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“Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child.”
-Cicero
 

Chris Kunz is an energetic Argentine whose refined command of English reveals his life-long dedication to teaching the language. We found him smiling happily at the end of the recent Second Anglia Examination Syndicate International Congress for ELT Professionals, at UADE premises in Buenos Aires.
“How was the Congress?”
“Great! We had a much better turn out than we did last year and enjoyed a very important and competent international staff of presenters and lecturers.”
Chris is a very English looking young man, with strands of curly hair brushing around the edges of his modified crew-cut. To tell the truth, he doesn’t exactly look like the “typical” English teacher. But then, appearances may be deceiving.
“How did you get involved with the Anglia Examination Syndicate?”
“Well, for the past four years and a bit I’ve been working at Chichester College in the southwest of England. But actually I began coaching children in English at the age of 18 or 19. I now represent Anglia Examination Syndicate in Argentina, Latin America and Spain. In fact, I’ve been involved with the Syndicate since 1996. We have just asked for a sabbatical from teaching on a permanent basis—which Chichester College has agreed to—and which will keep us occupied here until the end of December 2006. After that we will have to go back to England to teach.”
“You seem to have been born teaching English!”
“Yes, that’s somehow true. My mother used to be a primary school teacher, my sister’s an EFL teacher, so I guess it goes in the family. My wife’s also a teacher. To put it in a nutshell, we’ve always been involved in teaching. As I just mentioned, I myself began teaching at around 18 years of age and still love it, although for the past eight years I’ve been more and more involved in teacher training. In fact, I’m just beginning to enjoy that more than teaching EFL per se.
“Is your work with Anglia Examination Syndicate basically related to the expansion of the network of Anglia Members in South-America and mainland Spain?”
“That’s right. I first made contact with Chichester College, who owns Anglia Examination Syndicate, back in 1993, while taking a course. In 1994, when the Anglia Examination Syndicate began in Argentina, the representative was someone else. When we took over, me as the Academic Representative and my wife as the Local Administrator, and just to give you an indication of the tremendous growth Anglia has experienced, in 1995, the first time the exams had ever been offered in Argentina, there were only about 100 candidates whereas last December there were just over 5,000. We also are active in Venezuela, Paraguay and Uruguay.”
“How would you evaluate the evolution of English in Argentina?”
“I would say that with all due respect to other Spanish speaking countries, Argentine English learners tend to advance more rapidly and their accent is more intelligible. Now if you ask me what the situation is in Mexico, I’d say that they have the advantage of the closeness to the United States and that is reflected in THEIR accent.
“What are some of the greatest difficulties Argentines encounter with regard to pronunciation?”
“Intonation is perhaps the most difficult aspect for learners of English here. When I do training sessions on intonation for teachers they get the hang of the theory quite easily. The problems begin with the production phase. They know how they are supposed to say something but they just don’t find it easy to put it into practice, sometimes for fear of sounding affected. As far as the individual teachers are concerned, there certainly is also a problem related to the availability of resources—depending on where you teach. If you have been trained to use “Power Point,” for example, but work in a State school…well, you might like to use materials of that sort but they most likely are not available in the public schools.
“What do you think about the possibility of teaching English with locally generated materials?”
“It is true that there have been some attempts to locally generate teaching materials but I am really not in a position to say how successful they have been. However, my view is that it is better to go to the real McCoy rather than use a text written by an Argentine teacher. I think most teachers would prefer to work with the authentic English text books—British, American, Australian…”
“Getting back to the Anglia Congress…”
“It really was a success, with a much better turn out than last year’s Congress, and so we feel very gratified and are already looking forward to the 2007 Congress. There certainly will be an even greater variety of quality presentations.”
“What about your own presentations?”
“Well, let me just say that if you yourself ,as a teacher, feel that you have learnt something valuable by attending a presentation, you can be certain that your students will also gain important knowledge. And I invariably left the rooms where my presentations took place with that feeling and sense of achievement.”

Email: info@angliaexams.com
Web: http://www.agliaexams.com
Telephone /Fax: 4246-3547
Anglia Central Exams Office:
Tel: 4305-7913

 

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