Dear HLT Readers

Welcome to the August issue of HLT. Right now most of the Pilgrims trainers are at the Hilltop in Canterbury working with teachers from all over Europe and not only. For more on Pilgrims news see Course Outline: Build Your PLN with Pilgrims by Beyza Yılmaz and Işıl Boy, Turkey; to find out more about the Pilgrims atmosphere and impact read Memory Lane for Pilgrims, Canterbury, poems by Guðmundur Helgi Helgason from Iceland.

We are celebrating the publication of a new book by Pilgrims trainers “The Company Words Keep”, now available in shops and online. You can also download sample pages from the DELTA website. Soon we will be able to welcome a new DELTA publication on teaching pronunciation by Jonathan Marks and Tim Bowen; Tim is a Pilgrims trainer too. For more on the developments in the publishing market read the Publications section: Short Book Reviews by Hanna Kryszewska, Traditional Folk Songs:15 folk songs from Britain and Ireland – Auto-review, by David. A. Hill, Hungary, The Oxford English Grammar Course by Michael Swan and Catherine Walter - Author Review by Michael Swan, I.S.P. Nation. Teaching Vocabulary: Strategies and Techniques reviewed by Alan Maley. Many publications worth knowing about have won prestigious prizes this year, for details see the Readers letters section. I am sure the new book presented in the Preview section: ‘Psychology for Language Learning: Insights from Research, Theory and Practice”, edited by Sarah Mercer, Stephen Ryan and Marion Williams, will win many prizes, too.

The UK like the rest of the world is following the Olympic Games; while in the UK we all keep our fingers crossed for our national teams as well as for TEAM GB. And only recently many of us were crazy about EURO 2012. If you want a good laugh read the tips for the UEFA from Geoff Tranter in Testing Times.

And now let me say something about the more serious content. If you are interested in vocabulary, read: Consonance in English Proverbs and Collocations by Seth Lindstromberg and Humanizing Learning Vocabulary through Thematic Clustering by Yaser Khajavi. If you are interested in using technology, I am sure you will find the following articles inspiring: Humanising Language Learning: Blending Learning in SLA by D. Ravikumar and V. Anitha Devi, and WebQuest on Smoking Ban: Would You Like to Kiss an Ashtary by Natasha Jovanovich. The latter has a strong citizenship element just like: A Lot to Learn from Our Elderly (Year 1) - Getting a Deeper European Conscience by Isidro Almendárez, and Humanising Language Teaching: Reviewing Concepts for the Teaching of English to the Deaf by Antonio Henrique Coutelo de Moraes and Wanilda Maria Alves Cavalcanti.

Teacher trainers and future teacher trainers will enjoy reading: Motivation: An Elusive Quality - A Critical Analysis of Classroom Presence by Feride Hekimgil, Preparing Trainees to Teach Adults: Challenge for Teacher Training Programmes in Slovakia by Eva Homolová, and Empowering EFL Teachers with Interpretive Skills: Analysis of Student Teachers’ Self-Reports by Grażyna Kiliańska-Przybyło.

There are, of course, articles by HLT regular contributors: Michael Berman (Attitudes Towards Storytelling in ELT, Whether to Stay Here or to Leave this Life, and How to Find a New Job) and Simon Mumford (Tense and Time and Integrating Nonverbal Communication into Language Classroom Activities), and many more for you to discover.

I hope you will enjoy the issue.

Perhaps we will soon meet at Portonovo, IATEFL Poland, IATEFL Hungary or Thessaloniki and Athens book exhibition. Who knows? The EFL world is a small world.

Hania Kryszewska
HLT Editor
hania.kryszewska@pilgrims.co.uk