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ISSN 2228-0847

EATE Estonian Association of Teachers of English

The EATE Journal Issue No. 43 August 2013 DIFFERENT, YET THE SAME: NATIONAL EXAMINATION IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 2014 Ülle Türk, Ene Alas, Kristel Kriisa

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REVERSE TRANSLATIONS Philip Kerr

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FOR THE FUN OF IT Marju Purge, Tiia Raag

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ADVANCE BOOKINGS ONLY Erika Jeret

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WEATHER REPORT Julia Hirsch

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THERE ARE PLACES I REMEMBER ALL MY LIFE Evi Saluveer

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Teachers’ Teacher OUR ENTHUSIASTIC CANADIANIST An interview with Eva Rein

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In Memoriam EDA TAMMELO 23 April 1947 − 16 October 2012

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HELGI PULK 16 August 1923 − 16 November 2012

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GORDON LEMAN 18 February 1945 − 19 December 2012

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AINO JÕGI 2 October 1922 − 15 January 2013

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Reading Recommendations WORTHWHILE READING Mall Tamm

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JANE AUSTEN MEETS P. D. JAMES Ilmar Anvelt

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IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN Leena Punga

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Come and Share READING OF BEOWULF Ilmar Anvelt

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EATE ANNUAL CONFERENCE 26 OCTOBER 2012

Photos by Reet Noorlaid

Leena Punga presenting the annual report

Kristi Vahenurm promoting the education portal Koolielu

David A. Hill speaking about language play and creative learning

A group of interested listeners

Margit Timakov spoke about motivational strategies

Booksellers’ teams – Allecto

Booksellers’ teams – Dialoog

Estonian Association of Teachers of English www.eate.ee Chair

Editor of OPEN!

Current account

Leena Punga

Ilmar Anvelt

10152001597007

Phone 5212 347

Phone 7375 218

in SEB

e-mail: leena.punga@gmail.com

e-mail: ilmar.anvelt@ut.ee

EATE ANNUAL CONFERENCE 26 OCTOBER 2012

Vanessa Jakeman’s presentation was about the IELTS writing criteria

Plenary session in the hall of Miina Härma Gymnasium

Kärt Rummel's talk was about the British Council ELT courses and materials Anu Joon came to speak about total immersion

Time for a quick coffee – Piret Kärtner, Danica Kubi and Juta Hennoste

Almut Koester spoke about using real meetings for Business English training Photos by Reet Noorlaid

DIFFERENT, YET THE SAME: NATIONAL EXAMINATION IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 2014

Ülle Türk University of Tartu and Estonian Defence College

Ene Alas Tallinn University

Kristel Kriisa Foundation Innove

The national school-leaving examination in English has been in use since 1997, and though, over these years, minor changes have been made to the format and marking criteria, the basic principles underlying the examination and the overall shape of it have remained constant. However, 2014 will see the introduction of a fundamentally revised national examination. The article will first discuss the differences in the principles of the “old” and the “new” examination designs and will then provide an overview of the new examination format and content.

Differences between the “old” and “new” examinations The current national examination in English is based on the National Curriculum for Basic and Upper Secondary Schools adopted in 2002, and, thus, one of its main aims is to check to what extent the learning outcomes of the curriculum have been reached. At the same time, the results of the national examinations must be such that they can be used by further and higher educational institutions for entrance purposes (see the Decree of the Minister of Education and Research no 59, 17/09/2010).

These two aims are in many ways contradictory. A test that checks to what extent students have mastered learning outcomes does not necessarily discriminate between different students. If all students have mastered the learning outcomes, they all get top scores. When we admit students to an educational institution, however, we usually cannot admit all candidates and want to choose the best ones. Thus, we need a test that discriminates between the candidates well enough for us to know where to draw the line between those we will admit and those we will not.

The fact that on only half of the occasions (in 1999, 2002–2005, 2009 and 2012) someone has scored the maximum 100 points in the English examination is an indication that the examination achieves its second aim – it discriminates between students of different English language proficiencies. At the same time, it is not clear how to interpret the examination results. What can a student with the score of 95, for instance, do in English that a student with the score of 70 cannot? Though the examination is supposed to be “roughly at level B2”, it is not clear what that means. Is level B2 enough to score 100 points or 50 points – the usual pass score at our schools?

The examination to be introduced in 2014 will have to tackle the latter issue. The new National Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools is much more clearly related to the Common Reference Levels as described in the Common European Framework of Reference for Modern Languages: learning, teaching and assessment (usually referred to as CEFR, Council of Europe 2001) than the old curriculum was. School-leavers are expected to have reached the Independent User level (Level B) in two foreign languages, and the national examination is supposed to test whether they meet the requirement in at least one of the languages. However, the Independent User level is divided into two narrower levels – B1 and B2 – and, thus, a student might reach level B2 in one language and B1 in the other language, or B2 in both languages, or B1 in both languages. Hence, they should be given the opportunity to take 4

the national examination either at level B1 or level B2.

For the examination designers, this raises the question whether two separate examinations – one at level B1 and the other at level B2 – should be developed or whether there should be one bi-level examination testing students’ competence at the two levels. Both options have their advantages and disadvantages.

On the one hand, single-level examinations are easier to design and they can be shorter than bi-level examinations. On the other hand, designing two examinations instead of one requires twice as many resources and, whenever there are two examinations in one subject, the question arises how their results relate. Would a score of 90% at a B1 examination be better or worse than a score of 50% at a B2 examination, for instance? In addition, students must understand the levels and know their own language proficiency very well in order to be able to choose the right examination for them. This would put an added burden on the teachers, who must be able to advise their students. Depending on the way the examination results will be used, students might choose the examination that does not correspond to their level of competence because they need higher level results for their future careers (B2 instead of B1) or because they want to be sure to pass (B1 instead of B2).

The main disadvantage of a bi-level examination from the students’ perspective is that it is longer than single-level examinations, as it must incorporate a sufficient number of tasks at both levels. For the examination designers, the greatest challenge lies in determining the level boundaries: how many points does a student need for their language proficiency to be considered B1 and how many points for it to be B2? At the same time, a bi-level examination would save resources and would make life easier for both students and their teachers as they do not have to go through a complex decision-making process prior to the examination.

On balance, then, it seems reasonable to continue to have one national examination, but the National Examination 2014 must be more clearly related to the B1 and B2 levels than the current one, so that it would be possible to indicate what number of points corresponds to which of the levels. It is particularly important because students are allowed to replace the national examination with an internationally recognised one. Without the national examination being clearly related to the Common Reference Levels, it would be extremely difficult – if not impossible – to compare its results to those gained in other English language examinations.

The examination will, therefore, be a bi-level examination testing students’ competence in listening and reading comprehension and in writing and speaking skills at levels B1 and B2. It must contain B1- and B2-level tasks in all its components and the rating scales used to assess students’ writing and speaking skills must be clearly related to these levels.

Level of difficulty of the National Examination 2014 However, the question that must be asked is: what does being at a particular level mean? When can we say that a student is competent in English at a particular level? It is commonly recognised that language learning is not a linear process and, thus, learners do not master one level completely before moving on to learning the skills characteristic of a higher level. In fact, once a student has mastered all the tasks in all the topic areas of a level (that is, they score 100% or near it on a test set at that level), they can, and probably do, have developed considerable control over the tasks at the next higher level. Thus, in testing theory, there are different approaches to establishing what level a student’s language skills are at.

Statistically, being at a particular level means that the student has a 50/50 chance of getting the answer right. In everyday practice, that would mean that a student getting 50% of the answers right is considered to be at the level of competence they are being tested at. In reality, though, most examination boards in Europe seem to consider scoring 60% a minimum requirement for awarding a particular level. At the same time, students with very high scores (above 80%) are sometimes seen to be at the next level of proficiency. An example of such an approach would be the one used by Cambridge English Language Assessment, which uses the standardised score of 60 out of 100 as the pass score for their examinations (see Khalifa and Weir 2009: 161–167 or Geranpayeh and Taylor 2013: 268–271 for a detailed explanation) and awards the next higher level to those test-takers who receive grade A in the examination.

A somewhat stricter approach is used in the United States, where a score of about 67% is considered an indication that someone has reached a particular level (see, for instance, Clifford 2012). Also, in 5

order to be awarded a certain level, the student has to be tested on that level. It is not possible to get a higher-level certificate simply because one has done very well on the lower level. It could also be argued that in order to be sure that a student’s competence is at a particular level, they should also be given some higher-level tasks to do in order to establish both the so-called floor (describing sustained or consistent performance) and ceiling (the next higher) levels. Because language acquisition is not linear, it is impossible to have mastered one level without being able to do at least some tasks at the next higher level.

In the case of bi-level examinations, the issue is further complicated by the need to decide whether to use compensatory or non-compensatory scoring. In the case of the former, the total score is looked at and the pass scores for the two levels set based on it. For instance, it might be decided that in order to get the higher level, the student must get 60% of the items right, and in order to get the lower level – 40% right. In this case, it does not matter which items – easier or more difficult ones – the student gets right and which ones they fail.

In the case of the second approach, however, the pass score has to be identified for the two levels separately considering only the tasks at this particular level. Additionally, in order to be awarded the higher level, the student must first comply with the requirements for the lower level. For instance, in a test of 100 items, where 50 items are on level B1 and 50 items on level B2, in order to get the level B1 certificate, the student must get 60% of the level B1 items right. If someone, for instance has a score of 45 on such a test, but gets only 50% of the B1 items (that is, 25 items) right, they will fail the examination despite the fact that they also got 40% of the B2 items (that is, 20 items) right. Similarly, a student might gain 70% in the examination as a whole (that is, answer 70 of the 100 items correctly) and yet be awarded level B1 if 45 of the correct items are on level B1 (90% of the B1 level items) and only 25 at level B2 (50% of the level B2 items).

As the purpose of the new examination is to determine whether our school-leavers’ competence in English is at level B1 or B2, the tasks on the two levels should be considered separately. It is obvious from the above example that, when non-compensatory scoring is used, all the items and tasks must be correctly allocated to the level they belong to. It is relatively straightforward for the speaking and writing tasks as in the case of the productive skills the difference between the two levels is not necessarily determined on the level of tasks – it is entirely possible to complete a task at a lower or higher level.

What matters is the accurate rating of students’ productions. In the case of the receptive skills, however, some standard-setting procedure must be applied in order to determine the level each item and task belongs to and to establish the pass scores.

Fortunately, there was enough time to conduct a pilot examination in the spring of 2013, which provided an excellent opportunity to test the examination procedures as well as the suitability of the new examination format and the difficulty levels of the tasks. The results and conclusions of the pilot examination will be published in the autumn of 2013, after a standard setting study has been carried out and the necessary qualitative and quantitative analyses conducted. Only then can it be determined whether compensatory or non-compensatory scoring will be used.

An overview of the National Examination 2014 The national examination in English to be introduced in 2014 will consist of four parts: • the writing paper, • the listening comprehension paper, • the reading comprehension paper, and • the speaking test.

The largest changes are going to be introduced into the two receptive skills papers, which will become longer than they are in the current examination to allow reliable testing of students’ competences at both levels – level B1 and level B2. As the national curriculum does not list grammar structures to be mastered, there will be no separate language structures paper. However, the reading comprehension paper will also include two text-based language structures tasks, which means that it will be longer and contribute more to the final score. Table 1 below provides a summary of the examination components in 2014.

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Table 1. The National Examination in the English Language in 2014.

Number of tasks

Length

Weighting

Writing

2

90 min

25%

Listening comprehension

4–5

45 min

25%

Reading comprehension

7

90 min

30%

Speaking

2

12-15 min

20%

The order of the examination components will be the same as in the current examination. The writing, listening comprehension and reading comprehension papers will be administered on the same day and there will be a 15-minute break after the writing paper. The speaking test will take place on the following days and will still be a one-to-one interview.

The following three sections will discuss the characteristic features of the four examination components in some detail.

The writing paper The writing paper will undergo a few changes in the task content (see the list of possible task types in Table 2). The changes will be introduced gradually over a period of time, from 2014 until 2016, to give the teachers sufficient time to familiarise themselves and their students with the new task types (asterisked in Table 2) that may feature in the writing paper.

Table 2. The writing paper in 2014.

