© 2000 by Oxford University Press
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Talking shop: from aid to partnership
Director of the International Education Centre and Assistant Dean (International) at the College of St Mark & St John Plymouth, UK. Through the college he has been involved in ELT development work in many countries, but particularly, since 1991, in Hungary he led two M.Ed programmes, one of them in direct co-operation with CETT/ELTE, Péter's institution, and he has also facilitated CETT's annual staff development seminar for a number of years. In Romania and Russia he has trained and worked with teams of textbook writes. His professional interests include Teacher Trainer Development, Language Awareness, and Training Course Design. From 1985–92 he was Reviews Editor of ELT Journal.
CBE, is Director of the Centre for English Teacher Training at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He has written numerous professional books and articles, including The Non-native Teacher (Macmillan 1994; winner of the Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Competition), Changing Perspectives in Teacher Education (Heinemann 1996; co-edited with Angi Malderez), The Language Teacher (Budapest: Corvina 1997). He is also co-author of a course-book series, entitled Criss Cross (Hueber Verlag 1998–99), for Central and Eastern Europe.
Since the fall of communism, over ten years ago, there has been a huge increase in British support for ELT in Central and Eastern Europe. This has brought opportunities for visits in both directions, for professional exchange and for joint initiatives. In this dialogue, we explore some of the issues that have arisen through this period of intense activity from our individual perspectives. Péter Medgyes, director of a Hungarian teacher training institute, the Centre for English Teacher Training (CETT) at E#x00F6;tvös Lorand University, Budapest, has travelled Widely within and beyond the region; and a ‘Brit’ whose institution has been extensively involved in projects throughout Central and Eastern Europe since 1991. We chose the dialogue format for conference presentations at lATEFL Edinburgh, and at the British Council's Annual ELT Meeting in Constanta, Romania, in order to accentuate our different perspectives, and to encourage audience participation. We attempt to reproduce here some of the ‘cut and thrust’ of these live events, and to focus on four main issues: British and Local Priorities, Language, Teacher Education, and Mutual Learning. We hope that a retrospective view might help us to learn some lessons from the past, and to set some useful priorities for the future.