What culture? Which culture?

Cross-cultural factors in language

learning
Luke Prodromou

The 'cultural background’ in language teaching has, for a number of

reasons, recently moved to the foreground: there is renewed interest in
subjects as varied as the politics of national language policy, sexism in EFL,
and the ideology of textbooks and dictionaries. Broadly speaking, there has
been a shift in emphasis in course design from a pre-occupation with form
to an interest in content. This article describes the results of a survey
designed to elicit the views ofstudents on what language teaching should
be about. It tests a number of hypotheses expressed by a variety of writers
in previous articles in this journal: the importance or otherwise of 1
bilingual, bicultural teachers; 2 native-speaker models of English; 3 the
cultural content of English lessons in a context where English is a foreign
rather than a second language.1

The importance The burgeoning bibliography on cross-cultural matters in language

of English teaching is a symptom of wider social, political, and technological
developments and in particular the increased mobility of people, and
therefore of contact between people, brought about by modem
communications, electronic media, and international organizations. Thus,
there is potential for greater harmony or greater conflict. There is also an
increasing awareness of a common global destiny, highlighted by nuclear
and environmental disasters of an alarming variety.
English, therefore, as the foremost medium of international
communication at the present time, is called upon to mediate a whole
range of cultural and cross-cultural concepts, to a greater degree than in
the past. The international dimension of English language teaching is not
only becoming difficult to ignore, but offers ELT a potentially more
significant role than traditional ethnocentric views of the language as a
peculiarly Anglo-Saxon entity would have allowed.

The historical In spite of surface differences, the concept of culture implicit or explicit in
context: trivial most ELT methods and materials until recently, has been predominantly
pursuits monocultural and ethnocentric; the content of such materials has been
criticized for not engaging the student’s personality to any significant
extent. The grammar-translation approach was an easy target for
criticisms of cultural triviality, given its obsession, in the early stages of
learning, with made-up sentences designed to illustrate the parts of speech
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 to the detriment of syntax or meaning. Thus, direct methodists such as
Sweet poke fun at examples of the ‘pen of my aunt’ variety with the first
prize for meaning-less triviality going to a gem such as:
‘the philosopher pulled the lower jaw of the hen’
(quoted by Howatt, 1984: 145)
However, if we turn to direct method materials themselves, whether in
their early or later - situational - versions, we find greater sense than in
grammar-translation materials, but little that is culturally challenging or
inspiring. ‘Classroom culture’ (pupils, pens, chalk, and chairs) gives us
such familiar examples as:
‘You’re standing up. What are you doing?’
‘Are you the first pupil or the last?’ etc.
(Palmer, 1940: 64-66)
The real world provides descriptive examples and ‘general truths’ such
as:
‘Does a horse pull a cart? Yes, it does. What pulls a cart? A horse does.’
etc.
(Palmer, 1940: 64,77)
The audio-lingualists of the 1950s and 1960s claimed to place English in
the cultural context of modem Britain or the USA, but their notion of
culture is rarely more than superficial. This seems inherent in a method
which so dogmatically downgraded lexical meaning in favour of
structural form; the contexts are a pre-text for language forms and lead to
the blandness of:
We have set all the narratives in England. We provide, where
appropriate short notes on the cultural background in which Jillian and
Martin live , . . They have - we hope - something in common with
many young, educated, classless people in many larger cities all over
the world.’
(Barnett et al., 1968: 23)
In the communicative models put forward as an alternative to
structuralism, cross-cultural content is not given explicit priority: people
invite, apologize, make requests, and so on in London, Bristol, or
Cambridge. Wilkins’ concept of ‘authentic material’ confirms the mono-
cultural limits of early functionalism: ‘by this is meant materials which
were originally directed at the native-speaking audience. (Wilkins,
1976: 79).

The survey: In suggesting that the cultural content of previous approaches to ELT has
hypotheses we been trivial, I am making certain assumptions about the importance of
live by content in ELT materials and implicitly the kind of content which we
should be promoting. In the second part of this article, I would like to
report the results of a classroom survey designed to test some of these
assumptions and others, which have been made by recent writers on
cultural content in language teaching.
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My survey sought to elicit students’ reactions to the following four
hypotheses:
1 The importance of the cultural background.
2 The importance of the cultural foreground.
3 The importance of a cross-cultural understanding and multi-cultural
diversity.
4 The importance of English language teaching as education,
There is, of course, overlap in the four approaches, but each of the writers
I quote highlights one feature rather than another.