PART 1: WRITING (25%) 90 minutes Task 1

(Semi)formal letter 120 words

Possibletask types a letter an email message*

Task 2

Longer piece of writing 200 words

Possible task types an essay; a report an article*;a review*; a story*

Similarly to the current examination format, the writing paper will consist of two tasks, the first of which is a (semi)formal letter and the second either a report or an essay in 2014 and 2015. The required length of student response will be the same as it is today: the letter should be about 120 words and the essay or the report about 200 words long. Examinees are penalised if their responses are significantly (more than 10%) shorter than required.

Starting from spring 2016, writing an email message (as the first task) and a short article, a review or a story (as the second task) may also be tested. This change will be introduced in order to encourage positive and to reduce negative washback of the examination on classroom teaching. Both the new National Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools and the CEFR list such tasks, but as they have not been used in the examination, teachers tend to focus on improving their students’ essay and report writing skills and not pay enough attention to the other text formats. Contemporary course books, however, provide both examples of and instructions for writing all the text types mentioned, so they will be an excellent source for familiarising students with the new tasks.

The writing paper will make up 25% of the overall examination result. It is important to note that, because the examination will assess students’ language proficiency on levels B1 and B2, the existing rating scales will have to be replaced with the ones taking this into consideration, and new scales need to be developed for rating the new text types. At the same time, no major changes will be made to 7

the assessment procedures: the papers will still be assessed centrally and each paper will be double marked by qualified assessors.

The listening and reading comprehension papers Both the listening comprehension paper and the reading comprehension paper will be longer in the new examination than they are in the current one. An increase in the number of tasks is, again, explained by the need to determine reliably students’ level of competence at two broad levels – B1 and B2. At the same time, the text types and task types used as well as the sub-skills tested will be the same as those in the current examination. Table 3 below provides an overview of the two papers.

Table 3. The listening and reading comprehension papers in 2014.

PART 2: LISTENING AND READING COMPREHENSION 135 min Listening (25%) 45 min

4–5 tasks

Possible task types multiple choice sentence/table completion (gap-filling) short answers multiple matching

Reading (30%) 90 min

7 tasks 6 texts

Possible task types cloze (open or multiple choice) gap-filling (with or without a bank) keyword transformations word formation editing multiple choice questions multiple matching (gapped text, short texts with titles, words with definitions, questions and answers) short-answer questions sentence/ table completion

The listening comprehension paper will make up 25% of the overall examination result and include four to five tasks, two of which will be set at level B1 and the rest at level B2, with a few of the items at C1. Text types may include interviews, conversations between two or more people, news, sports broadcasts, presentations, lectures, and other monologues on concrete (B1) and abstract (B2) themes.

The most significant change will be in terms of the number of times students can listen to the tasks as one of the B1 tasks will be listened to only once. This should add to the authenticity of the listening comprehension paper as there are many situations in real life where there is no opportunity to listen to a text or a conversation a second time. Another aspect worth emphasising is the use of background noise in some of the B2-level listening tasks because the ability to understand spoken language in noisy conditions is one of the aspects that distinguishes a B2-level learner from a B1-level one.

The reading comprehension paper will account for 30% of the overall examination result and include seven tasks based on six different texts. Three of the tasks will be on level B1, three on level B2 and one on C1. Texts used can be both factual and literary. On level B1, texts will mainly be informative, describing things or people, retelling or recounting events, classifying phenomena or giving instructions. On level B2, texts will additionally include such functions as providing explanations and reasons, supporting opinions or justifying decisions, and may include different viewpoints. Text sources will include media (newspapers and magazines), reference books (encyclopaedia, manuals), publicity materials (leaflets, travel brochures) and literary works.

Two of the texts will be short (approximately 150 words) and, in addition to testing students’ reading skills, will also measure their grammatical accuracy and the ability to use the English language appropriately.

The other four texts will be longer (400–500 words each) and the tasks based on them will test students’ reading comprehension skills, which will include reading for gist, for specific information, for detailed 8

understanding, for the writer’s viewpoint or for implications.

Both the listening comprehension and the reading comprehension papers will be finalised once the results of the 2013 pilot examination have been analysed, and the final format of the papers will be published on the SA Innove website.

The speaking test The speaking test will undergo a change in the task content and sequencing as well as in the definition of the assessment criteria.

The principles of the speaking test will continue to conform to the overall expectations set for speaking tests: ‘... to set tasks that form a representative sample of the population of oral tasks that we expect candidates to be able to perform. The tasks should elicit behaviour which truly represents the candidates’ ability. The samples of behaviour can and will be scored validly and reliably’ (Hughes 2004: 113).

The speaking test result will account for 20% of the overall examination score. The speaking test will continue to be a scripted interview because, as Fulcher (2010: 260) has noted, ‘there is a growing body of evidence that the outcome of a speaking test can depend upon the interlocutor’. Providing a script for the interviewers has been shown to succeed in standardising some aspects of the interviewer behaviour, increasing the likelihood of participating students getting equal opportunities to demonstrate their speaking skills (Lazaraton 2002: 124–151). A survey carried out among the English teachers in Estonia in 2011 also found that 89% of those interviewers who conduct speaking tests within the framework of the national examination in English consider the script helpful (Kont-Kontson et al 122), supporting them professionally.

The new 2014 script will resemble its predecessor in that the speaking test will continue to be divided into 3 stages: stage 1 – introduction, stage 2 – task 1 and stage 3 – task 2, followed by a conclusion. A sample of stage 1 of the speaking test can be seen in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Interviewer script. Stage 1.

INTERVIEWER SCRIPT 2014 STAGE 1: Introduction (2 minutes) [Greet the candidate and ask him/her to sit down.]

[When the interview is recorded, switch on the recorder and read out: This is the Speaking Test of the National Examination in English recorded on ..................... (date).

Student code number …………………………………

Then turn to the candidate.]

Good morning/afternoon.

My name is .................and I am your interviewer today, and this is ........... (name), your assessor.

How are you?

That’s good then. / Just try to relax, you’ll be fine.

[Choose ONE of the following sets of questions. Vary them equally during the day.]

Let’s talk about television. Is television a good way to learn a foreign language? Why? What TV programmes are popular among young people? Why? OR Let’s talk about bicycles. How popular are bicycles among young people? Why? What means of transport do people mostly use in Estonia? Why? OR Let’s talk about radio. How common is it to listen to the radio among young people? Why? 9

Where do young people mostly get information about current events? Why? OR Let’s talk about singing. How popular is singing as a hobby among young people? Why? Would it be a good idea to have singing as a career? Why? OR Let’s talk about furniture. What furniture do people typically have in their living-room? Why? What kind of home would you like to have in the future? Why? Thank you. Let’s go on to task 1.

Stage 1 has two functions: first, to provide a formal beginning for the interview and, second, to give the student an opportunity to warm up for the speaking test. The first part is accomplished by the formal introduction as well as, in case the interview is recorded, by announcing the name of the test, the test date and the student code number.

Once the participants have been introduced, the interviewer selects a topic for the warm-up phase from among the five options given in the script. Each of the options has typically four questions, as can be seen from the script above. The topics are general interest topics that any B1/B2 level student should be able to handle. At this stage, the interviewer must remember to restrict the query to the questions provided in the script. No additional questions should be asked. While the students are preparing for the test, teachers should inform them that in this part of the test, their performance is not assessed, and indeed they could use this stage to warm up to task 1 and 2 without being overly concerned about the quality of their language. The interviewer should take care, though, to manage the time of this stage so that not more than two minutes are spent here, so that the students would not spend all their energy responding to warm-up questions and risk running out of steam by the time they reach tasks 1 and 2, where both the amount and quality of language demonstrated are assessed.

Task 1 in the new 2014 speaking test will ask the student to describe, compare and contrast photographs.

The CEFR outlines various levels of being able to describe oneself, objects, environment, people, places, feelings, reactions, etc. (see CEFR 2001: 59), indicating the degree of sophistication the description needs to achieve on a particular language proficiency level. The level descriptors listed in the document indicate that a description / comparison / contrast task can be developed so that it will allow us to measure students’ language proficiency at levels B1 and B2. Students on both these levels are able to complete such tasks, but their performance differs in the complexity and quality of the language displayed, which will allow the rater to assign them to the appropriate level of proficiency. A sample of stage 2 of the interviewer script can be seen in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2. Interviewer script. Stage 2.

STAGE 2: Task 1 (5–6 minutes) In this task, I would like you to compare and contrast two pictures. You should speak for two minutes about them. Before you talk, you have 1 minute to think about what you are going to say. You cannot make any notes.

Please, pick a card. What is the number of your card?

Here are the two photographs.

You now have 1 minute to think about the photos.

[Allow 1 minute of uninterrupted preparation time. The recorder must NOT be switched off for that time.]

All right. Remember, you have 2 minutes for this, so do not worry if I stop you. I will tell you when the time is up. Please start speaking now.

[Allow 2 minutes of uninterrupted speaking time.]

[When the student has been speaking for 2 minutes, find a logical way (at the end of a sentence or thought) to stop him/her.]

OR 10

[If the student has spoken for less than 2 minutes, ask ‘Is that all you wanted to say?’ or ‘Was there something else you wanted to say?’]

[When the student has completed Task 1, continue with the questions in the script in the order they appear.]

Thank you. Now I would like you to answer some questions.

OPTIONAL QUESTION: How are the two pictures similar to/ different from each other?

[Other questions are given with each set of photographs.]

Thank you. Let’s go on to task 2.

In stage 2, the student gets two photographs on the topic specified by the number of the card which they have picked. A sample of photographs to be described, compared and contrasted can be seen in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3. Sample student card for task 1.

Describe, compare and contrast.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of relaxing in both ways?

The student has one minute to familiarise themselves with the photographs and think about how to do the task. At this stage, note-taking is not allowed. The student is expected to focus on all the aspects of the prompt, that is, describe, who or what is in the picture (while teaching, it is perhaps helpful to instruct students to imagine that the interviewer cannot see the pictures), compare the two photos (say what they have in common), contrast them (say how they differ) and respond to the question written under the photographs.

One of the problems that may occur at this stage is that the student forgets all or one of the earlier tasks (to describe, compare or contrast) and jumps straight to the question under the picture. This can easily be pre-empted by the teacher focusing on the task type in the language classroom and alerting students to the requirements of the task. However, should the student still forego the description, comparison or contrast when doing the task, the interviewer has at their disposal an extra question prompting the student to complete the whole task (see the optional question in the script in Figure 2). This question is optional, which means that it should only be asked if the student has clearly overlooked this section of stage 2. Otherwise, once the student has completed the task or has been speaking for the allocated two minutes, the interviewer should stop the monologue and proceed with the follow-up questions. Sample questions accompanying the pictures shown above can be seen in Figure 4.

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Figure 4. Sample follow-up questions for task 1.

1. Which of the above was closest to your way of relaxing when you were a child? Explain.

2. How important is it to relax? Why? 3. What type of sport would you like to take up in the future? Why? 4. What would you like to know about these people’s sporting habits?

The questions aim to prompt the student to make use of different tense forms in the past, present and future in their answers. The final question seeks to see if the student can formulate questions, either direct or indirect.

Stage 3 comprises the task that is task 1 in the current national examination speaking test – a monologue commenting on a controversial statement. It should be noted that the topics of stage 2 and stage 3 are not related; for instance, if the student has to talk about sports in task 2, task 3 will tackle a different topic. This follows the principle of giving a student as many fresh starts during the test as feasible. A sample script of stage two of the 2014 speaking test is given in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Interviewer script. Stage 3.

STAGE 3: Task 2 (6–7 minutes) Now, I would like you to speak on a topic for two minutes. Before you talk, you have 2 minutes to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes if you wish.

Here is a card with a task on it.

Here is a pencil and some paper. You now have 2 minutes.

[Allow 2 minutes of uninterrupted preparation time. The recorder should NOT be switched off for that time.]

Alright. Remember, you have 2 minutes for this, so do not worry if I stop you. I will tell you when the time is up. Please start speaking now.

[Allow 2 minutes of uninterrupted speaking time.]

[When the student has spoken for 2 minutes, find a logical way (at the end of a sentence or thought) to stop him/her.]

OR [If the student has spoken for less than 2 minutes ask ‘Is that all you wanted to say?’ or ‘Was there something else you wanted to say?’]

[When the candidate has completed the monologue, continue with the questions in the script in the order they appear. If the student has already answered any of the questions in his/her monologue, skip the question).]

Thank you. Now, I would like you to answer some questions.

[Questions will be provided in the script.]

Thank you. This is the end of the interview.

[Switch off the recorder.]

