Letter 1

Dear Hanna

Thank you so very much for that super review of the book I wrote with David Hill, 'Writing Stories'. Your only negative comment relates to the amount of time needed to write stories!

Yes, the time it takes to write is a factor. This would apply to any extensive writing.
I would say that a lot of the activities given in the book do not need to take an hour and the full stories can be done for homework.

What I have always found is that students give far beyond their normal homework time IF their stories are respected and not responded to as texts to be grammatically corrected. My opinion is that stories offer the teacher evidence of their teaching and what focus should be given in more language point focussed practice. Thanks again.

Andrew

Letter 2

Dear Hania,

Thank you for your hard work putting my article up on the site. It's very nice how you can click on the mind map to enlarge it. The edition this month contains a lot of interesting articles. (…)

Best, Mark

Letter 3

Dear Hania,

I hope you are well and everything's all right! I just wanted to compliment you with the new issue of the magazine. I read Singh's article, Cultural Differences: England vs. Italy, found it very funny and, ultimately, true, although it contains some exaggerations or, better, examples taken to the extreme. It is about Rome and the Romans, which means that the Romans cannot be taken as an example of 'average Italians', just as Londoners cannot be taken as an example of 'average Britons'! Italians are very different from North to South, and even in the Centre! I'm Florentine, that is, Tuscan (North-Centre of Italy), so, me too, can find Romans very funny and different from us! Not to speak about Neapolitans, or Sicilians! Here, of course, there are a lot of stereotypes, as I think everywhere, but there's something true, in any case. We Italians are aware to be very different from North to South, as if we were different peoples, so a Northern Italian cannot be compared to a Roman or a Neapolitan, and vice versa. I think a Scottish, a Welsh or an Irish could say the same about Londoners! (…)

Many regards. Hope to hear from you soon,

Anna Maria

Letter 4

Dear Hania,

Please find attached an article entitled "The TEFL Teacher; The Cyber-bully; The Closet Racist", which I hope you will find suitable for publication in a future issue of HLT.

There is some history to this one. I wrote it for the IATEFL Global Issues SIG Newsletter, but the editor there seemed to think the rather nebulous idea of Peace Education was more important than shining a light on a problem that teachers can actually DO something about.

Developingteachers.com did not want it, because they try to focus on the more positive side of things. In the past, HLT took my paper Two Tales from the Dark Side of TEFL, so I very much hope that you will be able to find space for this piece.

Yours sincerely,

Neil McBeath

Letter 5

Hi Hania

Yes, Lutzker's book is a real feast. It's a great support for my Creative Methodology course in the summer. I need and will seek out more opportunities to improvise. I hope it gives me the Houdini-like skills I feel I need to escape the terminology and mind-set of science and business with which language, learning and teaching have been shackled.

Many thanks

Robert Fraser

Letter 6

Dear Hania,

(…) Would you be so kind and pass on the following link to your Pilgrims colleagues - to the international conference I'm organising: www.childrenslit.de

I've read a little of the ideas of Earl Stevick and Gertrude Moskowitz – I believe our conference on children's literature in language education is very much in keeping with humanising language teaching.

Best wishes,

Janice

Letter 7

Dear Hania,

(…) I think quite a lot of teachers in Serbia know about your magazine, since the HLT banner is now on the homepage of our TA (www.elta.org.rs). But perhaps many of those who could submit articles are a bit like me - they might think that their writing is not good enough for a magazine like yours. That was my impression, anyway, before Mario suggested I could write something. Now, I will definitely encourage all the others who could write something, or have already written articles for our TA newsletter, to send in their articles to you. And there are at least a few people that I know. I hope it is all right with you if I send them your email address.

Best of regards,

Natasha