以下引用天涯英语杂谈ernie网友的节选介绍。 Essential English通译《基础英语》，在英语教材中一直被誉为不朽的名著。
该书共4册，C.E.Eckersley 著，第一册初版于1938年，后来迭经修改，1955年，由作者的儿子J.M. Eckersley 出版了修订本和全套教师用书。我手头的一套，是光华出版社影印的七十年代版本。
Essential English 在我国享誉多年。从四十年代到八十年代初，私人补习英语都多有采用它作为教材的。文革后，大专院校的研究生院和市面上的业余英语夜校，教授 Essential English的也很多。后来才逐渐被新概念英语和其它教材取代，至如今基本上销声匿迹。
Essential English 第一册以从未学过英语的读者为对象，从看图教学： This is a man等教起。书到一半，转入由英语老师Mr. Priestley 教授四男二女6位欧洲外国学生学习英语的情景，并以此贯穿全书。书中的老师和学生都各有鲜明的性格和自己的经历和故事。Mr. Priestley是典型英国绅士和学者型，善良博学，循循善诱却不苟言笑；学生Hob最懒惰调皮，爱讲有趣幽默故事，都给读者很深刻的印象。每篇课文，都配有许多幽默漫画、经典笑话和故事，引人入胜。全书末了，还有其中两位学生相恋成婚。这些人物的故事性和情节发展，也是本书吸引读者的因素之一。
Essential English 的宗旨，是向外国学生教授道地的英语“口语”（colloquial English ）。“英语道地”，是该书在我国长期享誉的最主要原因。全书4册，设计作一年时间的教学之用，涵盖了最基本的英语语法，特别注重基本动词和短语、成语的正确使用，在教学过程中反复提供了生动、丰富、详尽的语言材料，让学生融会贯通，掌握运用。作为“基础英语”，据作者介绍，每册新增加词汇量仅为500个，基本不涉“大词”（big words ）。到第四册，主要介绍英美文化知识，如重要历史片断和最伟大的作家和文学作品等，具见“基础英语”的匠心。
愚下曾经跟老师学习过Essential English 第二册，“自学”过全书，后来也曾经用第二册为教材，教过一些学生，也观摩过一些教学。按照本人粗浅而极其片面的体会，在我国教英语，使用这套教材，会很难达到原著的教学目的，也很难达到一般学生学习英语的期望。究其原因，或许是因为不大对我们的“胃口”吧。
Essential English 语言地道，平易流畅，课文虽然比较长但难度不大，看看头头是道，要消化吸收掌握，变成“为我所用”，却不容易。一般说，我们采用一套教材，习惯“精读”教学：讲解课文、语法、词汇用法，等等。这些讲完，一篇课文也就过去了，老师也不会要求活学活用，吸收掌握。要说通过这套书学习那些基础语法，又似乎有点拖沓。好不容易待到四册学完，无论词汇和阅读难度，要达到能够顺利应试或者看英文原著的水准，却还差得很远。甚至简单的情景会话，也未必能够应付（因为没有强调练习使用）。凡此种种，都会让人很“失望”。
我个人学习Essential English，也有过一点收获。比如，第二册13课，学生 Frieda 准备星期四回瑞典探亲，给家里写了封信，最后一句说： Thursday can’t come too soon ! 意思是：星期四来得可真慢啊！表达了她盼望回家的急切心情。这样的英语，我无论如何想不出来写不出来，于是把它记住，有机会就用出去。类似这样的“好英语 ”，全书比比皆是，要在能注意学习吸收，而不是“看懂”。第二册11课，介绍英语诗歌和歌曲，让我对英语诗歌的用词和韵律有了点感性认识，有了点皮毛“语感”，后来再读《牛虻》尾声，阿瑟在给琼玛的信里提到他们小时候一起读过的几句小诗，读来就十分亲切有味。11课篇末介绍的英国传统“老歌”Cockles and Mussels ，我很喜欢，印象深刻。后来和英国人谈项目，晚宴席间，上来海鲜，我和对方戏说：Cockles and Mussels，对方顿时表现出意外的惊喜，笑着向我挤眼：啊，你知道这个？！我马上接了一句歌词： alive, alive –o ! 对方高兴得当场把这首歌唱了起来，大大活跃了晚宴气氛。
C.E. Eckersley's life and careerCharles Ewart Eckersley (1892–1967) grew up in the North of England and attended Manchester University, where he gained an M.A. in English. He served in the Royal Artillery during World War I and later gained his first civilian job as a schoolmaster. He was appointed to the staff of the Polytechnic Boys’ School in Regent Street, London, in 1921 (Quinault 1967: 2). The school was associated with the Polytechnic Institute, which specialised in technical education and language teaching, and provided classes in English for foreigners. It was a frequent occurrence for Boys’ School masters to be asked to help with the Institute’s evening classes, and so it was that Eckersley gained his first experience of teaching English as a foreign language. The methods used by a French master at the Boys’ School, H.O. Coleman (who was a friend of Harold Palmer’s), appear to have been particularly inspirational for Eckersley in his transition from teaching English as a mother tongue to English as a foreign language.