[Before the student leaves the room • tell the student when the scores will be announced • ask the student to sign the attendance form • collect the student’s notes] In this part of the speaking test, the student has two minutes to think about the statement and plan their monologue. Note-taking is recommended but not obligatory. The student can start speaking before the two minutes of the preparation time have elapsed if they wish. The interviewer should nevertheless remind the student of the expectation that they keep speaking for two minutes and that the interviewer will keep time (see the script in Figure 5). Below is a sample of the student’s monologue card (Figure 6).

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Figure 6. Sample student card for task 2.

MONOLOGUE Read the topic below and prepare to speak about it. Use the questions given to help to plan your monologue.

Some people say that helping others is a special skill.

Why do you think they say that? Do you agree? Give reasons.

When preparing students for the examination, care should be taken to instruct them to cover all the aspects of the prompt; that is, they should hypothesise why some people might hold the view, give reasons for their opinion, followed by their own point of view, again supported by reasons or examples.

The monologue is followed up by the student responding to questions. The questions must be asked in the order they have been listed in the interviewer script. They vary in their level of particularity and generality, moving from personal interest questions to those requiring the ability to generalise on fairly universal topics. Sample questions following the discussion of the statement given above can be seen in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Sample follow-up questions for task 2.

1. What kind of volunteer work would you be prepared to do? Explain.

2. Is it common for upper secondary school students to volunteer? Explain.

3. Why do some people find it difficult to ask for help?

4. When can somebody be considered a hero?

When the student has finished answering the questions, the interviewer ends the speaking test according to the script, and the recorder is switched off. The interaction involving announcement of test results, signing documents and managing student notes should not be part of the speaking test recording.

The student’s performance will be rated by an assessor on a 6-point marking scale (0 to 5) according to the following criteria: task completion, vocabulary, grammar, fluency and pronunciation. The rating scale will be published on the SA Innove website in autumn 2013.

To conclude, the new national examination in the English language to be introduced in 2014 is, on the one hand, considerably different from the current examination and, on the other hand, very similar to it. It is different in regards to its theoretical underpinnings and the principles of scoring, but it is very similar in terms of the test tasks used and the language skills tested. Thus, the new examination offers considerable challenges to the developers and designers, requires some retraining of teachers in conducting interviews and rating speaking and writing tests, but does not change much for language learners and their examination preparation process. Though it will be somewhat longer than the current examination, most of the tasks used will be familiar to students and their teachers and the level of difficulty of the examination will not change either. Nevertheless, the teachers will be informed about all the details of the new examination after the pilot examination results have been analysed in autumn 2013, and teacher training sessions will be held later in the school year to help teachers to conduct the new speaking test and to assess the writing and speaking papers. The materials of the pilot examination as well as the rating scales will be available on the SA Innove website.

REFERENCES Clifford, Ray. 2012. Progress labels used to describe learners’ “Floor” and “Ceiling” ability levels. Overseas Chinese Flagship Program, available at http://chineseflagship.byu.edu/overseasflagship/art-byuexplained.php 13

Council of Europe. 2001. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fulcher, Glen. 2010. Practical Language Testing. London: Hodder Education.

Geranpayeh, Ardeshir and Linda Taylor (eds). 2013. Examining Listening. Studies in Language Testing 35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gümnaasiumi riiklik õppekava. Lisa 2 [National Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools. Appendix 2: Foreign Languages.] Riigi Teataja I, 2010, 6, 21.

Haridus- ja teadusministri määrus 17.09.2010 nr 59 [Decree of the Minister of Education and Research no 59, 17/09/2010] Tasemetööde ning põhikooli ja gümnaasiumi lõpueksamite ettevalmistamise, koostamise, läbiviimise ja hindamise tingimused ja kord ning tasemetööde, ühtsete põhikooli lõpueksamite ja riigieksamite tulemuste analüüsimise tingimused ja kord. Riigi Teataja I 2010, 67, 502.

Hughes, Arthur. 2004. Testing for Language Teachers (2nd ed). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Khalifa, Hanan and Cyril J. Weir. 2009.Examining Reading. Studies in Language Testing 29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kont-Kontson, Riin, Ene Alas, Suliko Liiv. 2013. Developing Interviewer Proficiency: a Self-Perception Survey. Helle Metslang, Margit Langemets, Maria Maren Sepper (toim.). Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Ühingu aastaraamat 9 [Estonian Papers in Applied Linguistics 9];113 - 128. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus.

Lazaraton, Anne. 2002. A Qualitative Approach to the Validation of Oral Language Tests. Studies in Language Testing 14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Põhikooli ja gümnaasiumi riiklik õppekava [National Curriculum for Basic and Upper Secondary Schools], Riigi Teataja I 2002, 20, 116.

REVERSE TRANSLATIONS Philip Kerr

Teacher trainer and coursebook author (Straightforward, Inside Out)

The use of the students’ own language has been more of a mute point than a moot point in the discourse of English language teaching in recent years.

The topic is largely absent from teacher training manuals, from conference presentations and from coursebooks, teachers’ magazines and journals. In some contexts, the use of the students’ own language in English classrooms is banned. There is a widespread assumption that English is best taught through English alone. Teachers who use their students’ own language to help in their acquisition of English often do so with a sense of guilt or inadequacy, as if they were falling short of the English-only ideal.

The assumption that English is best taught through English alone is as wide of the mark as it is widespread. Its currency is surprising. There are, in fact, few aspects of language teaching where such a strong consensus of academic and research opinion exists, although it is taking time for this view to filter through to classroom teachers.

Put baldly, the consensus view is now that the students’ own language is a useful resource and it would be foolish to banish it from the English language classroom. The question is not if or whether the students’ own language should be used, but how often and for what reasons. I do not intend in this article to look in detail at the theoretical arguments in favour of using the students’ own language. For anyone who is interested, the two most useful places to turn are Guy Cook’s Translation in Language Teaching (Oxford University Press, 2010) and a state-of-the-art review article by Graham Hall and Guy Cook entitled Own-language Use in Language Teaching and Learning (Language Teaching, Vol. 45/3, July 2012, pp. 271-308).

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It will, however, be useful to summarise a few of the main arguments. First of all, it is pointless to attempt to immunize our students against the influence of their own language (Widdowson, 2003, p.151). Whatever rules we attempt to impose in our classrooms, our students will be translating in their heads, even if not aloud. It makes more sense to deal with this head-on than to pretend it not taking place. We may say that we want our students to learn to think in English, but research suggests that this is not possible until they have reached quite a high level of proficiency (B2 or above) – a level higher than many of our students will ever achieve during their formal education. It is better that they should think in their own language than not think in English! Secondly, all meaningful learning is built on previous learning. In the case of low-level learners of English, the only relevant previous learning is their knowledge of their own language (and, in some cases, another language they have already acquired).

For this reason, comparisons between their own language and the English they are learning are not only inevitable, but desirable. Thirdly, with the growing availability and usefulness of apps and online tools which offer instant (and inaccurate) translations, our students need help to use these critically and effectively. The only way we can provide this help is by allowing the students’ own language and translations into our classrooms.

Once we have accepted the potential of the students’ own language as a resource for learning other languages, the most pressing question is the practical one. How we can exploit this potential? Both historically and at the present time, the most common use of the students’ own language is for contrastive analysis – comparing, for example, tenses in the two languages, or contrasting pairs of false lexical friends. There are, however, a large number of other uses that we can make of the students’ own language. In the rest of this article, I would like to consider just one of these uses: reverse translation.

Reverse translation has been around for a long time, at least as far back as the sixteenth century when the Spanish humanist, Juan Luis Vives, and the English educationalist and scholar, Roger Ascham, recommended the technique. It is hardly complicated: students are given a text to translate from one language to another; later, they translate it back again (without, of course, referring to the original). Here are some suggestions for bringing this technique to life in the twenty-first century classroom.

1 Translated Chinese whispers (broken telephone) Begin by whispering a shortish sentence in English to one student in the class. This student must translate it into their own language, and whisper this translation to the student sitting next to them. This student must then translate what she / he has heard into English and whisper this to the next student.

The next student translates what she / he has heard into their own language, and passes this on as a whisper. And so it goes on.

With a class of more than about eight students, you may like to have a number of sentences being passed around the room simultaneously. You may also prefer the students to generate their own minitexts to pass around. The higher the level of the class, the longer the texts can be. This activity works well as a warmer (or a fun filler).

2 Concertinaed translations In this variation of activity 1, students write a translation of a sentence or very short text at the top of a piece of paper. They pass this on to another student who leaves a little space on the paper before writing a translation into the other language. They then fold over the paper so that only their translation (and not what they translated from) can be seen. These pieces of paper are passed on to other students, who carry on the process – translating, folding over the paper, passing it on.

Stop the activity when you (or the students) have had enough. The students will want to open up the pieces of paper and see how the translations evolved (or diverged from the originals). This provides you with a rich resource. What did the students find difficulty in expressing? Which translations were acceptable? Why were some better or worse than others?

3 Grammar or vocabulary revision Many or most of our lessons contain some element of grammar or vocabulary teaching. Very often, this language is practised with a gap-fill of some sort. Once the students have completed a gap-fill and you 15

have conducted whole-class feedback on the activity, tell the students to close their books. Then, explain that they are going to do a dictation … but a dictation with a difference. Tell them that they must not write down what you say (i.e. they must not write any English); they must only write down a translation (into their own language) of what they hear.

Dictate the completed sentences from the gap-fill exercise (there are usually six to eight sentences in such exercises). The students should work individually. Give them enough time to think about and write down their translations. When they have finished, give them some time to compare their answers with a partner. Then, you spring your surprise: tell them that they must now translate these sentences back into English. They must not consult their books, but they can work with a partner. After a sufficient amount of time (monitor how they’re getting on!), tell the students that they can now look at the original exercise in their books. Conclude this activity by answering any questions that the students ask, or by discussing anything interesting that you have noticed while monitoring.

4 Model texts for writing exams* Students taking exams in written English will often have to produce some writing of a particular genre and, at some point during their preparation course, they will need to study a model of this genre. Find or write a model answer for an examination writing task (you can find model answers to writing tasks for Cambridge ESOL exams (e.g. FCE, CAE) in many coursebooks that prepare students for these exams) and translate this into the students’ own language.

In class, students study the model answer in English. Draw their attention to the organization of ideas and paragraphs, and to useful phrases (set phrases which are typical of the genre). Then, take away the English version of the model and hand out the translation. In pairs or small groups, students must translate this into English.

When the students have finished, or when they have got as far as they can, let them see the original again. They should look for differences between the original and their version. For each difference, they should decide (a) if their version was acceptable (b) which version was better.

Studying a text in this way can help learners to memorize chunks of it. In many exams, it is useful to have sets of useful phrases for particular written genres stored in the memory. * Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Roger Marshall for this idea.

5 Google lost in translation Like it or not, our students will use, and misuse, Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/). Here is one way of helping them to use this resource better and to become more aware of its limitations. Before the lesson, select a text (text A) that you want the students to work on. This should be an authentic text of intrinsic interest and be of an appropriate level. Translate the text into the students’ own language. Paste your translation of the text (text B) into Google Translate and convert into English. Save this document (text C). Highlight any words / phrases in this translation that are incomprehensible or incorrect.

At the start of the lesson, generate some interest in the topic of the text (e.g. through discussion). Show the students the text (C) generated by Google Translate. Explain that this is a translation of a text that was written in their own language. Point out that it contains errors (the words / phrases that you have highlighted). The class works in pairs or small groups. Tell the students to translate the text back into their L1. They should do this orally, and they should not worry about the highlighted words. Once the students have had enough time to complete their oral translations, show them text (B), which is written in their L1. Their task now is to look at the highlighted words, and improve the translation into English.

Students can then compare their answers with text (A), the original in English. Wrap up the activity by asking students how they feel about using Google Translate now. What tips would they give to other users?

In August 2012, I gave a talk on the subject of translation in the English language classroom at the Summer School in Pärnu. It was because of the generally enthusiastic response to that talk that I decided to write this article. To accompany that talk, I produced a digital handout / blog which contains more 16

practical ideas, as well as a link to a video version of the talk. If you have any practical suggestions of your own, I would love to hear from you at http://translationhandout.wordpress.com/.

References Widdowson, H. (2003) Defining Issues in English Language Teaching Oxford: OUP.

FOR THE FUN OF IT Marju Purge, Tiia Raag

Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium

Motivation – one of the main determinants of foreign language learning achievement It’s 9:30 on Saturday morning, 24 November 2012 in the small town of Võru. Most children and parents are probably sleeping at home in their cosy beds, but more than 150 students all over Võru County start gathering in Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium to dress up for the third Drama Festival of English plays. They have come here to enjoy both acting and watching short plays and sketches in English.

