Is there a cure? David Baker looks at the challenges of teaching general English to adults at an advanced level.

1. 24 www.modernenglishteacher.com n Volume 23 n Issue 4
Advanced general English classes
are often daunting for teachers.
In this article I begin by looking at
the difficulty of defining who ‘general
advanced’ learners are. I then go on to
discuss four broad teaching strategies
aimed at helping to ensure that their
needs are met.
Many teaching institutions offer an
‘Advanced General English’ course. The
prospect of teaching these classes is
often extremely daunting for teachers,
sometimes to the extent of inspiring
real fear. There are a number of reasons
for this ‘General Advancedophobia’,
but underpinning them all is the sheer
difficulty of determining these learners’
motivation for studying and their actual
needs and then applying this knowledge
to what and how we teach them.
Defining ‘advanced’
A discussion of this topic needs to start
by acknowledging the difficulty of
defining the term ‘advanced’.
One starting point is the Common
European Framework of Reference
(CEFR), which defines three broad
levels of language competence,
of which the highest level, Level C
(‘proficient users’) might be taken to
correspond to the advanced learners
discussed in this article. However, there
are several complications.
The CEFR subdivides its C level in two
and makes a key differentiation between
C1 (‘Effective Operational Proficiency’)
and C2 (‘Mastery’). All too often in
‘General
Advancedophobia’
Is there a cure? David Baker looks at the challenges of teaching general English
to adults at an advanced level.
discussions of advanced learners, the
distinction between C1 and C2 is blurred,
and all advanced-level learners tend to be
lumped together. There are times when
they are lumped together in classes as
well, which presents us with an additional
challenge. Perhaps this blurring of C1 and
C2 happens because, for most teaching
institutions, advanced-level learners still
represent a minority of the total number
of learners, albeit a growing one.
For most of us, C2-level learners
are definitely ‘a minority within
a minority’. Their needs and
expectations – at least insofar as
they are defined within the CEFR
– are closely tied in with ‘native-
speaker norms’ and assume a range
of competencies that would, in
reality, be impossible for many native
speakers. The validity of these native-
speaker norms, and the practicability
of ever achieving them, are both
highly controversial, and would really
need a completely separate article
to do justice to them. In the case
of C1-level learners, their goals are,
relatively speaking, more achievable,
although still far from straightforward.
There is an even more serious issue at
the lower end of the ‘advanced’ scale.
A number of taught courses – and
some published materials – use the
label ‘advanced’, where the content
is actually below that of the C1-level
descriptors in the CEFR. There are
several possible reasons for this. Partly
it reflects an attempt on the part of the
course providers to match the aspirations
of learners and their teachers; partly, it
might point to the need for a separate
category to reflect the time and effort
needed to progress from CEFR B2 to C1;
and possibly it might also suggest a more
fundamental and widespread confusion
about what it is to be an advanced
learner and language user.
As teachers of advanced classes, we can’t
find easy solutions to these problems of
defining what ‘advanced’ means, but we
should at least have some awareness of
the potential range of levels that might be
present among the learners and classes
that we are working with.
Defining ‘general’
For some advanced-level learners,
studying the language can often be
an ‘end in itself’, where using and
improving their English is for them a
special interest or hobby in its own right.
However, in many cases, students who
are attending a ‘general English’ course
either have work-related objectives or
are preparing for exams in their national
education system and/or for international
English exams. It is simply the case that
in their ‘general English’ classes, work
or exam preparation is not the sole or
primary objective. However, we will
normally want to make sure that our
general English lessons don’t overlap with
or encroach upon what students are doing
elsewhere in their specialised classes.
One way of addressing this is to try to
define the different contexts in which
our learners are using – or wish to
use – the language they are studying.
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2. n Volume 23 n Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com 25
The CEFR does this by describing four
‘domains’ of language use: educational,
occupational, public and personal.
The content of all our advanced-level
courses and syllabuses will typically
spread across all four domains, but
the relative priority that each one is
given should depend on the learners’
needs. For example, in the case of an
English for Academic Purposes class,
it is the educational domain that will
predominate for most of the time,
while a business English or English for
specific purposes class will focus (again
primarily but not exclusively) on the
occupational domain.
So, for ‘general English’ classes, that
leaves the personal and public domains.
