Introducing our seventh year

2005 opens with a new Section simply called Poems. I hope that readers will share those of their poems that deal with ELT themes, in the very broadest sense, themes such as strangeness, exile, otherness, home, away, learning, dreaming, succeeding, burn-out, exuberance, shyness, joy and wonderment. ( Who knows... are these some key themes in my EFL life?)

If you are looking for practical ideas, then this is the issue for you. In Teacher Resource Preview you have 21 well-worked out lesson plans for imaginative, reader-focused writing practice that is ideal if you are taking an exam class that is not purely orally-aurally focused.
Do you want your students to practise English with others in lands over the horizon? If so, go to Maj Article 2 and read about German-American MOOs.

In Maj Article 3 Boers and Lindstromberg offer you half a dozen exercises teaching collocations via the pleasure of alliteration and other auditory titillation.
Don't be put off by their professorial thoroughness- they are first class exercise creators.

The idea of telling stories to a class, telling them without having a text in hand, this scares some people. Maj Article 4 is a step-by-step guide to help you work smoothly towards confident, powerful tellings, written by David Heathfield who understands that everybody does not have his gift.

In Short Article 5 Gigliola Pagano suggests well-tried NLP ways of helping students marshall their resources before tests.

I think that the article from which I have learnt most in editing this issue (and I learn loads as I edit) is Maj Article 5 : EFL methodology in teaching music.
David Cranmer shows how pervasively his history of music classes at University have been permeated by EFL humanistic thinking, focusing, feeling and experience. He makes the valid point that we in EFL now have 40 years of creative classroom thinking under our belts and that we have a right to walk tall.
It chuffs me to think of EFL as a rich methodological feeder field for teaching the history of music.

Also in the music area is Jeremy Harmer's welcome to HLT , Jeremy) Short Article 1: Parallel Melodies, in which he draws out the similarities between orchestral performance and language teaching. And finally Old Exercise brings you a musical exercise that Lou Spaventa taught Pilgrims teachers back in the 70's.

Do you trust what the wind has whispered to you about NLP ( Neuro - Lingusitic - Programming)? Go to Readers Letters for two views of NLP from Poland and from Spain.

Most readers know Adrian Underhill's huge contribution to the humanistic teaching of languages. He is now looking at how to humanise school structures and the ways the leaders impinge on their staffs. If you want to hear more about this visit Maj article 1: Learning Leadership and ELT today.* I would love you to react to Adrian's article as, in fact, Sheelagh Deller has done in Short Article 2. I will happily publish your reaction in the March 2005 Issue of HLT. If your views would lose you your job you'll be published anonymously. The ways some managers treat humans does sometimes arouse violent feelings.

* Click over to our main site and have a look at the outline of Adrian's July 2005 Leadership course.

In December 2004 your magazine received an average, per day, of 900 visitor sessions.
Earlier in 2004 the per diem average was around 650-700.
Something must be going right.

Email me mario@pilgrims.co.uk and let me know of changes you would like to see in HLT, navigational, technical content or stylistic changes.