It’s a very important event for them. This festival is not a competition; it’s for the fun of it! No prizes are awarded here – all the participants will get the certificates for excellent performance. There are Harry Potters, Peter Pans, Little Red Riding Hoods and many other famous characters. The Festival even smells nicely – during the interval, pancakes with jam and cocoa are offered. Caring parents have also accompanied their kids either helping with costumes or recording the plays.

English Language Events at Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium and in Võru County Several researchers consider motivation as one of the most powerful factors in foreign language learning. Let’s take a look at some possible ways we have been using at Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium and found really fascinating for our students.

Learning and teaching English has always been popular in our school. Having English-biased classes dates back to 1967, and for years we have had various events from speech contests to pancake races.

Foreign languages have especially been the centre of attention during the so- called languages month (earlier in February, now in November). At that time, all kinds of language events take place.

Our language teachers have always been busy organising activities both at our own school and in Võru County. The annual English language county events involve Quizzes and Puzzles Competition for the 6th graders, Making And Solving Crosswords for the 7th graders, Translation Contest for the 8th graders, Speech Contest for the 9th– 12th graders.

In addition to the county contests, we have been organising several language events at our own school: the annual Languages Quiz Contest for 6th–9th and 9th–12th graders that involve different foreign languages and cultures: German, Russian, French, Finnish and, of course, English. All students of grades 6–9 and 10–12 also take a 100 words spelling test and a dictation in English.

English Drama Festival for Basic School Students of Võru County Contests, contests, contests! Why don’t we do something different that is not a competition and motivates a lot of students in the whole county! So we did it. Three years ago we started our festival for 4th–9th graders, and the number of participants has grown ever since.

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The idea of the festival actually grew out of our mini-performance traditions. For years, we had been acting our own little plays with the students of the same grades (e.g. different groups of grade 6). We read home reading books and acted out extracts, performed them to other groups and parents. It was enjoyable and easy, as it didn’t demand perfection on the stage; we just did it in the classroom and the kids were really creative.

Making preparations for the county festival, we had to consider teachers’ great amount of work. We thought it would be easier for them to prepare just short plays or sketches with the students. As the teachers often have to write the plays themselves, it’s still lots of work for them but it’s worth it.

In order to spice it up, we had the idea of serving pancakes and cocoa during the interval; besides, the children from all over the county needed refreshment.

The Value of the English Drama Festival • The festival is not a competition. It’s fun for everyone. It lacks the stress of winning and losing.

• A lot of students get a chance of performing plays not only at their own school but also on a ’’bigger stage’’ with participants from other schools of the whole county.

• The fun of the preparation period is as motivating as its result – the festival. Acting out dialogues, short sketches, extracts from their home reading books, fairy tales, etc. lasts for a longer period and involves the whole language group. Language lessons are more enjoyable and practising the plays sometimes takes 5–10 minutes of the lesson, but the kids are eagerly waiting for those moments, and the whole lesson brightens up.

• Performing short plays (5-20 minutes) means less extra work and preparation time for the teachers.

• The students are involved in the creation of the plays.

• Using home reading books becomes more exciting.

• Some teachers take the whole language group to the festival, even a couple of sentences acted on the big stage is of great importance to the young performers.

This is how we have tried to make our students’ studies more challenging and enjoyable at Võru.

We hope our short article has inspired new ideas and will help teachers of other counties and towns find more ways of motivating their students.

English Drama Festival.

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ADVANCE BOOKINGS ONLY Erika Jeret

Pärnu College of the University of Tartu

Tourism in Estonia is a sector of the national economy which has weathered the recession and is now picking itself up. This is reflected in the number of domestic and incoming tourists in 2012 with the latter accounting for 3.62 million nights and a steady upward trend for the third year running (Eesti ja Euroopa turism 2012).1 That said, this improvement is the result of the hard work of many people and companies in terms of promotion and active marketing, or creating, developing and launching numerous facilities, sites and sights in the country. The ways in which entrepreneurs and businesses present themselves and their products and services are fundamental components of marketing. Obvious means to this end today are not only printed leaflets and brochures but also homepages and other virtual media.

The following article is based on an analysis of the homepages of about 70 tourism providers (tourist farms, countryside museums, activity tourism providers, transport companies, etc). Phraseology and the use of English in homepages is the topic of this research rather than design, layout, functionality, user-friendliness and other such features. However, it had to be noted how frequently it appeared as if all the power had been spent on setting the page up so there was no fuel left for running and keeping it updated. On numerous occasions prices were still presented in Estonian kroons, and homepages in foreign languages were “under construction” indefinitely, or did not exist at all, apart from the flag.

English is by far the favourite foreign language to have in a homepage and is followed by Finnish, German, Latvian, Russian (presented in alphabetical order, not statistically) and several other languages.

With so many people speaking English in Estonia, especially the younger generations, one might expect the level of English to be good or very good, which most regrettably, is not always the case. The author is not intending to point out particularly bad examples of poor usage of English in the homepages but rather suggest standard phrases which can be easily used in a correct way.

Tourism English uses both general English vocabulary and rather specific terminology. Also, tourism incorporates a wide range of component parts, such as accommodation, food and catering, attractions, sights, museums, activities (which in their turn range from rather taciturn pastimes, such as strolling in a countryside park, to sports verging on the extreme, for example canyoning or white-water rafting).

Comparison of the homepages in Estonian and English revealed that far too often key information was missing, got lost in translation or was conveyed into English incorrectly. The following sections highlight a few most common issues identified in the research.

Accommodation When looking for a place to stay the night, this does not only mean making a decision between a camping site and a five-star hotel (and the rest in between or beyond the range). It also depends on whether and with whom you might share the room. The most common types of guest rooms are: single (SGL), twin (TWN), double (DBL), triple (TRP). Most errors in the said homepages occur in the distinction between twin and double rooms. In the Estonian language both are frequently called “kahene tuba” (literally a room for two) and it lacks clarity for an interested person in what exactly it means. The first is a room with two single beds (also called twin beds) accommodating two persons, and the latter is a room 1

Eesti ja Euroopa turism 2012. http://static1.visitestonia.com/docs/771191_eesti-turism-2012.pdf

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accommodating two persons too, but comprising one large (double) bed. For obvious reasons people need to know in advance which of these rooms they have booked. Many accommodation providers often advertise their rooms as twin/double rooms, suggesting that two twin beds can be joined with connecting devices to form one bed.

Interestingly enough, there is another word which some providers in Estonia use in the tourism sector, and this is housing. Seemingly suited to denote a place where people stay or live, yet the context is entirely different.

Housing is used when referring to where people live, its standard, price, or availability. The word appears in collocations such as housing benefit, housing estate, council housing, and is normally not used in relation to tourism offer.

Twin room

Finally it should be mentioned that accommodation cannot be plural in British English, but it can be plural (accommodations) in American English.

En suite An en suite (also ensuite or en-suite) bedroom means that it has a bathroom connected to it, in other words, it has a private bathroom This is a neat and short way of putting across the meaning of privacy and helps avoid the use of long and clumsy phrases attempting an Double room explanation. If the bathroom is not private, it is shared among residents. However, a phrase “en suite facilities” is also used, and that means there is always a toilet, there may be a bath with or without over bath shower, or a shower (cubicle). For example, one might describe rooms in a guesthouse like this: we have three double rooms and five twins, all en suite; our twin rooms are en suite but triple rooms have shared facilities; in our B&B bathrooms are shared among three rooms.

Meals and tariffs In English, several terms denote a variety of meal times during the day, ranging from breakfast to supper, and what one calls a particular meal may depend on the speaker’s socio-demographic background or regional origin. In tourism, however, the main meals of the day are normally called breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Accommodation packages also clearly indicate which or how many meals are included in the price.

Types of accommodation which include a meal may be as follows: "Housing" 1. a) bed and breakfast (B&B) as a provider is a small lodging establishment that offers overnight accommodation and breakfast, but usually does not offer other meals (Bed and breakfast, 2013).2 As the name suggests breakfast is available and usually included in the price. Therefore it is most confusing 2

Bed and breakfast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_and_breakfast#United_Kingdom

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for foreigners travelling in Estonia to head to a B&B establishment, advertised as such on the homepage and on signposts in the location, and be confronted by what is in fact self-catering accommodation. b) B&B may also suggest that, for example, in the package tour people buy to go to Egypt, breakfast is included.

2. half board (HB) is another type of package in which breakfast and one other meal, usually dinner is included, plus a chosen room type.

3. full board (FB) denotes a package which includes room, breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Booking Accommodation providers, attractions and sights often present their lists of services, activities, and so on, and then add that special offers are available for groups, special opening hours may be offered, extra services can be arranged, or certain limits are applied. Now follows the most cumbersome part – how to say that if there is interest or need for a particular service, the interested party should request it.

In Estonian the phrase often is “(ainult) ettetellimisel”, “peab ette tellima”, “soovi korral”, “broneering”, “reserveerima” or similar.

Universal words in English for this purpose are book as a verb and booking. What customers can do is: make a booking, make an advance booking, book (a table) in advance or book well in advance (if there is high demand for a service); book early with us and get a 10% discount; book online and get a 5% discount.

Another option is reserve, such as: to reserve a (twin) room / a seat, make a table reservation; make your reservation in advance.

Last but not least, one could use request. Examples may include: meals are available on request; brochures can be sent on request, picnic hampers prepared on request.

Opportunities and extra opportunities There is another minefield in tourism literature when it comes to the description of what a provider has on offer. Imagine a B&B in the countryside. First, a potential guest is told on the homepage what there is in terms of “hard” ware – the number of rooms, the number of beds, the number of beds in total when extra beds are added, etc. Then there are the other opportunities (or possibilities), such as use of sauna, hire of sport and exercise equipment, use of kitchen, use of grilling equipment, children’s playground, babysitting, and so on. On top of it all there are extra opportunities, for instance a riding farm or an activity provider nearby for more entertainment or recreational pursuits.

All of the above can be described in just one word – facilities. By definition it is “the buildings, equipment and services provided for a particular purpose” (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 3rd Edition).

As can be seen, it includes both the “hard” i.e. buildings and equipment, and the "soft" i.e. services, features on offer, thus there remains no need for all these “opportunities”.

The reason for misuse is apparently deeply rooted within the Estonian language and tourism literature where hardly any tourism offer can go without the word "võimalused". Some examples: the route offers excellent possibilities to get acquainted; one can choose between two possibilities to reach Metsaküla; one has an opportunity to travel in time; it is possible to weave on a loom.

The English language which focuses on a more dynamic part of speech, i.e. the verb would probably also employ a modal verb can and suggest that: visitors can weave on looms, can travel in time and can choose between two routes to get to Metsaküla.

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Costs (extra) Travelling entails various costs for items purchased on their own as individual items (transport tickets, insurance policy, accommodation, meal at a restaurant, etc.). Entrepreneurs may sell packages which combine several services into a bundle which is then sold as a whole entity. An example of such is a trip to a hot destination in which you buy flights, accommodation (with or without meals), services of a tour rep, transfers etc. An increasing number of packages are offered in rural tourism as well. They may often be a combination of meals, tour guiding, accommodation, museum visits and activities – doing handicraft seems one of the popular themes currently. Whether a package or not, sometimes tourists want to do something which is additional to what they had purchased or booked in the first place. Here the provider has to get the message of extra costs across. What may be expressed is: meals must be booked in advance and they are charged extra; hire of bikes is charged separately; use of sauna is charged; price list of additional services, additional services can be booked at reception.

The words hire and rent are often interchangeable. Although distinction has been made between British and American usage, these days the dividing line is fuzzy. Thus we speak of car hire and car rental, or hire or rent a car/bike.

Training and sightseeing Providers often give long lists of rooms they have in their premises, e.g. a fireplace room, seminar room, party room. This seems a particularly Estonian phenomenon to tell exactly what you can do e.g. in a seminar room – run a training session, seminar, or a business meeting. Or, when a room is less formally appointed you can use it for parties, birthday/jubilee parties, wedding parties. It would be more to the point if one said the rooms are designated for private and business/corporate functions.

Rather commonly mistakes occur in the use of the words training and sightseeing where users translate literally from Estonian, and a word in plural in Estonian obtains a plural form in English too. The word training is a singular uncountable noun, therefore it cannot be used with an indefinite article, nor in the plural. To talk about training in the singular, one can only refer to a training course or session, if the word ‘training’ alone is deemed insufficient.

