For over 30 years I was an oral examiner for learners of English
as a foreign language.
In that role
I’ve seen normally confident, high-ranking
military officials and civil servants reduced to the debased position of
struggling to express themselves in an alien medium
I’ve seen children from remote mountain
villages, where they had little or no communicative language practice, burst
into tears in sheer terror on meeting a foreigner for the first time - never
mind one about to examine them
I’ve been in drawing-blood-from-stone
situations where anxiety kicked in, paralyzing the candidate into silence.
And you learn from experience:
That a kind word and a warm smile can
melt petrification
That a touch on the arm and an
expression of humour can rapidly dispel crippling anxiety
That candidates who are confident and
strong need help too – to be deftly guided to reach their ceiling, to operate
at their level of full potential.
All of that is what it means to be an examiner.
In recent years a well-known organization,
operating internationally and broadly involved in offering English language
services, however, has moved the goalposts in the interviewing game. The role
now promoted is one of pure
script-reading. Any candidate difficulties are to be dealt with solely by
repetition, facial expression and gesture. The canon is one is given a rubric
and one must not deviate from it.
So here we have it - reductio ad absurdum: one
‘interlocutes’ and adopts a quasi-robotic
role. In such a context the Communicative
Theory is of necessity eschewed. This, my dears, is neither interacting,
nor communication and certainly not examining. This behavior is allegedly promoted
so that all candidates are given ‘equal opportunities’. So it’s our old friend
‘political correctness’ rearing its
ugly head; the reductio ad absurdum
being that the examiner is permitted no real contact with the person before
him, but is, nonetheless, expected to assess his language level.
The reason I’m broaching this topic of
examining in the first place is that recently I received several e-mails from
another well-known organization, operating internationally, partly involved in
organizing such exams. Now it was quite a surprise to see I was on their
circulation lists since I haven’t examined in years - when I began to feel the
pressure of examiner gag and strait-jacket, I decided to call it a day. But my
second great surprise was that I was apparently required to provide them with
my Criminal Record! The assumption -
gasp! – was that I have a criminal past. Now presumably what they were asking
for – had it been properly translated and expressed- was for a clean
police record, the equivalent of a Criminal Record Check available from the
Disclosure and Barring Service in GB. And here’s another strange thing: the
required criminal record check in Greece was to have been issued within the last month,
whereas the equivalent British document issued within the last three years was
deemed an acceptable alternative : ( ?
I can understand why
employers want to be sure that they are not inadvertently putting children in
potentially dangerous situations, especially in cases like this where a good
number of the clients involved are young learners. But British statistics show
that such sexual predators constitute only 0.5% of the population. No one can
condone such criminal activity, yet is
that statistically significant enough to generate such fear that PC - here
‘Professional Correctness’ – both in the
British classroom and in language examining contexts generally, means that
attempts to communicate, comfort and reassure are seen as unacceptable and unnatural
behaviour?
The original objective of Political
Correctness was to ensure the inclusion of individuals into society. Nowadays
some of its exponents have become inflexible, self-righteous and convinced that
only their perspective is ‘the valid one’. The in loco parentis role of the educator should not be jettisoned. What
one should be operating on is a policy of Moral
Correctness: extending caring, nurturing, support and encouragement - the
corner-stones of family values – to those
in our charge, and feeling free to do
so.
Detective Chief
Inspector Bob McLachlan, Head of Scotland Yard’s Paedophile Unit, rightly says,
‘One of the main things in not to frighten parents to death’. I believe that the measures being
taken could well create such an atmosphere of fear. But not to appear totally callous let me
make a helpful suggestion: that the exam organizers reconsider their long-term
habit of running such oral examinations in hotel bedrooms.
Let’s move on to a cheerier subject – travel. This time
you’re joining us on a trip we went on with my brother and his wife when they
came out to see us towards the end of the year. In last year’s March blog we
visited Elatohori and this time we are only 8 kilometres from there, again near
Katerini and behind Mount Olympus. We had been enjoying really mild weather,
but as we ascended the mountain escarpment, we gradually moved into autumn with
leaves changing colour and the atmosphere becoming sharper.
We were in the village
of Aghios Dimitrios. Below you can
see the church in the square with its brightly- coloured icon depicting this
mighty warrior.
Nearby is
the school and even if your thirst for knowledge spiritual and educational has
been sated, to cater for all your needs is a fresh-water spring, claiming that
Macedonia is more Greek than Greece.
Our accommodation is the stone-built
guesthouse, Dimatis, bearing the
name of the family who run it.
Here is Kyria Katia, the matriarch of the establishment, with
her son, Thodoris, who handles the shop-front business. Katia, from a
well-known line of skilled bakers and confectioners, is famous for her bread,
pies and sweets. The cheese pies she had made for our breakfast were memorable.
What is interesting is that there is a family-run farm with deer and wild boar. This cheeky chappie
showed great curiosity towards my husband, the photographer. Clearly, the
village hunters don’t carve knotches on their belts, but display their prowess
otherwise- these are boar tails!
Our stay at
the guesthouse marked a special occasion – my brother and his wife had their
wedding anniversary- so here we are at the table all set – both table and us –
to celebrate!
The picture below shows two things:
the empty
plates show that their grilled mushrooms and their salad of rocket, figs,
walnuts, sundried tomatoes, parmesan, balsamic vinegar and pomegranate seeds all went down a treat;
and that the farmer-son doubles as a waiter, serving us
delicious venison in a red wine sauce with noodles.
This took me back to when we were kids in the West Highlands
of Scotland and lucky enough to live next door to Johnnie MacArthur who worked
for the Forestry Commission. He was in charge of occasional culls on the red
deer to protect the young trees. Interestingly these culls often happened
around Christmas and New Year, so our festive table had no turkey. There might
be the odd pheasant – road-kill, of course! And our mother made a roast haunch
of venison with rich black gravy like no one else.
On our second night there we had wild boar
with roast potatoes and rice with cinnamon chestnuts and raisins with a garnish
of tomato jam, made by our waiter’s wife, the cook. Here she is preparing some
of her many jams and preserves.
As we took
our leave it was with warm memories, loads of chestnuts we’d gathered on the
mountain and several extra pounds. A
sign in the village commends the Dimatis for ‘good food’. To use a good Greek word
that is a fine example of litotes!
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