Susan Holden

From a personal conversation with Susan:

“I first visited a foreign country (France) while preparing for my A levels, working as an au pair in two different families, one of whom I liked very much, the other … I left after a week. No doubt the feeling was mutual!

This experience made me want to explore other countries and societies. A French Government scholarship to Paris to research French medieval theatre gave me another au pair experience - and improved my French. It also made me realise how ‘family French’ and ‘child French’ are very different from ‘textbook French’. People and context are the key factors.

A visit to Venice (to do some theatre history research) convinced me this was the place I wanted to spend more of my life - so I did a training course at IH London to supplement my drama teacher training, and was given a DoS job in IH Latina, between Rome and Naples, and then a training course based in IH Rome but travelling all over the country. My Italian improved, but living in Venice still seemed far away. I did manage to get married in Venice City Hall, during a school November holiday, to a partner who had moved to Latina with me - the school principal thought two foreigners living together without being married brought the school into disrepute! Again, cultural differences were important. So was a growing awareness of the differences in the Italian used in Venice, Rome and Latina - language is local and has different degrees of localisation, depending on the context and speakers.

Another experience of different cultures (and languages) occurred when I had a year in Montreal, teaching at Concordia University. This involved observing teaching practice in schools in the French part of the city. A comment to an adolescent that it must be so useful to have TV channels in English and French provoked the response (in Quebecois) ‘My Dad would hit me if he caught me watching a programme in English’. Again, people and context (and politics) affect language.

Returning to the UK, and editing MET [Modern English Teacher] magazine, was a further reminder, through the articles they submitted, of the different concerns, possibilities and limitations of teachers working in different contexts. They were writing about their own experience which they thought would be of interest to others. As editor, my task was to read, judge, decide … and to convey that decision, with or without suggestions for changes, to the writer. The decision may have been based on academic or readership criteria, but it had to be conveyed to the writer in a way that was sympathetic, objective and appropriate. The personal and professional elements are equally important.

These kinds of judgements were equally important in the wider publishing world, first in my own small company, Modern English Publications (MEP) and then later in a large one, Macmillan, working as Publishing Director for Europe and parts of Latin America, where sensitivity to local language learning needs and contexts, while working with authors, had to be matched by an equal awareness of financial investment and likely sales. Again, the personal and the professional coloured and shaped each project.

When the part of Macmillan for which I was responsible was sold to a large US-based company, I encountered a totally different publishing culture. One in which a visiting director could ask ’Why do you need different editions for different countries in Europe? They all have McDonalds…’.
The result? After 2 years, realising the new colleagues and I spoke totally different languages (albeit varieties of English), I left to set up a new company, Swan Communication, determined to use it to publish culturally-aware materials for specific contexts and users. Another firm decision was to keep the company small - and to be responsible for all the decision-making (with help from trusted freelance colleagues) and results. In fact, it was set up, in 1996, with just one director/employee: Susan Holden. The responsibility is huge, but the opportunity to make decisions quickly, and be flexible, is an invigorating way of producing materials with a ‘voice’.

Many of the materials developed since then, whether published by Swan Communication, or when working as an author, or as a teacher training consultant, have been based on experience in two very different areas: Central Europe and Latin America (notably Brazil and Mexico).

The former was affected by developing history: after the fall of the Berlin Wall, English could suddenly be taught as a first foreign language in schools - but the existing ‘international’ courses produced by UK publishers, often full of pictures of red letter boxes, Westminster Abbey and the London Underground were far from the reality of their prospective users - students and teachers who had not yet travelled to experience this world and communicate with its inhabitants. So, there were opportunities for materials based in the reality of Central Europe, and involving local teachers as writing teams. Place, culture, teaching experience and learning context were all as important as the language syllabus.

Ongoing consultancy work in Brazil had involved extensive travel to various parts of this huge country, with its different climates, history and populations. Observing classes and talking to teachers in a prestige language institute in Rio or São Paulo was a very different experience from doing so in a state sector secondary school in a small town where the class size might be 40 and the teacher had limited English. Again, the need for different types of materials (and training) was apparent. People and context … it seems so obvious!

The main results from these regular visits to Brazil were the Portfolio/Topics series of highly illustrated magazine-type material, aimed at providing topic-based input through photos and text in order to encourage users to explore the topics in their own environments, and to produce their own texts and photos based on their own reality. Many teachers liked the idea but were nervous about the practicalities of doing project work, so supportive text and video material was produced for them. Listening and observing feeds into the creation and production of appropriate materials. For this series, I was the author.

I was also the author of Encounters. This was born out of the realisation that Brazil would be hosting the 1996 World Cup, and people working in the Service sector (taxi drivers, bar, hotel and restaurant staff, police, people working in shopping mall stores) who might never have learned English effectively at school, would suddenly have to interact with a range of foreign visitors, often using English as the means of communication, in contexts where either party could be stressed, appear rude, or simply give up. Extensive observation of these kinds of service encounters showed the problems and provided the framework and methodology for this four-level series for Brazil.

So where do Susan Holden and HLT come together?

Not through academic writing, but probably through a lifelong conviction that communication starts with people and context, is shaped by the relationship between these, and that any teaching/learning activities and materials should take this as the starting point. Humanistic? You decide!”