Our English teaching

This language material can also be found in the Middlesmoor Grammar Book, written in 1994. The Middlesmoor Grammar Book is intended as reference material for the students. Often children suffer too much grammar teaching, and grammar that is taught confusedly. We have made our book simple and linear, excluding every thing that is not central to daily use, yet keeping in mind the requirements of the school curriculum.

During the lessons we also utilise The Teacher's Kaleidoscope, our language teachers' resource book,  to present the teaching material in interesting ways.

One of the chief advantages of living together, rather than split up in families, is that our English helpers are always in contact with the students. In speaking with our students we aim to use the practical, simple English that forms the basis of lessons.

At this point it's worth considering the whole problem of the disadvantages or advantages of there being more than one German speaker or Italian speaker together. The choice of sending a child to a foreign family alone may seem "logical" from a language point of view, but the logic is only apparent. 

Often the host families accept foreign students as a way of supplementing their income. They are often busy working families, with little conscious knowledge of the English language, thus quite likely to to use that particularly idiomatic form of English which is difficult to understand. For a mere 3-week period this family English is too unprocessed. 

Another disadvantage of family accomodation is that a foreign student is often left too much alone to watch television, or left to go out with a friend of the same nationality met in the morning lessons. 

The solution we offer is, we hope, a sensible compromise: we are a kind of extended family. We do the activities together, and as the 8 English helpers are always in the students' company, they are able to consciously extend and practice the central English that has been defined for each group: it's a conversational environment that is mediated to the needs of the students. Above all, in such an environment the students are happy, whereas a lonely experience in a foreign family can demotivate a child for life. Besides this social aspect, in ordinary families food is often a problem. Ordinary English food is not famously popular among foreigners! Over the years we have learnt to plan meals that hopefully satisfy both Spanish/Italians and Germans/Austrians.