A similar mistake occurs with sightseeing. Again, many users of the language ignore the fact that it is an uncountable noun and does not have a plural form. It is used in phrases such as ‘we did a bit of sightseeing’, or ‘we’d like to go sightseeing when in Venice’. Alternatively there is an option ‘see the sights’, e.g. we saw lots of fantastic sights in Berlin.

A further note draws attention to the bedevilling pair of sight and site. Close as they might be but not interchangeable with the sight being a place that people find interesting, e.g. a mansion, waterfall, church.

The site is also a place but the one where something is, was or will be built, and has or will happen, e.g. a battle site, a factory site. The Estonian tourism literature contains examples of mixing the two up, and in addition, garnishes the mix with objects. The word which can replace sight is attraction – “place of interest where tourists visit, typically for its inherent or exhibited cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, or amusement opportunities” (Wikipedia), e.g. major tourist attractions, the main attraction of the town.

Conclusions A common error which was not dealt with in this article was the use of the word “nature” as there already is an article on it in the OPEN!3 Nevertheless, mistakes in the usage do occur frequently and apparently need addressed again, or in a different forum.

Based on the above, there is some considerable ground to cover, and teachers have huge opportunities for improving the situation when teaching, working as translators of texts or advising entrepreneurs on their translations.

3

Jeret, E (2010). The Nature of Nature. OPEN!, 37, 17–21.

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Test yourself. What is the word?

1. A hotel room with two small beds (to accommodate two people).

2. A hotel room with one small bed (to accommodate one person).

3. A hotel room with three small beds (to accommodate three people).

4. A hotel room with one large bed (to accommodate two people).

5. A hotel room with its own bathroom attached.

6. A word meaning buildings, pieces of equipment and services for a particular purpose.

KEY: 1. twin 2. single 3. triple 4. double 5. en suite 6. facilities

WEATHER REPORT: A BRIEF PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF HURRICANE SANDY Julia Hirsch

Brooklyn, New York

When I think back to late October, my heart races and I get anxious. The fear I felt comes back. Days get conflated, and even though I can still recall specific scenes, I can no longer remember what happened on which day without going back to my 2012 diary or checking with Wikipedia.

Ominous news began to appear on TV around October 22nd. Extreme winds and water levels were occurring in the Caribbean. TV news reporters, stationed in various American coastline communities, from Florida to Maine, were talking about rising winds and surf. Images of flooded boardwalks, trees bent over in high winds, shop windows crisscrossed with tape, accompanied advice to stock up on drinking water, batteries, dried food, and blankets. Such warnings had accompanied the turn of the millennium (Y2K) when a worldwide computer crash had been forecast, and I felt a certain skepticism about them. As for the wind and water, I was staying with a friend in mid-Manhattan, where the nearest waterway is the East River, and felt a bit smug. No ocean surges were going to come that way. Then it happened. Mid morning on October 27th, I saw the tree tops sway wildly out of my friend’s tenth floor window. I saw people in the street bent over fighting the wind. Suddenly danger felt a lot closer.

I rushed back to my Brooklyn apartment to make sure my windows were closed, and that nothing stood on my small terrace that could be blown away. The warnings about flooding, power outages and the suspension of all transportation in the city frightened me. The possibility that my giant city would be immobilized by the elements reminded me of the 2004 science fiction film about global warming, The Day After Tomorrow, in which raging currents of icy water course down Manhattan streets, and the marble walls of the New York Public Library are gradually coated in ice. If awful things were going to happen, I wanted to be in good company. I went back to my friend’s apartment.

Back in Manhattan, I dashed off to a local supermarket. It was crowded with other shoppers: the line at the five cash registers snaked around the store and out the front door. Everyone was preparing and in different ways. Some people were stocking up on smoked fish and fine pastries, raspberries out of season, their favorite coffee, and very expensive, imported bottled water. They were preparing, it seemed, for a trip on the Titanic. The milk supply was dwindling. The bread bins were almost empty.

I came home with two loaves.

We were now glued to the television. Sixty-mile-an-hour winds were making their way to New York City.

The sky was darkening. We were in it, the storm itself.

By Sunday morning, the 28th, destruction was more imminent. The ocean surge—a sharp rise in the level 23

of the ocean—had risen to fifteen or more feet. Entire neighborhoods were swamped. Power outages affected many low-lying neighborhoods including Chelsea and Chinatown in Manhattan, and the coast of Brooklyn which includes Red Hook, Coney Island, Brighton, Manhattan Beach, and Sheepshead Bay. Parts of Staten Island as well as communities in Queens, Long Island, and in New Jersey were also affected. I heard from my sister in Montreal that her daughter and family in Chelsea were left without heat, electricity or phone service of any kind. Hospitals were being affected. Coney Island Hospital was closed and patients brought to other hospitals. At New York University’s Langone Center the backup generator failed and patients had to be taken elsewhere.

We kept the TV news on all the time, as the record of closures grew longer. Schools and the Stock Exchange were closed, train service in and out of the city and the subway system were shut down, bridges that link parts of the city to each other were closed to traffic. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, a major connection between Brooklyn and Manhattan, was flooded: water rushed at great speed where normally cars crawl in heavy traffic. I started thinking of my friends who lived in various endangered places. My London niece and her teenage son had come to visit their Chelsea cousin. How were they managing? Her landline and her cellphone didn’t respond. Another friend lived in Mill Basin, a neighborhood of Brooklyn near Jamaica Bay, not far from Kennedy Airport, and across the street from a little inlet that served as a boat basin. Another friend has a summer house at Breezy Point, on the tip of the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens. Being cut off from people with whom I’m in frequent contact blurred my sense of time and place. I was in a mid-town apartment safe and sound. Outside the world was amorphous, confusing and --- wet.

On the 29th, the winds had died down and the rain had stopped. I decided to go outside to see how things looked: I felt a bit like the first doves in the account of Noah’s arc who go out to explore the world after the flood to see if there’s a safe place to nest. I came home with a mixed report. Many trees in my friend’s neighborhood—a residential part of the city due east of the Metropolitan Museum—had been entirely uprooted as if a giant bulldozer had lifted them out of the soil. Here and there a parked car had been crushed by a falling tree. People were beginning to walk around, like me, checking things out. At the supermarket, entire shelves were empty, since there had been no deliveries since the start of the storm.

Our internet began to receive calls for help. An organization called Occupy Sandy was forming, made up of “veterans” of Occupy Wall Street plus an number of other organizations. A plea came for help in Red Hook, a part of Brooklyn about three miles from my apartment. I set out on Wednesday to help out, though at this point I no longer remember which day was which. Getting to Red Hook was complicated as subway service was still spotty due to flooded tracks and tunnels. Walking from the subway station at Borough Hall in Brooklyn to the meeting point, I passed people in Red Hook who were pumping out the basements of their two- and three-story houses with electric pumps plugged into street lamps. The flow of water that gushed into the streets meant that they must have had many feet of water to contend with.

Sodden furniture and ruined appliances appeared on the sidewalks. When I got to the park indicated as meeting point in an internet message, I found about seven people and a dozen Guardsmen. Our goal was to distribute packages of dried food in special packages that could be warmed up without a stove or oven, and bottles of water to the residents of the housing projects all around us. (I don’t know what were the sources of these supplies.) Meanwhile, able-bodied residents of those projects came down to the assembly point to pick up supplies themselves. Some came with shopping carts; some came with bags, to bring supplies to elderly or disabled neighbors. I loaded up with boxes and bottles and followed one of the residents into her building. The building, part of low-income municipal housing project, had no elevator, no light, and no heat. Small candles lit some of the hallways but we had to make our way up the stairs by feel. Many people, according to neighbors, had left the buildings before the storm, to go to city shelters. The residents who remained were relieved and grateful to receive the supplies. Most of them also seemed quite exhausted.

A few days later, I took the subway to Rockaway, one of the most affected parts of Brooklyn, to help with food distribution. Due to damage to the tracks, the subway didn’t go the entire distance. Buses picked up passengers at the last stop and took them to different parts of the peninsula. As I travelled to my destination, I passed Riis Park where, as a child, I had enjoyed many sunny days at the beach.

Mountains of debris had been piled along the road, and in the parking lots where cranes and bulldozers deposited the remains of homes and furnishings. I met the group of Red Cross volunteers I was to 24

join in the parking lot of a small shopping center. Many volunteers from a number of organizations had assembled to distribute food in various states of preparation: warm and cooked, cold and ready to eat, canned and packaged. My job was to empty out donated boxes of canned food (including peaches, rice pudding, soup, and tuna fish) into donated plastic bags and hand them out. Nearby people were rummaging through boxes of donated clothes. The clothes had not been sorted out by gender or size.

Baby clothes and sneakers, warm sweat shirts and high-heeled shoes were all packed together. People moved through the parking lot, some with grim determination, others in a daze. The mood was somber.

People were suffering and our bags of goods only addressed the most tangible needs.

As Thanksgiving approached, my friend and I wanted to find some way to share the holiday with those who had endured so many losses due to the hurricane. We reported to a church in Brooklyn we had read about online from which volunteers were being sent to other sites to distribute food and clothing.

By now, the subway system was working in most places, but our final destination was again Rockaway, where destruction had been extensive. The area had in part been less affluent and the need was proportionately greater than in other parts of the city. We were asked to go door to door and let people know that a Thanksgiving meal was going to be served in a particular parking lot behind a local church.

We found few people at home. Most of those we spoke to were quite cheerful: but some sort of selection process must have been at stake. Many people were not home at all and we knocked on many doors still covered in the sticky grit that the water had washed onto streets, homes and cars, a resilient mix of sand and grit. One man was wandering the street. He approached us and told us that he was “really alright, not to worry.” We told him about the meal at the parking lot. He walked away. Later we saw him again, and he repeated the same words. He had no recollection that he had already seen us. My friend, a trained social worker and psychotherapist, commented that the man was probably suffering from post-traumatic stress: and we have continued to wonder about the long-term emotional effects of the storm. As for the meal we were letting people know about, it was abundant and when we returned to the parking lot after covering our “beat,” we were heartened to see so many people seated under a blue and sunny sky enjoying the traditional holiday meal nicely served and well-prepared by a number of chefs who had volunteered their skills. Many meals sponsored by many different organizations were served throughout the city.

As the weeks went by, some semblance of ordinary life returned to the city. By Election Day, my friend and I were off to Philadelphia to work on the campaign of our favored candidate, but calls for help continued and continue still. Reconstruction of damaged buildings is a major undertaking and FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, has been busy providing financial support. Various organizations have also become interested in collecting narratives of what people actually experienced those turbulent days: the venture seems to have both a practical aspect, clarifying infrastructure needs, and an historical one, recording an event that will no doubt have a lasting effect on people’s life, and larger issues of urban planning. Gradually, over a number of days, I was in touch again with friends and family whom I hadn’t been able to reach during the storm. My friend in Mill Basin reported that some six feet of water had flooded her house and that her car had been submerged while debris of all sorts, including other cars, was carried by a fierce current down her street. Today her house is once again intact, mainly because her husband, a builder, was able to do the work himself, and FEMA came through with some funding quite quickly. But she has not regained her pre-Hurricane composure, and on most days she reports that she feels quite depressed and overwhelmed. The house in Breezy Point in Queens was among the one hundred homes that were destroyed by fire caused indirectly by the hurricane. That friend is still grieving her home and the loss of cherished possessions. But her husband has taken a positive step. He has been writing a newsletter for their former Breezy neighbors informing them of insurance protocols and other practical matters that may help them recover from their losses. A bookbinder and restorer I know told me about the destruction of artwork that had been shown or stored in the art galleries in Chelsea; she has volunteered her expertise to rescuing them, an arduous job that requires the initial drying-out of materials. I myself gained unprecedented status in my family when I found a way to get my London niece and son to Kennedy Airport at a time when car travel across New York City bridges was still limited, taxis in Manhattan refused to leave the borough and no phone service was available between our homes. (I got a taxi to take them from Brooklyn but had to walk to Manhattan to tell them of the arrangement. The Chelsea niece drove them to Brooklyn but I had to drive back to Manhattan with her and her husband to meet the emergency requirement that cars have at least three passengers when crossing bridges!)