Advanced learners should usually
already have the level of English needed
to function in the public domain “as
a member of the general public, or of
some organisation” and so should be
capable of performing a wide range of
transactions and interactions in everyday
life. Because of this, I would argue that
the most the most important of the
four domains for the general advanced
learner is the personal domain. What
might this mean in practice?
Focusing on the personal domain: The
personal domain is defined within the
CEFR as where the learner “lives as a
private individual, centred on home life
with family and friends, and engages
in individual practices such as reading
for pleasure, keeping a personal diary,
pursuing a special interest or hobby,
etc.” For advanced-level learners, we
might want to extend this definition to
include such activities as reading – and
fully understanding – books and articles,
watching films and TV programmes in
English, following the news and current
affairs, using English to interact on
social media, and taking part in informal
conversations and discussions with
family and friends (and with colleagues
in a social environment).
If – as I suggested above – we decide
to focus mainly on the personal
domain with general advanced
learners, then this poses an immediate
challenge. Identifying topics that
will interest a class is more difficult
for adults than it is for children or
teenagers, where an unofficial but
frequently used list of core topics
(e.g. sport, music, the environment)
has emerged over time and has
been consolidated through several
generations of published teaching
materials. And the problem of finding
appropriate, workable topics is even
greater when it comes to advanced-
level learners. Why is this?
The more advanced our learners are,
the more specialised the topics and
personal interests that they wish to
discuss in English are likely to be.
Also, the more advanced they are, the
greater the amount of detail they will
want to use to talk about their personal
interests and to interact with other
people who share those interests. When
we are working with a whole class,
unfortunately the reverse is also true.
The more specialised and detailed an
individual learner’s personal interests
are, the less likely it is that other
people in the class will share them or
be interested in them. Of course we
could try to turn this challenge into
an opportunity. But we need to be
realistic, and that means trying as best
we can to identify, or to create, points
of interest in common.
Four strategies for
general advanced classes
So far, I have focused mainly on
problems and so, for the remainder of
this article, I’d like to make four positive
suggestions for keeping advanced
general English classes on track.
1. Introducing longer, richer input:
With advanced level learners,
it is a good idea to introduce
longer input texts (reading, audio
and video) than they have been
used to previously. This becomes
possible at advanced level because
learners should no longer be
slowed down by the problems with
comprehension and unfamiliar
vocabulary in the way that is typical
when intermediate-level learners
start to tackle longer texts. This
work with longer texts will help
advanced learners to deepen their
knowledge of how different kinds of
text are structured and organised.
(Of course, this does not mean that
all the texts we work with in an
Advanced class should be long.)
As far as what kind of texts to choose
is concerned, obviously this will
greatly depend on our personal
assessment as teachers of what will
interest the classes we are working
with. As mentioned earlier, it will
be impossible to satisfy everyone,
so there has to be a degree of
compromise. A good starting point
is to provide input texts (of whatever
genre and on whatever topic) that are
genuinely engaging and interesting;
that are unusual or unpredictable – in
other words, texts that we teachers
might actually choose to read, watch
or listen to ourselves. If we find texts
that have the capacity to surprise us
or challenge us in whatever way, then
very often they will have the same
effect on our learners. And, of course,
we should also be encouraging
learners at advanced level to bring
in their own texts as well, and to
use class speaking activities as an
opportunity for listening practice.
2. Facilitating more varied
and spontaneous output: At
advanced level, we can introduce
different levels of formality into
class discussion ranging from
free conversation to structured
debate. This is an excellent way of
reinforcing learners’ sensitivity to
register and tone, as well as their
ability to express themselves across
a range of social contexts. For
those learners who wish to develop
their writing skills, then the same
possibility of exploring different
registers and writing styles applies.
As far as class discussion is
concerned, at advanced level we
should be less anxious than we might
be with lower-level students about
their getting so ‘carried away’ by
a stimulating discussion topic that
they neglect attention to form and
accuracy; (we can always take notes
and return to real points of concern
later). On the other hand, we should
be aware that creating controversy
for controversy’s sake can often
be pedagogically or culturally
inappropriate – or simply tiresome.