Hypothesis 1: The importance of the cultural background

Valette (1986) expresses the first hypothesis:
‘For the classroom teacher, cultural goals may be divided into four
categories: developing a greater awareness of and a broader knowledge
about the target culture; acquiring a command of the etiquette of the
target culture; understanding differences between the target culture
and the students’ culture; and understanding the values of the target
culture’. (Valette, 1986; see also Brown, 1990, who argues for the
importance of cultural knowledge in interpreting texts appropriately.)
It is important to bear in mind that Valette is writing in the context of
English as a second language in the United States, where the learner may
well be seeking to become integrated into the life of the community. It is
often claimed, as a kind of collorary of this position, that the successful
learner is one who has a positive attitude towards the target culture (see
Svanes, 1988). But my question is: ‘How applicable are these
assumptions to a context where English is a foreign language?’

Hypothesis 2: The importance of the cultural foreground

It is in the context of English as a foreign rather than second language that
Cem and Margaret Alptekin, writing about Turkey, feel that local culture
may, regrettably, be submerged into the dominant culture of the foreign
language. They question the desirability of identifying the learning of
English with the culture of the native speaker, and counter-propose the
use of local varieties of English. Implicit in this position is the desirability
of bilingual/bicultural teachers of English as a foreign language.
(Alptekin and Alptekin, 1984: 14; see also Rampton, 1990, who questions
the supremacy of the ‘native speaker’ at a time when world English is a
mosaic of many non-native - and ‘nativized’ - varieties.)

Hypothesis 3: The importance of cross-cultural understanding and

multicultural diversity
No-one involved in teaching English is likely to argue for cross-cultural
mis-understanding, but some may question the relative emphasis to be
given to cross-cultural as opposed to target or local culture components in
course design. Robinson (1985) believes in the importance of developing
cultural versatility to help learners meet the demands of an increasingly
multicultural world; the ‘cultural background’ approach is criticized for
What culture? Which culture? 41

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 its implicitly alienating effect on the learner: ‘Cultural instruction does
not usually build bridges between the home and target culture . . .
students are asked to role-play and imitate the target behaviour rather than
synthesise it with their own experience’ (Robinson, 1985: 100). Robinson
therefore proposes a multilingual/multicultural model of education rather
than a bilingual/bicultural one.

Hypothesis 4: The importance of English language teaching as education

The view that ELT has for long been practised in an educational vacuum is
expressed by Brumfit (1980), Cook (1983), and Abbott (1987). Abbott’s
focus, building on Cook’s work, is on ‘interesting’ content: ‘Current
views of language teaching are highly instrumental and have led to the
creation of speech oriented syllabuses . . . much more thought is needed
on what the aims and content of school EFL syllabuses should be.’

But what do At this point, it is time to ask: What about the learners? How do they feel
students think? about all the claims made for them, and the concern shown for their
cultural improvement? As a recent ELT Journal editorial suggested:
A properly conducted survey of students’ views on the matter of
cultural standpoint and credibility of the range of teachers and
materials available to them would be very interesting.
(Editorial, ELT Journal, April, 1988).

In the rest of this paper, I describe one attempt to conduct such a survey.

The survey: The survey was in the form of a questionnaire which was distributed to
background 300 Greek students. The students were asked five questions:
1 Do you think your teacher of English should know the students’
mother tongue?
2 Do you think your teacher of English should know about Greece
and Greek culture?
3 Which model of English do you wish to learn: British/American/
other?
4 Is it important for you to speak English like a native speaker?
5 What do you think the content or subject matter of your English
lessons should be?
a. The English language;
b. Facts about science and society;
c. Social problems;
d. British life and institutions;
e. English/American literature;
f. The culture of other countries;
g. Political problems;
h. The experiences of other students in the class;
i. Greek life and institutions;
j. American life and institutions.

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 The first two questions sought to elicit their attitude to the bilingual/
bicultural teacher.
Questions 3 and 4 aimed to discover how strongly students felt about
native-speaker models of the language.
The final question was more detailed: it asked students to specify the kind
of content they would like their English lessons to be based on. The items
in the list of topics are based on Cook (1983), Abbott (1984), and
Prodromou (1988): thus, I hoped to find out what students felt about some
of the assumptions we teach.