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Nearly six months after Sandy, as the Hurricane is now called, many dire effects remain. Occupy Sandy still sends out calls for help, mainly bearing on home repairs and construction. Many families live in temporary housing. The memory of the Hurricane is still strong, and many of the problems it caused are unresolved. The media, so quick to make news, paradoxically, also promote a short memory. Who still thinks of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans? Who still thinks of Hurricane Irene? What one can hope is that city planners and social agencies as well as individuals will recognize the reality of rising waters and frequent and more violent storms and come up with new ways to build homes, shopping centers and recreational areas. As a subway advertisement for Earth Day festivities in mid-April proclaims, “Climate change is here to stay.” And Hurricane Sandy was only one recent piece of evidence to back that up.

THERE ARE PLACES I REMEMBER ALL MY LIFE.* FIRST-TIMER’S REFLECTIONS ON IATEFL CONFERENCE Evi Saluveer

Institute of Education, University of Tartu

This year, the annual IATEFL conference was held in Liverpool from 8 to 12 April. IATEFL today unites 116 English teachers’ associations with more than 4,000 members from all over the world. Although half of them are from Europe, the recent years have welcomed many new organisations from Asia and Africa. For instance, while a few years ago there were only two countries representing the Black Continent, today their number has reached 24. The conference attracted over 2,500 delegates from more than 70 countries and took place in the modern Arena and Convention Centre on the famous Mersey waterfront.

Evi Saluveer (right) with colleagues from Argentina and Senegal

People often associate Liverpool with the Beatles and their world. The conference was no exception. The music of the Fab Four was heard and their lyrics discussed in various sessions. Even the patron of IATEFL, Professor David Crystal had entitled his plenary talk: The world in which we live in: Beatles, blends and blogs and was introduced by the Secretary of IATEFL Zeynep Urkunas as follows: Although yesterday you may have had a hard day’s night, get ready for a talk that will offer you so much that it won’t let you sleep like a log.

Because there’s something in the way Professor Crystal talks that will attract you like no other. So, come together. Let it be and in the end, perhaps, even just a little bit twist and shout.

She was definitely right in that Professor Crystal’s talk attracted listeners ‘like no other’, which is why I would like to share some of his thoughts with the readers.

Many teachers may have used the Beatles’ songs in their classes. However, not as many would have analysed their lyrics from the point of view of phonology, syntax and lexis. Those who are familiar with David Crystal’s lectures in the series Keep your English up to Date on the BBC Learning English website may remember that he has defined blends as words that are made by “running two words together to make a third”. Examples of lexical blends include words like brunch (breakfast + lunch), smirt (smoke + flirt), docusoap (documentary + soap) to name just a few. In his talk, however, he concentrated on syntactical * From the Beatles’ song In My Life

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Flag outside the conference centre

blends. To explain this linguistic feature, one should have a closer look at the title of the talk once again.

A careful reader would notice the use of a double preposition. What most teachers would consider as a mistake, a linguist would identify as a syntactical blend. The latter, according to Crystal, arises when people are uncertain about which construction to use and therefore use both. This is an unconscious process which operates at the speed of thought and is very common in speech. Double prepositions can also be explained by the clash of formal and informal English. While in the former the preposition is not used at the end of a sentence, it is very common in the latter (cf. For which party will you be voting?

Which party will you be voting for? → For which party will you be voting for?) In song lyrics, syntactical blends might be used because of rhythm, rhyme or tune, like in Paul McCartney’s song Live And Let Die:

David Crystal's plenary is about to begin

When you were young and your heart was an open book You used to say live and let live (You know you did, you know you did, you know you did) But if this ever changing world in which we live in Makes you give in and cry Although syntactical blends are more common in speech, they can often be seen on the Internet, especially in blogs. Poorly constructed sentences (e.g. sentences started in one way and finished in another) could be a result of too long sentences or intense emotions. Differently from lexical blends, many of which have become part of standard English and have entered dictionaries, syntactical blends do not get into grammars. However, “when music calls, the grammar bends.” David Crystal concluded his talk with a very important message for language teachers: learners’ writing often displays syntactical blends. Instead of seeing them as errors, they should be taken as signs of growth and analysed, not ignored or condemned.

As can be expected, all the other plenary speakers touched upon the present and future of the English language teaching. Deniz Kurtoğlu Eken from Turkey introduced the results of her survey where 290 teachers from 51 countries revealed their perspectives on effectiveness in various fields (altogether 11) of ELT, e.g. methodology, fostering students’ and teachers’ motivation, and teacher training. What worried the speaker was that while the teachers were quite satisfied with the situation concerning teaching methodology, the areas such as academic management and fostering teachers’ motivation were ranked the lowest. Jun Liu from Georgia State University, Atlanta, focused his talk on the future of ELT and emphasized that this was greatly influenced by various factors such as the growth of population, resource management, technology, etc. According to him, a future language teacher should be able to face the changes around us and meet new challenges like technology and new learning environments.

How to understand the metaphor “If English were a drug, expatriate teachers would be the dealers” was one of the topics discussed in the plenary by Susan Barduhn.** While the only question concerning the plenary talks might have been whether to go or not to go, things became much more complicated when the participants had to choose what sessions to attend. Altogether 550 sessions running from 10:30 to 18:30 in more than 20 halls with hundreds of interesting topics and exciting presenters could have caused a headache even for an experienced conference goer, not to speak of a first-timer. What to consider – an intriguing title, a promising summary, a well-known speaker, the availability of places, the distance between the halls and so on – was not an easy task to solve, nor is it easier to give an overview of all the topics under discussion. Therefore, the following will be just a few thoughts jotted down at different sessions: ** David Crystal’s talk and several others can be watched on the Liverpool Online website: http://iatefl.britishcouncil. org/2013/sessions/index

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• A good language teacher should be able to teach English in at least one subject area (Jun Liu; Senem Ozkul).

• To facilitate CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) teachers should provide different input and focus on different skills (F. Amrani).

• “Practice is like putting money in the bank.” Language learners need a lot of meaningful and deliberate practice (J. Harmer).

• Teachers should think how to help their students to develop critical thinking, especially today when students are exposed to all sorts of resources (J. Hughes).

• Teachers should be prepared for the unexpected – “the dark matter of teaching” (A. Underhill & A. Maley).

• New methodologies (e.g. Dogme, CLIL) and the advance of technology pose new challenges for textbooks writers (S. Greenall).

• Letting students see stories behind words and phrases makes understanding and memorising them easier (R. McNeff).

• There are several ways of developing students’ cultural awareness. Why not try a culture road map (T. Ausems), use traditional folksongs (D. A. Hill) or the powerful ‘language’ of films (A. Curtis).

A conference is not only about attending sessions and accumulating new or reinforcing existing knowledge, but much more. Altogether 50 organisations and publishers showcased their latest books, teaching resources, CD-s and software. Hardly anybody left the exhibition without a new book or CD. The evening programme offered something for every taste – receptions, a quiz night, poetry reading, an open mic night, an interactive tour of Liverpool, and a party in the Cavern Cub. The feeling that joined hundreds of delegates singing the Beatles’ songs together is impossible to put into words.

That was my first IATEFL conference and it was a fantastic experience. I cannot agree more with Branka Segvic from Croatia who wrote after the conference: This is an event each teacher should experience in order to develop both personally and professionally.

It is one of those Conferences that just overwhelm you no matter where you come from or your previous conference experience. This is a place where teachers think, create and share. This is where ideas are born and where teachers’ motivation comes from.

I would like to thank EATE and the Institute of Education (University of Tartu) for this unforgettable experience.

Liverpool cannot be fully experienced without taking the Magical Mystery Tour, visiting the Beatles Story and Cavern Club, listening to their music or learning something new about the Fab Four.

The Cavern Club Beatles – like real

Try the Beatles quiz 1. In which capital city did the Beatles finish their last British tour?

2. For whom was the Beatles song Don’t Let Me Down written, and which Beatle wrote it?

3. Which word entered the Oxford English Dictionary after appearing for the first time in the film A Hard Day’s Night?

4. In 1964 Ringo said:”The only piece of jewellery I’ve ever bought myself is ___________” What is the jewellery item?

5. How much did the band’s first suits cost, each: (a) £15, (b) £25, or (c) £ 40?

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6. Which of the Beatles said, “…I’m a major Disney fan, I really think it’s high art.”

7. Which one of the Beatles had a relative who ran a Bed and Breakfast called A Hard Day’s Nite, and whereabouts was it?

8. In what year were CDs of the Beatles’ music first available?

9. In what year could you first buy a legitimate Beatles’ LP in the Soviet Union?

10. I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You were the only songs the Beatles recorded in a foreign language. What was it?

11. Which popular British newspaper coined the phrase ‘Beatlemania’? Was it (a) The Observer, (b) The Daily Mail, or (c) The Daily Mirror?

12. To which Beatle did Franco Zeffirelli offer a lead in his film of Romeo and Juliet?

13. Which of the Beatles went to India in order to study a musical instrument in 1966, and what was that instrument?

14. Which female member of the British royal family said of the Beatles, “They are so fresh and vital. I simply adore them.”

15. Which British island is mentioned in the song When I’m Sixty Four?

16. Which two politicians are mentioned in the song Taxman?

Answers: 1. Cardiff. 2. It was written for Yoko by John. 3. ‘Grotty’ from the word grotesque. 4. “…my watch.

However, he also added: ”… but since I joined the Beatles, I’ve never known what time it is.” 5. (c) £40.

(They were apparently later discounted to £30). 6. Paul. 7. George’s sister, in Illinois. 8. 1987. 9. 1986. 10.

German. 11. (c) the Daily Mirror. 12. Paul. 13. George went to study the sitar. 14. The Queen Mother. 15.

The Isle of Whight. 16. Mister Wilson and Mister Heath.

Liverpool Beatles Pop Culture Quiz

Reference

Teachers’ Teacher OUR ENTHUSIASTIC CANADIANIST AN INTERVIEW WITH EVA REIN

When did you first hear about Canada?

As a child, when an ice-hockey match was shown on television.

How did it happen that you chose Canadian literature as your speciality?

My interest in Canadian literature was triggered by my father’s remark during a conversation we had in the first year of my studies of English philology in Tartu. I remember how he said that Canada was also an English-speaking country and he was wondering what their literature was about. This got me really interested in the field so that I even changed the topic of my course paper in the second year at the university. Back then, we were given a list of topics with the names of supervisors. I chose a topic by the name of the supervisor – Professor Jüri Talvet – who taught us World Literature. At the time, he was actively introducing Spanish literature not only to the students but also to the Estonian general public. This had given me an idea that if I approached him with a wish to explore and introduce Canadian literature, he would agree. To my luck, Professor Talvet not only approved of my plan to write a course paper on 29

translating Canadian literature into Estonian, but he encouraged me to deal with Canadian literature, and in fact, like my father, he keeps doing so until today. Back in 1985, there were hardly any Canadian books in Estonia, so that my father ordered works of Canadian literary history and criticism for me from Leningrad and Moscow libraries with the help of his acquaintance who worked in the Library of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Among the books was also a bulky Checklist of Canadian Literature – an invaluable volume that helped me to identify all the Canadian books while I was browsing the handwritten catalogues of late Public recording of Eva Rein's lecture "Photography and 19th and early 20th century American literature in Literature" at the Radio Night University, hosted by Jaan the Estonian Literary Museum. The books on Tootsen, during the Tartu International Literary Festival Prima Canadian literary history and criticism helped Vista on May 6, 2011. Tartu University Old Café. me to evaluate the representation of Canadian Photograph by Uku Peterson. literature in Estonian translation. This research led to the completion in 1986 of a course paper 75 years of translating English-Canadian Literature into Estonian, which got its title from a discovery that the history of translating Canadian literature into Estonian began in 1910. The lack of Canadian books meant that I wrote my following course papers on comparing translations from Canadian literature.

After graduation, I worked for three years as a translator at the University of Tartu and it was only after the restoration of Estonian independence that it became possible to go to study Canadian literature in the University of Helsinki. In 1992, I joined the Department of English in Tartu, and in 1993, the doors to Canadian literature opened as I went to Finland on an exchange between the Universities. The key figure in this pursuit for me was Associate Professor Mari Peepre-Bordessa, an Estonian Canadian who was teaching Canadian literature alternately in Canada and Finland. It was in Helsinki that I got access to a wealth of Canadian books and scholarly journals – literature and criticism, and had the luck to be taught by an excellent specialist in the field. The more I delved into Canadian literature there, the more fascinating it became. So, it was in 1993 that Canadian literature became my speciality.

What would you recommend to read from present-day Canadian literature?

