interesting articles, wrote down questions, drafted inoffensive role plays and laminated photos that would lead into relevant themes for discussion. All to get my students speaking as much English as possible.
Now they’re lucky if I even glance at their information cards before entering the room. This minor rebellion on my part started the day I realised I’d been teaching for significantly longer than the six months I’d planned and – even worse – that I was good at it. I was both patient (who’d have thought that would be the main ingredient for a good language teacher?) and had a knack for getting my students to speak English. Now that I’ve stopped planning my lessons and they’ve become a mystery to both me and my students, life has become a bit more exciting.
‘Oh, everything. Schnitzel, sausages …’ says Petra.
‘Complete sentences,’ I say, encouragingly.
‘I like to cook schnitzel and sausages,’ Petra says obediently.
Because the basic rule of the Berlitz method is that you can learn a language through everyday conversation, I can keep a lesson going for as long as I can come up with things to talk about. My three years as an English teacher have turned me into an expert in small talk. Once I got a student to talk about the lock he’d changed on his garage door for a quarter of an hour, just to see if I could.
‘And what’s your favourite drink?’ I ask.
Petra considers. ‘Tap water.’
‘Complete sentences,’ I repeat with a strained smile.
‘My favourite drink is tap water,’ Petra says.
I continue to smile at her, because I genuinely have no idea what to say to someone whose favourite drink is tap water.
For the final fifteen minutes, we do a cookery-themed crossword. When the bell rings I let out a little pretend sigh and turn down the corners of my mouth to show how sad I am that we have to finish. We shake hands, of course, and Petra disappears off home, probably to a dinner consisting of schnitzel and sausages washed down with a glass of tap water.
Everyone crams into the tiny staffroom so as to avoid any contact with the students during the five-minute break. On the walls there are Berlitz posters with multicultural faces and sentences followed by exclamation marks. The three bookshelves are full of Berlitz’s in-house magazine Passport and some Spanish, French and Russian textbooks that appear to be completely untouched. The English books, on the other hand, are so battered that most of them are missing their spines or are held together with tape.
None of the Berlitz staff are real teachers. Mike’s an out-of-work actor, Jason’s finishing his PhD on Schönberg, Claire used to work in marketing, Randall’s a graphic designer, Sarah’s a civil engineer, Rebecca’s a violin maker, Karen has a degree in media and communication and I still dream of one day becoming an author. The only one who’s a trained teacher is Ken, so he’s hated almost as much as Dagmar, the administrator at our Berlitz branch on Mariahilferstrasse.
Ken stalks into the staffroom. ‘Ooh, busy, busy,’ he says cheerfully, trying to squeeze his way through to the photocopier holding open a grammar book. Everyone ignores him. At the window, Mike and Claire huddle together, trying to smoke through a gap of about a centimetre.
‘Now I have four lessons in a row with the same group,’ Claire sighs, stuffing her lighter back into her cigarette packet. ‘I won’t be done until eight.’
‘Just a little longer and you’ll never have to do this again,’ Randall says. Claire will be going back to London soon to do a Masters.
‘I’m about to have my twelfth lesson,’ I say, and an impressed murmur goes round the room. There are only three topics of conversation in the staffroom: how many lessons we have to teach that day, how annoying our students are, and how much we hate Dagmar.
‘I just had an AMS group,’ counters Mike.
Everyone sighs in sympathy. AMS is the Austrian employment office. A few years ago, Berlitz won a state contract to provide English lessons to every unemployed person who applied for them. There are few things more depressing than teaching an AMS group.
The last student of the day is new. She’s already in the room when I come in, standing looking out of the dirty window. To my relief I see that her English has been classified as Level Five – that is ‘A high level of competence’. The higher the student’s level, the less effort I have to make.
‘Hi, my name is Julia,’ I say, offering my hand.
The thin woman puts out her own hand, which is surprisingly warm. Within a quarter of an hour, I’ve learned that she’s called Vera, is originally from Graz, that she works as a PR consultant for the Austrian People’s Party, and is a single mother with an 8-year-old daughter. Unfortunately, she then starts asking me questions.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Sweden,’ I answer without thinking.
A crease immediately appears between Vera’s eyebrows, and I realise my mistake. Even though my English is both accent and error free, no one wants to hear that I’m not from an English-speaking country. Even Dagmar discreetly asked me not to mention it to the students. Rebecca once told me about the time she was moonlighting as a waitress at a barbecue restaurant in Cairns. Even though she always remembered everyone’s orders, she had to pretend to write them down in her notepad because she noticed that the customers got nervous if she didn’t. That’s kind of how I feel every time I have to lie about where I come from.
‘Swindon,’ I correct myself. ‘In England. Northern England.’
Vera is still looking at me. ‘Isn’t Swindon in the south of England? Near Bristol? I took a course there once.’
I feel my cheeks and neck grow hot.
‘This is another Swindon,’ I add quickly. ‘A smaller Swindon. We call it … mini-Swindon. So, Vera, tell me what you like to do at the weekend. What are your favourite pastimes?’
Vera continues to observe me with slight suspicion, and I think that I really ought to follow Rebecca’s advice and stop having so many lessons a day.
Unfortunately, Vera’s English is almost perfect. But towards the end of the lesson, she says ‘in the end of the month’ rather than ‘at the end of the month’. I finally have an opportunity to correct her and stop feeling like a useless stage prop.
On the way home I suddenly have an idea for a book. It’s so highly charged and creepy that I stop in my tracks, and the hairs on my arms stand on end. The story will be about an unsuccessful author who gets a job as a caretaker at an isolated hotel resort. He has to spend the whole winter there with his wife and young child. The child will be a boy. Or a girl. No, a boy. During the winter, the author begins to lose his mind due to the isolation and the evil spirits haunting the hotel. It all ends in a chaotic bloodbath. I can see it all laid out before me so clearly that it’s almost frightening. The blizzard whining round the building, the deserted corridors, the hotel rooms where nothing moves, and the author sitting at his typewriter. What a gripping, spooky book it’s going to be! I almost run home so I can start writing, and I’m astounded that no one’s thought of this story before.