The students The subjects were 300 Greek students of English, mostly young adults,
studying English as a foreign language in private language institutes or at
The British Council Teaching Centre, Thessaloniki. One third of the
students were beginners, while the others were intermediate or advanced.
They were all working their way towards either the Cambridge First
Certificate or Proficiency. I chose to divide the distribution of the
questionnaires between Greek private language institutes
(‘frontisteria’ - as repetition is cumbersome, henceforth PLI) and The
British Council (henceforth, BC), in order to establish a possible
difference in attitude towards the target culture on the part of students who
chose to emole at the BC with its exclusively native-speaker teaching
staff, and those who chose to attend lessons at PLI, whose teachers are
mostly non-native speakers of English. I included different levels of
language ability (beginners to post-First Certificate) largely in order to
identify possible differentiation in attitudes towards the use of the mother-
tongue in the classroom by students with only a little knowledge of
English and those, on the other hand, who knew quite a lot. (The
questionnaire was given to beginners in a Greek translation.)

The results The results of the questionnaire are summarized in Table 1 on page 44. In
the next section, I attempt a summary and initial interpretation of the
results.
Questions I and 2: The bilingual/bicultural teacher
Just over half of the students thought the (native-speaker) teacher should
know the learners’ mother tongue and know about local culture. There
were slightly more BC students who felt the teacher should be bilingual/
bicultural, compared to students in the Greek PLI. On the face of it, one
might have expected the result to be the other way round, on the
assumption that BC students had paid to be taught by native speakers. A
possible explanation for the slight reversal of expectations in this respect
is a feeling of frustration felt by BC students when faced with non-Greek-
speaking teachers attempting to explain difficult vocabulary or when
giving complicated instructions. Beginners feel more strongly than
higher-level students (65 per cent compared to 53 per cent) that their
teacher should know the students’ mother tongue. This is predictable,
given the limitations of direct method approaches with students who
know little English.
What culture? Which culture? 43

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 Tab/e 1: Total number of students: 300
Results of questionnaire 1 ‘Do you think your teacher of English should know the students’ mother
on cross-cultural factors
tongue?‘
in language learning
% total BC PLI Beg Int/Adv
58 59 55 65 53

2 ‘Do you think your teacher of English should know about Greece and Greek
culture?’
% total BC PLI Beg Int/Adv
56 58 51 42 74

3 ‘Which “model” of English do you wish to learn?’

% total BC PLI Beg Int/Adv

i British 75 76 72 77 76
ii American 18 16 22 17 16
iii Other 5 0.5 3 - 1
4 ‘Do you think it is important for you to speak English like a native speaker?’

% total BC PLI Beg Int/Adv

62 58 78 64 52

5 ‘What do you think the content or subject-matter of your English lessons

should be?’
% total BC PLI Beg Int/Adv
a. The English language 84 83 85 80 87
b. Facts: science, society 74 74 73 62 86
c. Social problems 72 66 84 49 83
d. British life, institutions 60 61 58 57 65
e. English/American literature 44 38 56 29 48
f. Culture of other countries 36 33 40 24 43
g. Political problems 31 33 27 19 48
h. Experiences of students 28 25 32 20 31
i. Greek life, institutions 27 24 32 18 31
I.
. American life, institutions 26 24 30 18 31

Key
TotaI Aggregate replies of 300 students, all levels, British Council and Greek
private language institutes in Thessaloniki.
BS British Council students at all levels.
PLI Students in Greek language institutes at FC/Proficiency level.
Beg Students at beginner/elementary level (questionnaire issued in Greek).
Int/Adv Intermediate and advanced students.

In the case of cultural awareness, it is the intermediate and advanced

students who say that their teacher should be familiar with local culture
(74 per cent of intermediate/advanced students compared to 42 per cent of
beginners). This could have something to do with age and linguistic
competence: advanced students, being more adult, may also be more
sensitive to questions of cultural identity, or simply have enough
language - and successful learning experience - at their disposal to
welcome the challenge of discussing local culture in class.
Question 3: Native-speaker varieties of English
The overall picture here is of the universal popularity of British English
compared to American English. This must surely be a reflection of the
‘bad press’ the Americans have had in post-war Greece (the presence of
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US bases on Greek soil, a history of interference in internal affairs, etc.),
as well as the widespread feeling amongst Greeks that British English is a
‘purer’, more ‘refined’ form of English. (The BBC is a byword for clarity
of diction.)
More PLI students (22 per cent compared to 16 per cent) preferred
American English. This, along with the slightly greater preference for
British English amongst BC students, suggests that one attractive
‘marketing’ factor for BC clientele is British English itself.