The books that instantly come to my mind are Madeleine Thien’s Dogs at the Perimeter and Rawi Hage’s DeNiro’s Game. Both novels also appeared in the Estonian translation last year, entitled Armastatud ja kardetud ning DeNiro mäng, respectively, so that everyone has access to these two tremendous novels. The former is set in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime and the latter in Lebanon during the civil war. But these works are remarkable not only by opening up the past and the present of the places and people from the countries but both authors have found exquisite ways of telling the story in a most captivating, thought-provoking and poignant way. I appreciate and recommend these novels all the more because, having done research into narratives representing complex histories as well as individual and collective attempts to remain human and to come to terms with the past, it is difficult to overestimate both the artistic and ethical value of Thien’s and Hage’s works. Each time I take up these novels, there are new dimensions and striking insights to discover and contemplate. And there is the overwhelming sense of how small the world actually is and how strength and fragility come so close in human existence.

You have been to Canada several times. What are your most vivid impressions of this country?

During my first visit in 1998 as I was collecting material for teaching my first Canadian literature course, I was struck by a feeling while walking the streets of Montreal that the whole world was there. Indeed, on my way home from McGill University and back, I met people with all the possible backgrounds conversing in all the possible languages. This impression has only been confirmed later during a longer stay of studying and teaching in the University of Toronto in 2005– 2007 and during a research visit to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 2008. To familiarise oneself with an array of different cultures of the world, one can spend years in Toronto only, interacting with people with these 30

backgrounds, visiting their cultural centres and events. During the time in Toronto as well as Vancouver, I became increasingly aware of Canada being a country of paradoxes. On the one hand, it is absolutely incredible what this country has achieved within its almost 150 years of existence and how Canada has an awesome capacity to reinvent itself. On the other hand, there are many complexities that Canada has been struggling with as well as numerous unresolved issues that the country faces today.

What are your fondest memories of your student days at the University of Tartu?

My studies coincided with a time of great change from Brezhnev’s era to Gorbachev’s perestroika. It was quite bizarre that we were the last generation to take an exam in Scientific Communism and a few months later the Estonian national flag was brought to the University Festive Hall during our graduation ceremony in 1989. The most memorable period began with the Days of the Society for Protection of Cultural Heritage in Tartu in 1988 when I went to as many events as possible. It was very much a time of testing the limits of how far one could go with remembering the silenced and suppressed histories.

It was also a time of the awakening of Estonian national consciousness. I think that the sequence of events that began to unfold with the Phosphorite War and developed into the Singing Revolution is a very important and interesting period in Estonian history before the restoration of independence. This time of my student days has also served as a source for research on the phenomenon of the communal singing in Estonian culture, especially during the national awakening of 1980s.

What are your first impressions of supervising students’ teaching practice?

It has been a very rewarding experience. In fact, I had been wishing to go to school years after my own traineeship to understand the changes that I had started noticing in the students and that had became prominent about five years ago. I have learned a lot about today’s school and, due to this, I hope that I can also better understand and work with current university students. What I enjoy most about the role of a supervisor for trainee teachers is to be there for them when they need help or encouragement in the process of finding their own way as teachers.

Do you sometimes think in the Võro language?

Oh, yes! And I tend to switch to it automatically not only when I am in the company of my relatives who speak it, but also sometimes in my office at the Department of English. With its rich images and relaxing sound, there is hardly any better way to fight tiredness or lift one’s spirits than utter a few sentences in the Võro language.

How does it feel to lecture on the radio (e.g. Ööülikool)?

As these have been very rare occasions, I have been slightly worried about how they would go. But I have been really lucky to have great hosts of the programmes, and a wonderful, very attentive, receptive and dialogic audience of Ööülikool. Thus, the stage fright has dissipated quickly and it has been a sheer pleasure and an enjoyable privilege to disseminate what I have researched and discovered. It has been great to receive e-mails or comments on the lecture from different people who have shared their passion about the topic. This is one of the best feelings to have and one of the greatest things to know that you have been able to give something that has been meaningful to the others and appreciated by them.

You have participated in organising several festivals, e.g. Prima Vista. What has this given to you?

These events have given me a possibility to meet and get to know different people who share interest in literature and culture in general. Prima Vista has made it possible for me to introduce Canadian and other good literatures and writers to different and wider audiences outside the University lecture or conference halls.

Do you have any hobbies that you would like to mention?

The most important of them is going to various kinds of concerts, music performances and festivals.

Recently I have started exploring different places and their cultures in Estonia. As another thing, although there is not much time for it these days, I love sewing. As a small child, I was introduced to the miracle 31

performed by my grandmother of cutting pieces of cloth and turning them into clothes that perfectly suited all the possible figures and sizes. Doing something with my own hands is a great experience that I have also taken away from my grandfather. It is especially enjoyable when one has also to invent something out of almost nothing. Music and exploration boost imagination, doing practical things in a short time offers a wonderful counterbalance to achieving results in research as it usually takes months and even years for scholarly ideas to take shape and lead to something worth sharing in class or even publishing.

Eva Rein was interviewed by EATE Committee members

In Memoriam EDA TAMMELO 23 APRIL 1947 ‒ 16 OCTOBER 2012

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. – Thomas Campbell Tuesday, 16 October 2012, was a shocking and deeply saddening day for the members of the Language Centre of the University of Tartu and for Eda Tammelo´s family and friends who heard about her unexpected death.

She had been in the staff room some days before, making preparations for her next week’s classes, supporting other teachers with her pleasant smile and encouraging words. In her modest way, she admitted being tired of her responsibilities. She had been organising an international conference held in September, and she had been busy with it since spring. At the conference, she had also made a wonderful presentation on academic writing. Eda got compliments from many conference participants on her interesting and instructive presentation and excellent presenting skills. At the weekend, she planned to continue compiling her dictionary of media, social work and education terminology, which was near completion. She expressed the idea that writing a good dictionary was an endless process just as becoming a good teacher was a life-long pursuit. Eda was full of plans for the future.

Eda Tammelo graduated from the University of Tartu in 1970, and soon after graduation, she started working as a teacher of English in the chair of foreign languages, which is now known as TU Language Centre. She got her MA in TEFL from the University of Reading (UK) in 1998. The range of her research interests was really wide, including methods of teaching English, autonomous learning, e-learning, academic writing, translation and intercultural communication, and her expertise was internationally recognised.

As a Lecturer of EAP and ESP, Eda designed tailor-made academic courses for undergraduates and graduates as well as for university lecturers, always aiming at respecting her students´ learning models and choices. One of her most popular courses was Academic Writing Skills for Master and Doctoral Students, whereas most of her ESP work was focused on English for Media Students. During her 40 years of teaching practice, she also taught such ESP courses as English for Economics, Social Work, Information Technology and others, and compiled several study aids and e-courses. Her students respected her for her knowledge and loved her for her friendliness.

Teachers of English remember her as one of the enthusiastic organisers of the Language Teaching/ 32

Learning Updates Seminars at TU from 2000-2009. In addition, she was a proficient translator and language editor of many scientific publications.

Eda Tammelo was fully dedicated to the University and teaching English. However, she was also devoted to her family and friends.

Her colleagues remember her fondly: o I am in complete disbelief how this could have happened to such a vibrant, positive, and wonderful woman. o Eda was the person you could always rely on. She was always ready to help. She managed to overcome all the obstacles with flying colours. o I had the pleasure of working with Eda for many years and I have always considered her one of the kindest and most selfless people around. She was a very warm and caring person, always willing to help in any way she could. She lent her helping hand not only to her family, friends and colleagues, but also to total strangers. o Eda was perfect in everything she did – she was a great companion, supportive colleague, dedicated teacher, loving mother, grandmother and wife. o Eda was a smart and intelligent woman. She was a walking reference book. o Eda was a real Lady. There was beauty around and inside her. She was a beautiful person. o She was like a real English lady, a rare and almost extinct phenomenon nowadays. o There is a void in my life without her. I miss her very much. o As a younger colleague, I felt inexplicable awe towards Eda. She seemed unapproachable because of her outstanding knowledge, reserved attitude, dignified behaviour and manner of speaking. On that Christmas Eve we spoke about so many things and I understood that this calm elegantly dressed woman who mastered diplomatic listening and communication skills was a very emotional lady with a rich soul and open mind. We talked and laughed for hours. o There were a lot of things to be admired in Eda. I was amazed how hard-working and thorough she was. Once I asked her to translate an economic term for my son. Soon, to my surprise, Eda elegantly handed me a two-sided sheet of paper with detailed explanations. I was speechless. o Eda was a keen reader and a wonderful singer. She had a very beautiful tender soprano voice.

She knew all the lyrics by heart, which was amazing. When she came from Kohtla-Järve to study English in Tartu, she became a singer in the Folk Music Ensemble of the University. o I will always remember our summer seminars in Pärnu. After days full of lectures and workshops, a small group of teachers walked to the seaside and to the monument to Raimond Valgre, and we sang songs, both in Estonian and in English. o The last beautiful memory of Eda is from the end of September. After our successful conference, we went on a memorable excursion to Alatskivi Manor. The evening sun reflected back from the colourful autumn leaves. The weather was fine and we were in a good mood. On our way back to Tartu, we started to sing. There was a special meaning and sound in the song when Eda sang: “The sad end of summer has arrived and we can stay here no longer… ”.

Memories about Eda Tammelo were shared by Inga Jufkin, Tiia Haud, Malle Rüütli, Djuddah A.Leijen, Ele Sepp and Liina Tammekänd.

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HELGI PULK 16 AUGUST 1923 ‒ 16 NOVEMBER 2012

Helgi Pulk is dearly remembered by a group of her former students of the TU Department of English Language and Literature from her first year of teaching until 1966 as an encouraging, inspiring and demanding lecturer, also a cheerful and enthusiastic person. As a lecturer and educator, she touched a lot of lives, at the same time, learning and discovering things for herself.

Professionally, Helgi Pulk had to teach all the aspects of Practical English: text analysis, grammar, practical phonetics. She studied English prepositions in detail and as a result, published a study aid for students on the contrastive use of prepositions in English and Estonian. Although she was friendly and cool in class, this did not mean that she was lenient at exams. Often students noticed that some things that were not quite clear when entering her class, when leaving her lesson they had received all the answers.

Helgi Pulk also supervised teacher training practice and offered help to young teachers-to-be. The majority of her former students became teachers, too.

Helgi Pulk was an avid reader; she was also well aware of numerous journals which appeared in Estonia at that time, introducing to her students news about various scientific developments and interesting findings from Eesti Loodus, Looming, etc. Once, at the beginning of the 1960s, she brought to class a newspaper clipping with the photo and text about the Beatles, thus initiating her students into the whole new era of the world of music. She encouraged free discussion and expression of opinions.

Helgi Pulk was well versed in literature, expertly conducting literary discourse in her home reading class, making her students think and wonder about various literary texts, teaching young people to appreciate the variety of life and human relationships.

Helgi Pulk was a great organizer, taking her students to enjoy exhibits in Prof. Starkopf’s studio, stars at Tõravere Observatory and encouraging us to find new contacts and friends among students majoring in English at other universities (like the Teacher Training Institute in Leningrad, the Latvian University in Riga).

As our mentor, Helgi Pulk lived our lives and initiated all kinds of adventures at the Students’ English Club where she was an adviser for a number of years. At her initiative, a number of short plays by English and American playwrights (e.g., Oscar wants to know) were staged and performed at the University Club with the participation of students of English. At the English Club (in the then café Sophocles), the participants were taught how to make and drink cream teas, or enjoy poetry recitals as well as travelogues. At home, too, Helgi Pulk was a hospitable and attentive hostess; even in the years when she did not do so well, there was always coffee and cookies. Unfortunately, she had to bear the blow of losing her son.

We will always remember our first teacher at the university and sadly miss her.

A group of Helgi Pulk’s former students, later teachers of English

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GORDON LEMAN 18 FEBRUARY 1945 – 19 DECEMBER 2012

In the last days of 2012, the Department of English at the University of Tartu lost a highly valued colleague and dear friend Gordon Allan Leman.

Gordon was born in the small town of Cumnock in Ayrshire, Southwestern Scotland, as the youngest of the four children in the family.

Ayrshire with its rugged coastline and rolling hills is the birthplace and youthful home of the celebrated Scottish poet Robert Burns.

This may be one of the reasons why Gordon, as he writes himself, was interested in poetry, particularly that of Burns, since the last year in his school career. The school he attended from the beginning to the end was Cumnock Academy, which he departed after his Sixth Year of secondary education. He graduated with an MA in History from Glasgow University and did a post-graduate teacher training course at Jordanhill a year later. For nearly twenty years he worked as a teacher in Shawlands Academy and became a Head of Guidance.

