Second editions

By the early 2000s, English File was doing quite well, and OUP asked us to write new editions. Clive and I were very happy to do this, as there were many things that we felt could be improved. One of the first things we did was get lots of feedback from teachers, whose ideas were extremely helpful in reshaping the second edition of the series. This has remained a vital stage in the planning of all the subsequent new editions. 

We made a number of structural changes as a result of the feedback. First of all, we streamlined the lessons by losing some of the ‘extras’, like the Focus lessons, and the Grammar and Vocabulary revision lessons after each File. Teachers pointed out that there were so many of these extra lessons at the end of each File that it took forever to get to the end, so we decided to integrate these features into the main lessons. 

 We made all the lessons the same length which we realised would help teacher in planning lessons. The Travel with English lessons became Practical English and we gave them a video with a storyline – these were our first video lessons. The series was also re-christened New English File.

One of the things I remember about the writing of New English File was the discussions about the cover. It had been decided early on that in order to make the series more coherent, all the books would have the same cover design, but in different colours. One day when we were in the offices of OUP, we were called into a meeting to look at covers. We came in to the meeting room, and saw a huge table literally covered with different possible designs. We weren’t very experienced then in choosing cover designs, and we found it very difficult to distinguish the different features with so many to choose from. We’ve since learned that it’s much easier to make a decision if you are given fewer designs to choose from, for example one that is close to what you asked for, one that maybe the designer thinks is better than what you asked for, and one that goes in a completely different direction but that the designer thinks you might really like, and in fact for me the covers have simply got better and better over the years.

We rewrote the four main levels, but by now markets were asking for the course to become six levels, including Beginner and Advanced. It was very stimulating to write new levels, and as Clive was passionate about teaching beginners, and I loved teaching advanced learners, we really enjoyed the process, and possibly as a result of these additions English File began to really take off.