Jeremy has written courses, readers and books about teaching including the bestselling The Practice of English Language Teaching. He has trained (and spoken with) teachers around the world. He is a faculty member on the MATESOL at The New School, New York. Jeremy is also co-author of Jetstream, a new six-level, general English integrated skills course published by Helling Languages and distributed in the USA and Canada by English Central.
You are best known as a methodology writer. What attracted you to the Jetstream project?
I was interested to see what coursebooks could offer in the modern age – and I was very keen to work with Jane Revell and the Helbling team.
Because there are many general English coursebooks on the market, it is difficult for a new series to set itself apart from others. The unit themes, for example, are pretty much the same across the board (sports, dating, the environment, family, etc.). Jetstream claims to have interesting and motivating content – how did you and your fellow authors accomplish this?
Jetstream not only deals with some topics that aren’t sometimes touched on (like the senses, immigration, ideas of beauty and war, for example), but it also approaches them somewhat differently. For example in the sport unit (yes, that’s a recurring unit topic we know!) students have to try and come up with a definition of what a sport is, learn about a prize-winning male synchronised swimming team (which started out when a group of nearly middle-aged men suffering from ennui thought it might be fun), discover Ulama (an ancient ball game still played in parts of Mexico), and probe the attractions (or otherwise) of mud running – and laugh along with someone’s experience of it.
But above all, with everything from ‘You first’ sections, presentations, discussions etc, Jetstream is a course about and for students. It is what they bring to the course (and the classroom) that counts and Jetstream continually emphasises and encourages this. Our aim is to open the book(s) out and not keep students trapped between the covers, using the book(s) instead as a window out to the world.
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There are regular thinking and memory activities throughout Jetstream. What is the rationale behind this feature?
We believe profoundly that when students are actively engaged in what they are doing (thinking about it) they learn more effectively and enthusiastically. This kind of cognitive engagement is a vital ingredient in language learning, it seems to us. And what IS certain is that we remember things better when we have had to engage with them in a thoughtful way. Older teachers will remember Earl Stevick’s pivotal book Memory, Meaning and Method. Our approach – to make students think about meaning and language construction so that they remember what they have done – is a direct descendant of that kind of revolutionary (for its time) thinking. To be a good language learner you need to develop a good memory!
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Video is also a central feature of the series. Can you explain how it is used?
Almost anyone, nowadays, can film something on their smartphone and then upload what they have done to YouTube or a social media site. It would be foolish to ignore this – and indeed the whole process of doing the same in English has some real advantages. Not only does it engage students cognitively and emotionally, it also provokes memorisation (see above)! But it’s more than that: when students are going to do something in English on film, experience tells us that they pay more attention to how well they are using English than at almost any other time. And then, of course, there are the videos already ‘out there’. A modern course book, when discussing a singer or news event, for example, can’t keep students ‘imprisoned’ in the book – but instead has to encourage them to find videos themselves to back up what they have been discussing and learning.
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Some teachers are very much in love with the internet to the extent that they feel they no longer need coursebooks. What would you say to this?
We live in an internet age, but in our opinion reports of the death of books have been premature and, we think, plain wrong! Coursebooks provide a solid base for use at any time and any place. Their batteries don’t run out. There are no connection problems, and they can be used in just about any conditions. More importantly, as current research is showing, people are going back to books because they LIKE them! However – and this is a fundamental principle in Jeststream – books alone are not at all appropriate in a digital age. That’s why we encourage students to ‘explore online’ and why the Jetstream ‘package’ has cyber homework and all sorts of other online backup material and activities. Of course online material can be attractive and dynamic, but with successful and appropriate design of the kind that Helbling provides books can provide profound satisfaction for both students and teachers. If users think, as we do, that Jetstream feels good, then that is the best answer as to why books still work!