Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 4; July 2000

Welcome to the July issue of HLT 2000, this year's fourth issue.

Followers of our two columnists Donald Freeman on Telling Teaching Mike Rundell on Ideas from the Corpora will be able to enjoy the next instalments. Both columns are building up into substantial wodges of work and are well worth reading in sequence from the start of the column, 2000/1 in the case of Donald, and 1999/1 in Mike's case.

The second Major Article this issue is a republication of Herbert Puchta's 1999 IATEFL plenary on the role of beliefs in language learning. A few readers of HLT may have already read the article in the IATEFL Conference proceedings but I decided to republish because I see HLT gradually becoming an archive for the thinking of humanistically inclined language teachers. For such an archive to refuse the opportunity of holding this piece would have been absurd. When people ask you " what relevance does NLP have to EFL?" refer them to Herbert's article.

Our Secondary Consultant, Ana Robles, writes a passionate attack on the pernicious Hollywood myth of the "teacher as hero" and shows why this is totally at loggerheads with humanistic thinking. I suggest you give her article a wide berth if you reckon you are some sort of "star" teacher: what she says may give you pause for uncomfortable thought.

What is the Japanese secondary school like in terms of its beliefs and values and what does it have to say to the rest of us? Have a look at Kyozo Suzuki's two articles: The Essence of a Teacher and I had a big failure. In both direct and indirect ways he tells us a huge amount about where the teacher fits in school and school fits into the broader society.

In this issue the Lesson Outlines are equally divided between primary on the one hand and secondary/adult on the other. My feeling is that I would do well to expand this section of the magazine as here is where you have the real nuts and bolts you can take into class. Most EFL magazine that canvass reader opinion find that the nuts and bolts sections are the most popular.

Student Voices come from Fujian in China and to my mind these writers show how a risk-taking lesson plan can lead to student writing that is full voiced, deep, and interesting to read. You might want to show them to folk who cavil at person-centred ways of teaching.

Publications brings you many more titles than usual and is blessedly much quicker to read. HLT wishes to thank her elder sister, The Teacher Trainer, for permission to republish.

The New Scientist in early June carried an ad for a Potato Agronomist. Under the heading

A scientist who can communicate?
We don't believe that's impossible . Do you?

the text reads: The successful applicant will be an exceptional communicator with a flair for transferring complex technology with clarity, assuring early adoption by practical farmers.

If you imagined replacing the word "scientist" above by "applied linguist " and the word "farmer" by "teacher", wouldn't this be a magnificent advertisement for a Western University to place in the techical press when recruiting new MA gatekeepers?

If you see an advert like that you will know for sure that pigs can fly.