OUR EDUCATIONAL APPROACH

At Cambridge School, we follow what you could loosely call 'The Communicative Approach'.

Most of our courses follow a pre-written syllabus which is based on a course book.

We use up to date course book series such as 'Cutting Edge', 'Inside Out', "English File" etc We base most of our courses on a course book but we encourage our teachers to adapt and supplement the course books to suit the type of students they are teaching and in line with the teachers' own interests and beliefs about teaching.

We believe that general courses (as opposed to courses for special purposes) should be made up of both language work and skills work. We tend to introduce new language using a 'guided discovery' approach. We try to practise the language we have introduced in meaningful contexts rather than just manipulating language forms in a mechanical way. We give students lots of practice in the four skills, particularly speaking and listening. We try to extend our students' range of vocabulary and lexis. We also help them to improve their pronunciation. Written or spoken texts tend to be authentic or semi-authentic.

We believe in the value of games, songs and video in language learning. We feel that classes should be enjoyable for the students as well as useful.

We believe in student-centred learning so we often put students in pairs or groups to do activities so that they can help and learn from each other.

We believe in the importance of students doing homework in order to consolidate what they have learnt and practised in class.

We believe that tests and examinations are useful for motivating students and assessing their progress. Many of our students ultimately want to get a Cambridge ESOL qualification, particularly First Certificate.

We feel that it is very important for us to be au fait with new ideas and for this reason, we subscribe to all the major teaching magazines and journals. We also encourage our teachers to attend seminars and workshops outside the school. We like our teachers to experiment with new ideas such as 'the Lexical Approach', 'Task-based Learning' and 'Materials-free teaching'.