Cambridge author Phillip Brown’s new book reflects on his life as a language teacher

Author Phillip Brown has taught English as a foreign language (TEFL) in Cambridge for “the best part of 40 years”, something he explores in his latest tome, Language and Life: Reflections of an English Teacher.

The book, an anthology of articles dealing with aspects of the teaching of English as a foreign language, discusses approaches to elements of the language, such as grammar, lexis, punctuation, etc.

The articles were written in response to attempts to help his students understand the importance of language.

On what made him decide to write the book, Phillip reflects: “I wanted to say that language - and language acquisition - is very important, and it’s a good thing to be able to get people to try to understand that better.

“In the case of English, to understand their own language better. And also there is a tendency to ‘assault’ language in different ways.

“We see this in Orwell’s 1984 - the language is simplified. If you simplify the language, you simplify ideas, and this is something that’s dealt with a little bit in Undeliverable Letters, Unreachable Galaxies – Or, The Man in the Old Bowler Hat, the last book [I wrote].

“The way in which to subjugate a people is to deprive them of the ability to think - and without richness of expression, that’s precisely what happened.

“Ideas become banal and mediocre and mediocrity reigns.”

Phillip’s main motivation for bringing these articles together is his “emphasis on the importance of language and of language-acquisition”, and his belief that “a deterioration in the quality and richness of language is an irreversible assault on the quality and richness of life”.

“That is the central point,” he says, adding: “I’ve had a long time teaching English as a foreign language and I think I wanted to mark that time in some way, to provide a kind of validation of all that time I’d spent teaching English as a foreign language.”

Phillip, who studied for his PhD in philosophy at St John’s College, Cambridge, is keen to stress the book’s motto, which is: “To say, as I have been tempted to say, that language is human life, is incorrect; but to say that language is part of human life is a profound and widely-misconceived understatement”.

“To explain that is not part of the book, we just had to leave that as read,” says Phillip, “because otherwise we’d be into philosophical complexities and goodness knows what…

“But language is so important, such an essential element in human life, that its importance can’t be exaggerated.”

He adds: “My approach to teaching English as a foreign language has this background in philosophy, and philosophical reflection - which has made my experience richer, I’m sure, because my understanding of what I’m doing has been enriched, or motivated, if you like, by my philosophical background.

“Language comes into just about everything I’ve written, in some shape or form.”

As well as teaching English in Cambridge for four decades - at Studio Cambridge on Station Road - Phillip also taught at a university in Iran, before the 1979 revolution.

“The book has a dedication to the Studio School,” he says, “to ‘the staff and students past, present and future of Studio School Cambridge’.”

Phillip’s conviction that “a deterioration in the quality and richness of language is an assault on the quality and richness of life” is a theme that runs through many of his previously-published books, including The Mirror Men, The Mountain Dwellers, The Spare Room, and Undeliverable Letters, Unreachable Galaxies – Or, The Man in the Old Bowler Hat.

Language and Life: Reflections of an English Teacher is available now.