How can Agatha Christie be used to teach foreigners English? Two-dimensional characters address each other in language so wooden and leeched of emotion that they could be robots. The English they speak may be correct, but it is the kind of correctness that chills. It has no place in the classroom - unless it is a classroom presided over by a pedant. Can't we do better than this? By "we"," I mean those of us lucky enough to be raised speaking the language of Shakespeare and Dickens, who are rightly proud of it and who like nothing more than a foreigner who takes the trouble to master its intricacies. There are any number of masters of English prose who would offer a better introduction to the language than Agatha Christie: Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, CP Snow, Ian Fleming, Muriel Spark, Graham Greene, AS Byatt, Alan Hollinghurst. The list could go on and on. They each have a distinctive style but, for anyone wanting to graduate beyond phrase-book English, display a colloquial vividness that you will not find in Christie. Even JK Rowling, no Oscar Wilde, would be a more reliable guide to English as it is spoken in the 21st century. Her unvarnished prose has delighted millions. People identify with Harry Potter in a way they will never identify with those creaky museum pieces, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. A lot of foreigners think - not unjustifiably - that this is a country more attached to its past than its future. Why give critics further ammunition by inducting students from Prague, Mumbai and Singapore into an England of wisteria and lace curtains, sherry and toasted crumpets, a land where people dress for dinner, retire to the smoking-room, then hit each other over the head with blunt instruments?