After his mother died in 1988, he left Scotland for the Eastern African country of Malawi for a short time, and then for Finland where he taught English to engineers and did proofreading jobs for four years. He came to Estonia in 1993 with Voluntary Service Overseas and stayed here until death took him from us. VSO is a charitable organisation, which, in that period, greatly contributed to teaching of English in post-communist countries.

He arrived in Estonia in the early days after the Republic of Estonia had regained its independence.

Thus, he was among the first foreign lecturers at the Department of English at the University of Tartu.

He was one of the founders of the Centre for British and Overseas Studies at the University of Tartu.

With his courses of Scottish history and literature, he instilled interest in and love for Scotland in a great number of our students. Later he also worked at the Estonian Aviation Academy where he taught pilots and air traffic controllers. Teaching was a passion for him and his eyes always lit up when he spoke about his students.

The obituary in Cumnock Chronicle, the newspaper of his hometown, describes Gordon as a ‘great bloke and a terrific rugby player’ to whom all sports came naturally, although his favourites were rugby and golf. At one point, Cumnock even unsuccessfully tried to recruit him as a coach.

Gordon was married twice – in Scotland and in Estonia – and had two children from both marriages.

He fought bravely against the accidents and illnesses that hit him in the final years of his life. His colleagues and students remember him as always smiling and optimistic, having a good word for everyone next to him.

Colleagues from the Department of English, University of Tartu

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AINO JÕGI 2 OCTOBER 1922 – 15 JANUARY 2013

My first memory of Aino Jõgi dates back to forty years – at the beginning of August in 1973 she and Gustav Liiv examined me and other student candidates at the entrance exam of English at the University of Tartu. At that time one had to take four entrance exams – an oral exam in English, written and oral exams in Estonian, and an oral exam in history. The English exam consisted of three parts: analysis of an unknown text with the help of a dictionary, a grammar point with an exercise, and a topic for conversation. For some reason, I mispronounced the word ’Danish’, and the examiners corrected the mistake.

Aino Jõgi with her students Jane Tammeorg, Inga Jufkin and Enn Veldi Generally, however, the atmosphere of the exam was friendly and encouraging.

In 1973 the competition was about four applicants per an admitted student. According to a staff joke of that period, a student applicant had translated ‘My Fair Lady’ into Estonian as ‘Minu laadaleedi’ (with the help of a dictionary, it seems).

In September we learned that Aino Jõgi had been appointed our course supervisor. Now, when I think back about my student days in the 1970s, I believe we were fortunate to have her as our course supervisor; actually, she deserves our deep respect in several ways.

First, this period was the peak of her academic career, and it showed both in her teaching and academic supervision. A few years earlier, in 1971, she had completed her PhD thesis “Words of English origin in Estonian”, which she wrote and defended in Estonian. It is the first comprehensive study of EnglishEstonian language contacts. The thesis documents about 700 English loanwords in Estonian; the theoretical framework follows the ideas of Einar Haugen and Uriel Weinreich. In fact, it makes interesting reading also in 2013 when multiple language contacts are much more common in the globalizing world.

Unlike the present-day direct language contacts, in the case of earlier borrowings one also has to take into account the impact of two intermediary languages – German and Russian.

Second, she was open to new ideas, especially in lexicology, and was eager to share her extensive knowledge with her students and to inspire them. Her research interests included lexical fields, collocations and colligations, synonyms and antonyms, and translation. She was also very much interested in contrastive perspectives, which made her approach to lexicology even more valuable.

Third, Aino Jõgi deserves deep respect for living her life in accordance with the values that she cherished – love of Estonia and its kindred peoples. Her values stemmed from the Private Gymnasium for Girls of the Estonian Education Society in Viljandi (Viljandi Eesti Haridusseltsi Tütarlaste Eragümnaasium), where she studied from 1936–1941. This school provided a good grounding in languages (Estonian, English, German, Latin, and Russian in the final year). Aino Jõgi wrote about her school days in her memoirs published in 2011.

Aino Jõgi graduated from the University of Tartu in 1950; upon graduation she became a university lecturer. She belonged to the generation of university lecturers who taught at the university almost throughout the entire Soviet period and retired (Aino Jõgi in 1992) at the time when Estonia regained 36

its independence. She and a group of her elderly colleagues were able to visit the United Kingdom and see this country with their own eyes only at the end of their academic careers. Aino Jõgi wrote in her memoirs that “Estonia’s regaining its independence was like returning home from a long journey.

I had kept repeating all the time that no tree can grow into the sky and that even the darkest night will be over sometime.”

A few colleagues and graduates of the class of 1978 were fortunate to meet Aino Jõgi at the end of last year and to celebrate her 90th anniversary. We all admired her mental alertness, which she retained until the last days of her life.

Enn Veldi Jõgi, Aino. 2011. Ükski puu ei kasva taevasse. Kõik on kokku elu lugu. Carl Robert Jakobsoni nimeline Gümnaasium 1908–2008. Viljandi, 26–29.

Reading Recommendations WORTHWHILE READING Mall Tamm

Interpreter and interpreter trainer

Margus Puusepp, Suuline tõlge (Interpreting). Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, 2013.

In February 2013 Interpreting by Margus Puusepp appeared. The book is the first in-depth treatment of interpreting in Estonian. Originally planned as a textbook of interpreting at the Universities of Tartu and Tallinn, the result is much more interesting. With its 422 pages, the book is also worthwhile reading for self-taught interpreters, organisers of events with interpreting, and everybody else dealing with interpreting.

The book is of high theoretical and practical value.

The author has thoroughly acquainted himself with the basic sources in the field, which are unfortunately available only in foreign languages in libraries outside Estonia and to a limited extent on the internet. The book includes an introductory chapter with an overview of the history of interpreting in the world and Estonia.

It contains practical chapters on consecutive and simultaneous interpreting, conference interpreting, community interpreting, court interpreting, interpreter’s ethics, etc.

Margus Puusepp in the translation booth

Margus Puusepp is the first interpreting student from the University of Tartu to become an accredited freelance interpreter for the European Union institutions, and he started working for them even before 37

Estonia became a member, participating in the screening and negotiation process prior to accession. He has included numerous practical examples from his vast experience in discussing various issues in the book.

Margus Puusepp has also made an attempt to systematise the terminology of interpreting in Estonian, adding a glossary of Estonian terms with English and many French, German and Russian equivalents to the end of his book.

JANE AUSTEN MEETS P. D. JAMES Ilmar Anvelt

Department of English, University of Tartu

P. D. James. 2013. Death Comes to Pemberley. London: Faber and Faber Phyllis Dorothy James, whose given names are usually hidden behind the initials P. D., was born on 3 August 1920, which means that by the time this magazine reaches its readers, she will be 93, thus being one of the grand old ladies of English detective writing. P. D. James has a perfect professional background for a detective writer. She has been working in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, initially in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department.

She did not start writing before she was forty, although she had always wanted to become a writer. She should not be unknown to the Estonian reader, as a number of her books have been translated, e.g. The Murder Room (Mõrvamuuseum) and The Lighthouse (Tuletorn).

Her novel Death Comes to Pemberley came out just two years ago, in 2011. While her other books are usually set in the present or not so distant past with Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh as one of their main characters, this book is different. It is a sequel to Jane Austen’s romantic novel Pride and Prejudice written between October 1796 and August 1797. As P. D. James admits, more than seventy sequels have been written to Austen’s novels. James also states that Austen had deliberately avoided the world of violence, cruelty and death, although Pride and Perjudice was written at a time when the brutalities of the French revolution were still a recent memory and Britain was at war with France.

We might consider Death Comes to Pemberley a classical murder story where a dead body (of Captain Denny) is found in the woodland, and finally the mystery is solved. At the same time, we can admire the author’s skill of transmitting the atmosphere of the early 19th-century country house and the style of writing characteristic of the period (the story is set in 1803). There are lovely little details showing how much life has changed since those times. For example, nothing was known of blood groups and 38

DNA analysis (‘I take it, Belcher, that your scientific colleagues have not yet found a way of distinguishing one man’s blood from another’s?’). It is amazing how many servants people had – those who could afford them; those who could not, seem to have mostly worked as servants to others (‘The Colonel had hardly left before Stoughton arrived with coffee, followed by a housemaid to attend to the fire accompanied by Mrs Reynolds to enquire whether they would like breakfast to be served.’). The water closet was still a ‘new-fangled apparatus … which … has caused much ribald interest in the neighbourhood’. Although nowadays we still argue a lot about gender equality, then the problem was, ‘It is some centuries since we accepted that a woman has a soul. Is it not time we accepted that she also has a mind?’ No matter how bright a woman was, it was unimaginable for her to become a lawyer (‘Mr Pegworthy said that were I a man and had taken to the law, I would have been an ornament to the English bar…’).

While sequel writing is usually considered dubious business, here the masterful work of the author has proved the opposite. In an interview to the Paris Review, P. D. James says, ‘In Jane Austen it was her style and her irony, the way she creates so distinctive a world in which I feel at home.’ Her book shows that she really feels at home there.

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN Leena Punga

Lähte Gymnasium

“Most of us know a bit about what passes for good manners – holding doors open, sending thank-younotes, no elbows on the table. We certainly know bad manners when we see them. But where has this patchwork of beliefs and behaviours come from? How do they change? Why do they matter so much to us?” This paragraph has been taken from the introductory page of the book Sorry! The English and their Manners written by Henry Flitchings and published by John Murray Publishers in 2013.

Feedback to the book is positive and encouraging. ● “Erudite but eminently readable” – Independent on Sunday ● “Richly detailed, delightfully combative... such a pleasure to read“ – Sunday Times Henry Flitchings was born in 1974. He has contributed to many newspapers and magazines, and is a theatre critic for the London Evening Standard.

In the 25 chapters of his book, he takes us back to the history, telling us about manners in the age of chivalry and moving on closer to the present.

The author gives numerous examples of books published to teach manners to people of different times. Do you know the author and the title of the first guide specifically aimed at women and written in English? When was it published? Which of the sayings about manners comes up most often?

Middle class – a noun or a verb? Which of them was established earlier?

Has the handshake been popular and widely used in Britain for centuries or just a hundred years? Who advised his readers not to clean their fingernails, read letters or fall asleep when in company? Or how to mask the passing of the wind or not reveal without need those parts of the body which nature 39

has covered? How old is the word “gentleman“? Who introduced the use of forks in Britain? What does Henry Flitchings think of Estonia and Estonians? What do foreigners think of the English, their language, manners and Englishness in general? Lots and lots of other questions about the English and their manners in the past and at present find their answers in the book.

Come and Share READING OF BEOWULF Ilmar Anvelt

Department of English University of Tartu

Who would ever read the Bible, Iliad, Odyssey, Kalevipoeg, or …

Beowulf? I mean, who would find the time to read those grand works of world literature from the beginning to the end? But many hands make light work, and readings of such bulky books have been staged on several occasions recently, for example, readings of the Bible in Oleviste Church in Tallinn and in Rakvere, reading of Odyssey by the Department of Classical Philology at the University of Tartu, etc.

The staff, students and alumni of the Department of English read Beowulf, in Old English and Estonian intermittently, on 8 May 2013 as part of the Prima Vista literature festival. The reading took place on the top floor of the former Tartu University Church, which the older generation may remember as the reading hall of the Library of the Humanities. The reading started at 6 p.m. when the sun shone brightly into the forsaken room and finished well after midnight by which time the place acquired the appearance of a mysterious cave.

The readers and listeners are thankful to Professor Krista Vogelberg for teaching the pronunciation rules of Old English and Librarian of the Department of English Kärt Vahtramäe, the life soul of the whole event.

How well do you know London? (pictures p. 40) 1. Blackfriar’s Pub – this narrow wedge-shaped pub might be considered London’s counterpart of the Flatiron Building in New York.

2. Powerless Structures Fig. 101 – Sculpture by the Nordic sculptors Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset in Trafalgar Square in front of the National Gallery.

3. Princess Diana Memorial in Hyde Park.

4. Staircase in Tate Britain.

5. People drank tea even during the war – fragment of the Battle of Britain Monument on the Victoria Embankment.

6. Courtyard of the Victoria and Albert Museum with a pool.

7. St Paul’s Cathedral and Millennium Bridge – view from the window of Tate Modern.

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Photos by K채rt Vahtram채e and Ilmar Anvelt

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How well do you know London?

(Answers on p. 38)

4

1

5

2

6

3

7

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Photos by Ilmar Anvelt

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