From Siberia with Love

Maxim Agahanov and Olga Kuznetsova

In demand, complete, flexible, varied, easy to use, personal, successful... This is
not a list of adjectives taken at random from the Cambridge International
Dictionary of English. They are the words that come to mind when we think
about The New Cambridge English Course, one of the most successful English
courses used by teachers in Krasnoyarsk.
In demand
For many years Russians used to learn
English according to the LENOR
principle (Learning English for No
Obvious Reason). Because of the Iron
Curtain any communication with English
speakers was hardly possible some ten
years ago. After its fall, all of a sudden,
we realised that we knew a lot about
the language but were not prepared to
use it properly. Students were more
accustomed to doing a lot of grammar
and translation exercises. Everybody could easily explain how to form and use
tenses in English rather than answer a simple question: What do you do?
People clearly started to feel the necessity of changing our traditional
approaches in ELT. The new purpose was to focus on teaching communication,
especially on listening and speaking. There arose another problem: the lack of
communicative ELT materials. The textbooks we had didn't satisfy our learners
requirements. We needed an authentic course incorporating interesting, true to
life activities, tapes, videos, socio-cultural materials. This is when The New
Cambridge English Course appeared. In a very short period of time it gained an
audience and became very popular.
Complete
It is The New Cambridge English Course's completeness that many teachers like
so much. As a rule it takes time for a teacher to get used to a course structure,
just as it does for students. With The New Cambridge English Course you quickly
get used to how material is presented, to the order of the tasks, and the general
design. The course is complete in itself, although each level may be used
separately. Functions, Phonetics, Grammar and Vocabulary are presented
gradually in each unit, which helps students develop their skills equally unit by
unit. And this makes work fruitful and effective.

It is a great relief for a teacher to have a complete set of material ready to use.
The essential set of Teacher's Book, Course Book, Practice Book, Tests and
Cassettes is completed by Readers and Video Sets for Levels 1 and 2. With all
these components at your disposal you can start teaching English with
elementary students and work with the course through all four levels right up to
upper-intermediate.
Flexible and varied
These features are very important. Students are all different. So sometimes you
work really fast doing all the exercises easily and move rapidly through the
course. But sometimes you are stuck somewhere and realise that your students
need more practice on this or that. This is when either supplementary material
or extra time is needed. With The New Cambridge English Course you need not
worry about that. It is organised so that you may always choose to follow the
course without changing anything, or you can adapt it to your learners' needs.
So you may be as creative as you want, and still stay within the syllabus. Such an
approach is especially important when you are dealing with complete and false
beginners. In the early stages, translation exercises may be of great use.
Another reason why we prefer to start with The New Cambridge English Course
is because Level 1 (elementary) is actually starter and elementary combined. (The
supplementary teacher's notes Teaching Real Beginners by Peter Bereza make
this even more obvious.)
No doubt it is rare to be teaching a homogeneous group. Some students always
know a bit more and learn a bit faster than others. It is very important for the
students to have topics which interest them, and this is what The New
Cambridge English Course offers. Teachers may choose the pace which is suitable
for individuals within the group.
Another reason is that it suits learners of various ages. The variety of topics and
richness of content engage the interest of young adults of 14 as well as adults of
50 or so. So from the point of view of students age and abilities the course is
universal.
Easy to use
I have never heard so much praise about any other Teacher's Book in my life.
One needs to be a teacher to understand what teachers want from a manual,
and The New Cambridge English Course Teacher's Book deserves all the praise it
gets. We appreciate the spiral binding and the combination of the Student's
Book with Teachers Notes. Sections like Possible Problems, Cultural Differences,
Test Administration are of great help especially for young and inexperienced
teachers.

The New Cambridge English Course is also easy to use for students. The new
material is always presented gradually and in a variety of different situations so
the students pick up the words without any effort. The principle of no new
material at home also works wonderfully with all sorts of students. It also
develops responsibility for studying. Students have a special homework set,
including: Students Book, Practice Book, Readers and Students Cassette.
Personal
I would call The New Cambridge English Course a personal course. This is
another thing which makes it so special and popular among the teachers here.
The authors personalities may be traced through the whole course. You may
find them in nearly every task, on every page. It may be their sons voice
recorded in a listening task, their likes and dislikes in a reading section, and of
course that particular sense of humour they have. It makes working with the
course feel as if you are communicating with real people rather than a
featureless textbook. So, while working with the course, you are getting to
know its authors in their absence. I guess that was why I had a feeling I already
knew Michael Swan, when in February of last year, thanks to the effort of
Cambridge University Press and the British Council, he gave seminars in
Krasnoyarsk. I guess I was not the only one who felt the same. Two hundred
teachers attended the seminars which were a great success!
Successful
It takes just 4 hours to get from Krasnoyarsk to Moscow by plane and then
another 3 hours to get to the UK. The New Cambridge English Course covered
this distance within 3 years. It was the first communicative English course to
arrive in Siberia. It happened in 1994. Since that time, it has been used, loved
and cared for by dozens of English teachers all over the region. On behalf of all
Krasnoyarsk teachers who work with The New Cambridge English Course we
would like to give many thanks to Michael Swan and Catherine Walter for the
joy and satisfaction we have working with the course, which has become one of
the most precious gems in the crown of Cambridge University Press. We have
been working with The New Cambridge English Course for five years. Within this
time it has become a good old friend, and old friends are the best.
Maxim Agahanov and Olga Kuznetsova, Krasnoyarsk Teacher's Teaching
University