As Quinault (ibid.) reports, ‘He tackled this new work with such enthusiasm that by 1929 he was put in charge of the ‘Poly’ evening classes for foreign students’. Finding existing textbooks unsuitable for such classes, he had set about preparing his own materials, and, starting in 1932, they began to be published for wider use. That year saw the appearance of his first book, England and the English, and this was followed, in rapid succession, by A Concise English Grammar for Foreign Students (1933), and his first attempt at a course book, A Modern English Course for Foreign Students: An Intermediate Book (1935). All of these were issued by Longmans, the publishers of Michael West’s ‘New Method’ materials for school pupils overseas, and Eckersley was increasingly to take on board the ideas on vocabulary limitation of West, Harold Palmer and Lawrence Faucett, in particular following the publication of their jointly authored Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection in 1936. Eckersley’s materials were for a different (adult) market than West’s, and by the end of the 1930s he was beginning to become as well-known an author as West. In 1937 he published a simplified book of short stories, plays and poems titled Brighter English and a course book, Everyday English Course for Foreign Students. This was the prototype for what were to become his best-known books, the four volumes of Essential English for Foreign Students, which were issued from 1938 to 1942. Following the same pattern as Faucett’s Oxford English Course, the course was divided into four stages of five hundred new words each, from which the learner could then go on to acquire ‘full English’.
Among Eckersley’s students were groups of refugees from the Continent, including Walter Kaufmann, a Jewish German businessman with whom Eckersley became friends, and who was later to collaborate with him on several successful texts for business English: A Commercial Course for Foreign Students (Eckersley and Kaufmann 1947), English Commercial Practice and Correspondence (Eckersley and Kaufmann 1952) and English and American Business Letters (Eckersley and Kaufmann 1954). After the war began there were also allied servicemen from various countries stationed in Britain who were anxious to learn English quickly. Eckersley was asked to write a course, English for the Allies (1942), which addressed the needs of these ‘soldiers, sailors and airmen of the united nations’.
By now, the popularity of his books had led Longmans to encourage him to become a full-time materials writer, and in 1943 he gave up school teaching altogether. He compiled a bilingual learner’s dictionary for Spanish learners (Eckersley and Picazo 1946) which was later adapted for Polish (Eckersley and Corbridge-Patkaniowska 1951) and Turkish (Eckersley and Balkan 1954). He also wrote several bilingual introductory versions of his Essential English materials which were all published in 1947–48, in Spanish (Eckersley and Sarmiento 1947), Polish (Eckersley and Corbridge-Patkaniowska 1947), Yugoslav (Eckersley and Subotic 1947), Dutch (Eckersley and Bongers 1948) and Turkish (Eckersley and Gatenby 1948). The last of these was compiled with E.V. Gatenby (q.v.), with whom Eckersley was also to collaborate on a set of wall pictures with accompanying teacher’s handbook and pupil’s workbook (Gatenby and Eckersley 1955–57). In 1948 Eckersley was invited, along with A.S. Hornby (q.v.), to write a new ‘English by Radio’ series for the BBC. Eckersley’s series for beginners centred on ‘the Brown family’, and involving a ‘combination of English conversation and vernacular commentary’ (Quinault 1948: 49).
In the post-war years, Longmans promoted Essential English as a ‘system’ to rival Oxford’s ‘Progressive English’, and Eckersley contributed a number of Essential English Readers as well as the dictionaries. In 1953 there was a new book with exercises designed to make learning grammar fun, titled Brighter Grammar (Eckersley and Macaulay 1953), which went through several later editions and is still in print in Africa. Indeed, there were many new editions of his books, up to the 1970s. As Quinault (1967: 3) wrote:
he popularity of Eckersley’s books has continued: there have been repeated reprintings of Essential English and its characters, the teacher Mr Priestley and his family, and his students, Jan, Lucille, Olaf, Pedro, Frieda and Hob, have become familiar to generations of learners in every continent. What was the secret of this popularity? It was, I think, the product of a warm and lively personality with a natural flair for English teaching and a ready sense of humour. As Eckersley wrote in one of his prefaces, it was his constant endeavour ‘to cover the pill of learning with the jam of gaiety’.
Notes The above account by Richard C. Smith (uploaded here in 2007) is adapted from Smith, R.C. (ed.). 2005. ‘General Introduction’ to Teaching English as a Foreign Language, 1936–61: Pioneers of ELT, Volume 1. Abingdon: Routledge. Sources: Interview with John Eckersley (C.E. Eckersley’s son), 7 April 2004; Quinault, R.V. 1948. ‘BBC English lessons for foreign students’. English Language Teaching 3/2: 47–52; Quinault, R.V. 1967. ‘C.E. Eckersley, M.A.’. English Language Teaching 22/1: 2–3.
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