Peter Viney's Blog

TEACHING TRIVIA

I was taken by an article on Ken Wilson’s blog on culture in textbooks, and on English as a Lingua Franca.

Who cares what English people eat for breakfast? by Ken Wilson (LINKED)

I added a comment:

A “light bulb” moment for me was seeing Robin Walker talking on English as a Lingua Franca some years ago. A marvellous talk. It also relates to immigrants into the UK and the citizenship test. I hope it’s changed, but we helped a Polish friend with it. I’ve never seen such a collection of trivia, and for some reason a lot was about Scotland … which loch was further north, the Stone of Scone, Hadrian’s Wall (aka The Scottish backstop?) She’d lived here 10 years, spoke fluent English and worked in the NHS, but had never been north of Stratford-upon-Avon. She was aware it was just crap that you had to learn by heart and passed. So is now British. Most native speakers would struggle to pass it, but wouldn’t worry. NNS teachers, like your Hungarian example, just feel depressed and that they know nothing.

I wanted to add these extracts from “Foreign Affairs” my pseudonymous novel “by Dart Travis.” They touch on excessive teaching of cultural trivia, but they’re too long to add as a comment, and anyway, I thought I’d add them my blog.

LINK TO AMAZON.CO.UK

FOREIGN AFFAIRS by Dart Travis

Kindle edition: £3.33
Paperback: £8.99

Also available on Amazon.com and as an iBook.

It’s set in a large language school in Bournemouth in 1972.

BREAKFAST

Barry had a dreadful hangover, and annoyingly both Cosser and Hamish seemed unaffected by the previous evening’s libations. He motored through his first lesson on auto-pilot, resorting to ‘Modern English for the Foreign Student’ and a particularly dull chapter about the Smith family’s breakfast habits. He wondered how Mary Smith found time to cook kippers, bacon, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, boiled eggs, sausages, black pudding, tomatoes, fried potatoes, mushrooms, baked beans and fried bread, as well as prepare cornflakes, porridge, white and brown toast and (home-made) marmalade and plum jam. Especially as she got up at seven o’clock, then drew a bath and they breakfasted at seven-fifteen. It was surprising that Mr Smith had the energy to say ‘Goodbye, my dear. That was a splendid breakfast,’ before walking to the tube station with The Times under one arm and an umbrella in his hand. The text brought some derision from the students, particularly the heading ‘A Typical English Breakfast’. None of them had enjoyed such a gargantuan feast at their landladies’ houses in England, and Barry had to admit that he hadn’t either.

It’s 1972. Mr Llewellyn, the ageing teacher who usually does the lecture on the British Parliament is off sick, and Barry, a young teacher, had to give the lecture at short notice. Zenubia, a Swiss-Romansh student reports to her landlady: 

Mrs Carpenter put the two mugs of cocoa on the coffee table, and switched the ten o’clock news off, ‘There you are, dear. I don’t like the news much. It’s all so depressing. Did you have a nice day at school?’

‘Yes,’ said Zenubia, ‘It was interesting.’

Mrs Carpenter settled back in her comfy chair, ‘That’s nice.’

‘I went to the lecture about the British Parliament. Quite interesting.’

‘Good. Was that Mr Llewellyn? All my students love his little talks.’

‘No, it was Barry Grant.’

‘Ooh, wasn’t he the one who walked you home? He’s new, isn’t he?’

‘Yes. He is very … serious boy. Not making the joking like Mr Llewellyn. But I learn much.’

‘About parliament?’

‘It is very strange customs. They have the red chairs for the lords and the green chairs for the common ones. Barry is saying it will be better the other way.’

‘It’s tradition, dear, I expect.’

‘Some strange traditions. He is telling that they are only having three hundred and forty … forty-six, I think, chairs for the common ones. But they are having six hundred and thirty MPs. So that many cannot attend. Or must stand.’

Mrs Carpenter frowned, ‘That must be a mistake. That’s silly.’

‘Yes, this is what Barry is saying. It is silly.’

‘I’m sure that’s wrong.’

‘No, no. He is telling that Winston Churchill has done this,’ her eyes flicked to the Churchill Toby jug on the mantelpiece, ‘That Churchill will have it like this.’

‘Churchill was a wonderful man.’

‘This is not what Barry is saying. He tells that in the war, a bomb was falling on the Houses of Parliament. Before, they are having only three hundred and forty-six seats. When they must to build again, Churchill will have the small chambre. The same like before. Churchill will make three hundred and forty-six seats only.’

Mrs Carpenter shook her head several times, ‘That’s all rubbish, dear. Churchill was a genius.’

‘Barry is saying that in Wales and Scotland, the workers were hating Churchill in the war.’

‘I’ve never heard such nonsense. We all loved Sir Winston. He was on the wireless.’

‘He tells that the workers hate him because there was the strike in 1910. Churchill was the General for this strike, and was striking the workers with horses and swawds.’

‘Swords,’ Mrs Carpenter repeated with a silent ‘w’, ‘No, no, dear. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘He is telling us swawds … swords … not sticks.’

  Host families called in to complain about the content and Barry is has to see Colonel Treveleyan, the retired army officer in charge of the British Life & institutions lecture programme.

INSTITUTIONS:

Treveleyan was waiting in the Beginner’s staff room, ‘Ah, Grant. There you are. I wanted a word about your lecture.’

Barry put down the pile of written work (‘Breakfast in my country’), ‘I thought it went quite well considering. They asked a lot of questions at the end.’

‘That’s not the point, Grant. I’ve had three phone calls from landladies already, and it’s only ten o’clock.’

‘From landladies?’

‘Complaining about left-wing propaganda.’

‘What?’

‘Did you tell the students that half the MPs couldn’t get in to debates?’

‘Um, I told them that half couldn’t sit down.’

‘Where on earth did you get that from?’

‘It’s a fact. A well-known fact … in fact.’

‘And that the British people hated Churchill?’

‘I said he was unpopular in some working-class areas.’

‘And that he personally slaughtered Welsh coal miners with his sword?’

‘No, that one’s grown with the telling.’

‘Are you quite mad, Grant? You have half of Germany there and you tell them we hated Churchill?’

‘There can’t have been more than a few Germans, actually.’

‘This is just what they need. They go home and tell everyone, and it shakes our foundations. They’ll be back, you know. They’re all Nazis underneath. I know them, Grant. I’ve fought them.’

‘That’s hardly fair …and it is in most politics textbooks.’

Treveleyan was astonished, ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I can show you tomorrow … and the statistics about the House of Commons.’

‘That’s what they teach you at university?’

‘It’s simply the truth.’

‘Llewellyn always accentuated the positive aspect. Mother of Parliaments. Magna Carta. Cradle of Democracy. Quality of debate … Disraeli and Gladstone. Black Rod. The Woolsack. Stone of Scone. Big Ben. Remember, remember the fifth of November. Those are the important things. He kept politics right out of it.’

‘I’d call that jingoism and trivia.’

Trevelyan looked stunned. He shook his head, and left the staffroom.