THE INTERNATIONAL MARITIME LANGUAGE PROGRAMME — AN ENGLISH COURE FOR STUDENTS AT MARITIME COLLEGES AND FOR ON—BOARD TRAINING

At the great number of workshops and conferences I organised or co-organised worldwide, one inevitable question was always asked: when will a Maritime English textbook be available covering the essentials to be taught to and learnt by future deck and engineer officers of the merchant marine? The excuses for not having such a book were numerous; insurmountable problems of different national educational systems, lack of time and funds, no publisher interested in that specific field, etc., etc..

Peter van Kluijven, however, Maritime English lecturer at the Shipping & Transportcollege in Rotterdam, not at all impressed by all these arguments, sat down and did what others kept putting off. Originally meant to provide a sound foundation for his own teaching he was encouraged by the Maritime English Sub-Committee of the International Maritime Lecturers' Association (IMLA) to kill two birds with one stone, namely to let the Maritime English teaching community in his classroom and share his ideas. The outcome is convincing: a well structured, English-monolingual textbook with diversified texts, tasks and projects complemented and supplemented by a CD-ROM reflecting an up-to-date content based communicative methodology of language teaching and learning titled The International Maritime Language Programme (IMLP).

It is also suited for distant learning. The topics cover the essentials a ships officer in a multilingual crew needs to master in order to successfully meet the communication requirements at sea and in ports; the book even introduces the recently IMO adopted Standard Marine Communication Phrases (IMO SMCP 2002) embedded in a well thought out context and with appropriate exercises such as role plays.