Question 4: Native-speaker pronunciation

Only 62 per cent of students overall say they would like to speak English
like a native speaker. Even fewer BC students (58 per cent) attach
importance to a native-speaker accent than PLI students, which is
surprising. This may be due to any one or more of the following factors:
- BC students, surrounded by British teachers, take the question of
native-speaker pronunciation for granted.
- BC students have ‘demystified’ the attractions of native-speaker
accents and discovered the limitations of having exclusively native-
speaker teachers.
- In trying to get students to speak with an English accent we are in some
way invading their cultural space, in a way which does not apply to
grammar or vocabulary. Students are often ‘educated’ into adopting
certain attitudes by the way they are taught: the fact that most teachers
still ignore or neglect pronunciation may have something to do with
students’ perception of pronunciation as relatively unimportant.
- BC students, faced with a variety of occasionally obscure or even
incomprehensible native-speaker accents, may feel a good
pronunciation is beyond their reach.

Question 5: What should language teaching be about?

The fact that most students (84 per cent) said they wanted the lesson to be
about ‘the English language’ may be so obvious as to be insignificant, as
all lessons, in a way, are ‘about’ English.
Science and society. Apart from language itself, the most popular source
of content was ‘facts about science and society’, and the least popular
‘American life and institutions’. This is an interesting contrast, in that
‘science and society’ are the most neutral/universal cultural areas in the
list, while American culture is the most ‘marked’ and, in Greece, emotive.
The interest in science, technology, and society revealed in the answers
(particularly at advanced levels) may well be a reflection of the fact that
the majority of learners in the survey are university students, with a
healthy interest in the world around them, and a less healthy obsession
with passing their exams at all costs! ‘Social problems’ are uniformly
motivating for both BC and PLI students, but with a significantly lower
level of interest amongst beginners (49 per cent compared to 83 per cent
for more advanced students).
The great Greek paperchase. There is quite strong interest (60 per cent) in
British life and institutions amongst all students, both at BC and in PLI, at
What culture? Which culture? 45

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 all levels. There is, however, a significant minority (40 per cent) which is
not very interested in British culture. As far as Britain is concerned, young
Greeks do not seem over anxious about the threat of cultural imperialism.
This is in sharp contrast to attitudes to American culture (26 per cent).
Although not justifying an Anglo-centric approach to content, these
figures suggest quite a strong association in learners’ minds between
learning a language and learning about the people who speak that
language.
Why British and not American ? One plausible explanation is the
predominance of the British-based Cambridge examinations, and the
‘backwash’ effect they have. (A massive 45,000 candidates a year take the
Cambridge examinations in Greece.) There may be a conception (or
misconception) in candidates’ minds that their chances of passing the
examination are greater if they know about British culture. Culture-
specific material emanating from the Cambridge Syndicate (less obvious
in recent years) may fuel such preconceptions.
The cultural foreground. While the unpopularity of American topics may
be explicable in terms of post-war Greek history and an exam-oriented
society, it is harder to account for the very low rating given to Greek
culture (non-British Council students are somewhat ‘warmer’ towards
local culture). The most likely explanation (confirmed by informal
discussion with some of the students who completed the questionnaire) is
that students go to the BC and PLI to ‘escape’ from everyday routine;
going to foreign language lessons is primarily a social event. The
usefulness of the Cambridge First Certificate is, in practical terms,
limited, but it certainly gives thousands of Greeks a pretext for going out
in the evenings and meeting people. Another reason for the relative
unpopularity of Greek subject matter may be the highly charged nature of
Greek political life, particularly in recent years. Discussions of political or
semi-political topics (such as Greek newspapers) can be unexpectedly
divisive: the students’ affective filter is raised against personal
revelations, and normally voluble Greeks are left speechless.

There is further evidence for this hypothesis in the low response to

‘political problems’ as content (31 per cent) and the personal experience
of students (28 per cent). The latter result, in an age when humanistic
approaches are becoming an orthodoxy, should make us tread carefully
when ‘personalizing’ classroom activities.
English and American literature. There is quite a high interest in literature
amongst students (44 per cent, but far less at lower levels), which matches
the revival of interest in the subject in applied linguistics circles.

