Here - EnglishAgenda - British Council

Figure 1: How the modes complement each otherFace to face – lead modePresent, practice andextend (plus skills work)Computer modePractice (controlled) andextension activitiesFace to face – follow-upReview, personalise, andassess/testSelf-study modePractice (controlled) andextension activitiesMaterials and softwareWith regard to materials, a combination of general (Headway, Soars and Soars,2006 and Going for Gold, Acklam and Crace, 2003) and military English coursebooks(Campaign, Mellor-Clark and Baker de Altamirano, 2005 and Breakthrough, Kosalkovaet al., 2005) were used in the face-to-face mode. Although coursebooks have beenheavily criticised in the literature for being reductionist, bland, safe, and constrictive(Tomlinson cited in Toms, 2004; Brumfit cited in Sheldon 1988; Williams, 1983), inthis blend they were chosen as a step towards ensuring standardisation in terms ofcourse content across the centres, to support the relatively inexperienced officerinstructors and to help them develop pedagogically. The criteria for selection withregard to the general English coursebooks at lower levels were how ‘easy’ they wereperceived to be to teach and the quality of the teacher’s book in terms of the supportit provided for relatively inexperienced instructors, plus the quality of the add-ons,for example workbook, resource packs. Availability also played an important role inthe selection process. At higher levels the choice for the general English coursebookwas left to the teachers and I cannot recall the criteria that they used. With regard tothe military English coursebooks the choice was so limited that there was no call forextensive selection criteria.In the computer mode the learners worked independently with one learner to onecomputer using REWARD (Greenall, 2002) software. It was my belief that the learnerswould benefit from working individually at the computer as in a previous blendwhere they had worked in pairs, using different software, there had been a tendencyfor one student to be ‘active’ (controlling the mouse/keyboard and completing theexercises) whilst the other remained ‘passive’ (watching on, rarely collaborating,and at times even leaving the room). Therefore I was trying to prevent this in therevised blend. REWARD (Greenall, 2002) was chosen primarily for two reasons.Firstly, it only required a one-off purchase, thereby ensuring to a large extent postprojectsustainability in terms of cost-effectiveness. (Sustainability was of paramountimportance in the design as the UK-funded MESP had a fixed end date after whichA military blend | 177