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3. 26 www.modernenglishteacher.com n Volume 23 n Issue 4
3. Managing work on lexis and
grammar appropriately: At lower
language levels, it is often possible
to predict a lot of the grammar or
vocabulary points that our learners will
find difficult. This is much harder at
advanced level, where a bewilderingly
large number of potential higher-
level lexical and grammatical topics
compete for our attention.
In general, for general advanced
classes, lexis (and particularly issues
of collocation, register, and general
appropriateness) should receive
more attention than formal grammar.
Of course, grammar still has its place,
especially if we are working with
students who need to write in English
or express themselves in formal
situations. But as teachers, there is
a temptation for us to assume that
meeting the needs of advanced-level
students equals tackling a series of
ever-more-complex grammar topics.
There are several reasons why this is
not a good idea:
1. It is using up classroom time
that would be better spent on
more productive and interactive
kinds of work.
2. As mentioned above, it is very
hard to decide which grammar
points need covering; (even
harder than lexis, where we can at
least select the sets of vocabulary
we choose to focus on the basis
that they are tied in with an
underlying topic).
3. We might well come to grief
when we discover that our
advanced-level learners know
as much as, if not more than, us
about formal grammar!
One obvious point about the grammar
and vocabulary we cover with
advanced-level learners is that it should
emerge naturally as possible from the
texts we are working with and from our
students’ output. This does not mean
that we should abandon any pre-
planning of grammar and vocabulary
teaching. And, of course, the idea of
grammar and vocabulary explanation
deriving from a real-life context is also
important for lower-level learners. But
when we’re working with advanced
students, we can be much more
relaxed about dealing with points as
and when they arise in class than we
might be with lower-level students,
where we are often under pressure to
cover a pre-set series of teaching points
in some detail.
4. Developing learner independence:
We often pay lip-service to learner
independence, but in the case of
advanced students there is a much
stronger chance of its becoming a
reality. In order to allow language
points to emerge spontaneously from
class input and output, we need to do
a certain amount of preparation. At
the same time, we must acknowledge
that we can’t possibly prepare
everything in a text or discussion that
might come up in class.
The solution lies partly in
encouraging our advanced students
to seek their own answers. This is a
good thing at all language levels, but
it often doesn’t work in practice with
lower-level learners, simply because
a lot of them lack the necessary
motivation and curiosity. In the case
of advanced students, we start with
two great advantages:
1. By definition, in order to reach a
genuinely advanced level, a learner
will be highly motivated, and will
have a considerable amount of
intellectual curiosity in general,
and curiosity about language in
particular. In other words, they will
have a lot more in common with
us, their teachers. Such learners
will be highly motivated to pinpoint
things they don’t understand
and find answers to their own
questions. This doesn’t mean that
we abandon our responsibilities
as teachers, but we can feel much
more comfortable about sharing
the responsibility with them, even
to the point of acknowledging
when we can’t immediately answer
their questions as and when they
occur. We can also encourage
them to do their own research and
bring back their findings to the
class. Part of our role as teachers is
to point our students towards good
reference sources (and away from
bad ones), by explaining why they
are good or bad.
2. As well as online reference, there
is now a wide range of learning
resources available online to
help us to teach advanced
learners and to help them to
learn independently. And apart
from growing number of online
resources aimed specifically at
learners and teachers, we should
not lose sight of the fact that the
internet itself is a huge learning
resource. The language barriers to
using the internet are much lower
for our advanced learners: when
they do find something in English
that is unfamiliar or that they
don’t immediately understand,
they should be seeing these not as
annoying obstacles to immediate
comprehension, but rather as
opportunities for further learning.
Implementing these four strategies won’t
make all the formidable challenges
of teaching advanced general
English classes disappear, but at least
they should help to keep ‘General
Advancedophobia’ at bay.
References
Common European Framework of Reference
for Languages:Learning,teaching,assessment,
Cambridge University Press (2001),21-40.
ibid,45-46
For ideas on teaching collocation see
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/
article/collocation-advanced-levels-1-not-
entirelyproperappropriategood
David Baker worked as an in-company
language trainer and university teacher
in Paris before returning to the UK to
complete a master’s degree in Applied
Linguistics. He worked for the ELT division
of Oxford University Press for fourteen
years, specialising in publishing grammar
and reference, business English and ESP
materials. For the past eight years he has
been working as a freelance language
trainer, materials writer, publishing and
educational consultant.
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