet—that suit each and every group I work with. For example, on Mondays I have highly-experienced teachers who expressed interest in learning innovative ways to teach TOEFL, modern American literature, cross-cultural communication, and Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences.
While my Thursday groups are wildly mixed, with former librarians, engineers, and even physicists who became teachers after they were "down-sized" or simply wanted a career change. These teachers have received only perfunctory training in education and haven't had any student teaching experience. It should be reiterated that teachers in Russia receive a shamelessly small salary (about $75 a month) one that makes it nearly impossible to live on. For this reason, there has been a mass exodus of people from the profession and schools are scrambling to fill the open slots. Classes are large and often staffed with ill-prepared and inexperienced teachers who often don't last the month.
My workshops and seminars run the gamut from straight methodology, grammatical and lexical work, to country studies (basically, information about the geography, history, and culture of cities and towns) and modern American literature to simple language practice. We also talk about issues like discipline, how to get learners to work in groups and cooperatively, as well as autonomously, with wild digressions into topics like American imperialism, politics, the lyrics of a Bob Marley song, a line from a poem by Mandelstam about how to live with an oppressive government, the drug problem that is raging in Russian (and American) schools. Now, if anyone knows of a trainer's textbook out there that encompasses all of these topics and issues, please let me know.
As you can see, the textbook has not gone the way of the dodo in Russian EFL classrooms; its role has changed, merely. It now plays second fiddle to the teacher-created resource pack. In this Russian revolution, it is the gentle and creative hand of the teacher that is quietly making history.
Linda Werbner, formerly based in Lynn,MA, sends this piece from northwestern Russia. She can be reached at
lwerbner@hotmail.com
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