The culture of other countries. Nearly 4 out of 10 students find a more

multicultural approach to content attractive. There is in Greece a mixed
tradition of both xenophobia and ‘xenomania’, and together with an
ethnocentric educational system, this may have helped shape this rather
ambiguous result. A multicultural approach, particularly one which
involves comparisons between the students’ culture and other cultures, is
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 an important area to develop. This is a point I shall raise in my concluding
remarks.

British Council There are no significant differences between the attitudes of students who
versus other pay to come to The British Council and other students. (BC students are
students slightly more favourably inclined towards British culture, while non-BC
students are slightly less hostile towards American culture.) ‘Frontisteria’
students are somewhat keener (8 per cent) on local culture than BC
students.

Ways forward Knowledge of the target culture remains an important part of language
The cultural learning, especially at higher levels. This may be due to both subjective
background and objective factors: on the one hand, the sheer, intrinsic delight in
discovering more about a culture so different from the students’ own -
this includes the escapist factor. On the other hand, there is what Gillian
Brown has discussed as the ‘interpretation of discourse’: an intuitive
competence, drawing on cultural knowledge, which native-speakers
possess, but which learners have to be trained in (Brown, 1990). Training
students to infer culturally-determined meanings from clues in a text is a
particularly valuable approach with advanced students who have to deal
with authentic texts. It is an approach to the ‘cultural background’ very
different from the traditional teaching of facts about ‘British life and
institutions’.
My own feeling is that there is still a place for this kind of ‘learning about’
the target culture, but that wherever possible such ‘fact-based’ sessions
should be integrated with the other work done by the class and should be
consistent with a learner-centred methodology, if that is the option
adopted by the teacher. Activities in class may take the form of games,
quizzes, questionnaires, and project work.
For example, at elementary level, a true-false exercise about Britain or the
USA may be conducted as a quiz game or as part of project work. Not only
are such activities potentially enjoyable in themselves but may also be of
practical value to any students planning to travel abroad:
True or False?
- People drive on the left in the UK.
- If you go to Oxford you will see Buckingham Palace.
- You cannot use English pounds in Scotland.
- The head of the government in Britain is the President.
- There are 20 pence in a pound.
etc.

The cultural The survey suggests that there is a place for materials based on local
foreground culture in the EFL classroom but that, in this context at least, it might not
be as predominant as that suggested by Alptekin (1984). Nevertheless, the
direction taken by Adaskou et al., (1990) in devising materials for
Morocco following an assessment of teachers’ attitudes to the cultural
content of textbooks is consistent with the approach taken here in that they
What culture? Which culture? 47

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 avoided a top-down strategy in arriving at their decisions. Although most
of the texts chosen by the Morocco team involve local uses of English,
they also include texts of general interest corresponding to the topics in
my ‘English as education’ category (technology, unemployment, history,
science, etc. (Adaskou et al., 1990: 9).
A technique I have found useful for drawing on local culture in a natural
‘communicative? way, is a team game which reverses the usual roles of
teacher and learners. The students, in teams, prepare questions about local
culture for the native-speaker teacher to answer. The group which asks
most questions to which the teacher does not know the answer, wins. (If
the ‘innocent’ teacher is new to the country, he or she may be allowed to
select a student as informant/advisor.)
This kind of activity makes for a more reciprocal relationship between the
culture of the teacher and that of the students. It involves a built-in
recognition of the value of the learners’ culture and the value of their
contribution to the learning process: As Freire puts it: ‘the literacy
process, as cultural action for freedom, is an act of knowing in which the
learner assumes the role of knowing subject, in dialogue with the
educator’ (1970: 29). This use of learner input, incidentally, helps the
guest teacher develop greater awareness of local historical events and
attitudes towards them, thus avoiding certain cultural faux pas, which the
Alptekins and Adaskou et al. warn against.

