Renewing Access Access toto Renewing International English nternational English by Richard Burgess
Have you heard the one about the Brit, the American and the Canadian in a hotel lift, together with a pretty girl in a short skirt? Well, suddenly there is a power cut and the lights go out. A loud slap is heard. When the lights go on again the American has a big red slap mark on his cheek. “These damn North Americans,” the Brit thinks, “they simply don’t know how to behave!” “These damn Canucks,” the American thinks, “they’re just a bunch of hicks, and I get the blame!” The Canadian thinks: “I hope there’s another power cut soon so I can slap the Yank again!” No, not a real-life anecdote from a Cappelen Damm work session on the new Access to International English book. But confirmation, as if confirmation were necessary, that the national stereotypes are all there waiting to be put to use.
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The Canadians resent the Americans, the Americans disparage the Canadians – and the British still haven’t learned to differentiate between the two! Of course, it hasn’t been like that between us three writers. Far from it – Robert Mikkelsen (the Yank), John Anthony (the Canuck) and myself (the Limey) have worked together on the new edition of Access to International English in a spirit of equality, cooperation and amiability. (After all, it must be difficult enough for them not being British without me adding to their burdens!) Three ex-pats with, between us, several decades of experience of writing textbooks in Norway. You would think, then, that we would be used to the process and prepared for its challenges. But, strangely, each book is like a new expedition into the unknown in which you make exactly the same discoveries as last time, but are equally surprised by them. Such discoveries include:
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• how much time there seems to be at the beginning of the expedition. • how little time there seems to be at the end. • how it is perfectly possible to spend several hours writing one short paragraph. • how it is equally possible that that very paragraph is the one that gets axed by the editor, Butchering Birger. An expedition is one metaphor for writing a textbook, but there are also others. Pregnancy, for example. Not perhaps an immediately obvious one when the three writers are all middleaged men, but it’s nonetheless apt: the long period of gestation, the regular check-ups to see that the foetus is developing properly, and finally the difficult birth itself, when Butchering Birger becomes Benign and Benevolent Birger, providing encouragement (“just one more push!”) and laughing gas (i.e. three-course restaurant meals) as requ required. Fortunately, on this occasion, we aat least don’t have to argue about wha what to call the infant. She will be nam named after her elder sister … A ra rather more macabre extension of the birth metaphor is found in a term fam familiar to all textbook writers, namely “kil “killing one’s babies”. This refers to the process necessitated by a littlekno known law of physics, closely related to Sod’s Law, which states that “t “the optimum number of pages of a te textbook equals the total number of ppages of the final draft minus one fifth” (often formulated as
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