Placing or Rampton’s (1990) assertion that linguistic ‘expertise’ is more important

displacing the than notions of who is and who is not a ‘native speaker’ gains implicit
native speaker? support from the way students responded to question 4 of my survey. In
the long run, what seems to matter most to students is the teacher’s ability
to do the job; it is not ‘who you are, but what you know’ (Rampton, 1990:
99) that students will pay for. Non-native-speaker teachers of English are
not necessarily worse off than their native-speaker colleagues: they can
be, and often are, as ‘expert’ in English and ELT methodology as native
speakers, and have the added advantage of being able to draw on the vast
reservoir of the students’ first language and culture (see Atkinson, 1987,
for practical uses of the first language in the classroom).

What should The more advanced the students’ knowledge of English becomes, the
language teaching more receptive they are to interesting content and a richer cultural input. A
be about? great deal has already been done at higher levels to incorporate into course
design content based on school subjects and the learners’ personal or
professional interests. Some materials have demonstrated that a content-
based approach is also possible at elementary level (e.g. Hutchinson,
1985). Materials, wherever possible suggested or contributed by the
students themselves, should obviously continue to be about things
intelligent people would normally want to read or discuss. Examination
classes are particularly prone to the fallacy that the lesson has to be
boring, that the testing process is more important than the educational
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 value of the content. One looks forward to more examination material
which successfully balances exam preparation with preparation for living
in the real world, multiple choice with personal choice.

Conclusion: In finishing, I would like to broaden the perspective somewhat. Beyond

towards a future facts, however interesting, and beyond the horizons of local or ‘target’
perfect cultures, there are other cultures, for which English as an international
language and English teaching as a global profession are natural media.
‘Broadening students’ horizons’ is a traditional objective of educational
activity, and the expression takes on a new and more urgent meaning in a
time of global environmental disasters and the collapse of international
barriers. In the USA, there is a growing interest in Global Education
which prompts Finocchiaro to comment:
Bilingualism and biculturalism are not sufficient for living and
participating in today’s interdependent world. It is our responsibility to
prepare learners to cope not only with the world’s universal problems
and behaviours, but with its many ethnic and cultural systems.
(Finocchiaro, 1982).
In teaching any language, we are imparting information and therefore
power; in teaching English we can impart to learners not only the present
perfect, but also the power of knowing and caring more about the world
they live in. English is at the centre of international and global culture. It is
a cultural activity; it is an important activity.

Epilogue: what’s the There are two ways in which I have found the research described in this
use of classroom article useful. First of all, there is the end-product of the survey: insights
research? into the subject under discussion, cultural factors in language learning.
Secondly, there is the process itself of going to the students and finding out
to what extent the teacher’s assumptions and theirs coincide.
It is both disconcerting and stimulating to discover that our assumptions
and those of our students do not always coincide. As one wanders around
the mid-career plateau, such shocks to one’s complacency are a refreshing
form of self-development. Going back to the learners generates a renewed
interest in a process which, after fifteen years of language teaching, risks
becoming an unexamined ritual.
Received November 1990

Note Adaskou, K., D. Britten, and B. Fahsi. 1990.

1 This article is based on a talk given at the 23rd
IATEFL Conference in Warwick, UK, April 1989.
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secondary English course for Morocco’. ELT
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Alptekin, C. and M. Alptekin. 1984. ‘The question
of Culture’. ELX Journal, 38/1: 14-20.
Atkinson, D. 1987. ‘The mother-tongue in the
classroom: a neglected resource?’ ELT Journal,
41/4.

What culture? Which culture? 49

articles welcome
Barnett, J. A., G. Broughton, and T. Greenwood.
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Rampton, M. B. H. 1990. ‘Displacing the “native
speaker”: expertise, affiliation, and inheritance’.
50 Luke Prodromou
ELT Journal, 44/2: 97-101.
Robinson, G. L. N. 1985. Crosscultural
Understanding. Oxford: Pergamon.
Svanes, B. 1988. ‘Attitudes and “cultural distance” in
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Valdes, J. M. (ed.). 1986. Culture Bound.
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Valette, R. M. 1986. ‘The culture test’, in Valdes
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The author
Luke Prodromou has a degree in English with Greek
(Bristol), an MA in Shakespeare Studies
(Birmingham), and a Postgraduate TEFL Diploma
(Leeds). He is a teacher trainer for The British
Council, Thessaloniki. He is the co-author of Bits and
Pieces, a book of sketches for students, On the Move,
an advanced course book, Are You Ready? (Use of
English), and Medicine (ESP); he is also the author of
a forthcoming book on the mixed-ability class.
articles welcome