Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 3; July 03

Mario Rinvolucri

Welcome to the July 2003 issue of HLT, Year 5 Issue 4

Welcome to you if you are halfway through your year as is the case in The Southern Cone of Latin America, or in Thailand, where the long break is beginning to be a distant memory. Welcome to you, too, if you read this on return from your long break as will be the case in Northern Hemisphere places.

I don't think I need to stress to you that HLT is an archive and that there are fascinating things that went up in 1999, and 2000. I see from the stats that plenty readers go burrowing through back numbers. On the web, the idea of a "back number" is not really a very sensible one, and harks back to print technology.

In Major Article 1 Brian Tomlinson shows how coursebook writing, in the right atmosphere, ie a creative atmosphere, can really contribute to teacher self-development. He should know as he has set a large number of group writing projects in motion in places like Namibia, Indonesia, and many more.

In Major Article 2 Seth Lindstromberg offers us a clear summary of Peter Skehan's thinking in the area of Task-Based Learning.

In my view the most powerful text in this issue is Short Article 1 in which two Croatian authors discuss how to use and when to use person-centred techniques with students who have just fled a war-zone with all their worldly belongings in a plastic bag, be it Vukovar or Basra.

HLT has never offered readers a chatroom and in Short Article 5 , Zsazsa Kuti invites you to join the ELTEeCS chatroom, run by the British Council. They have some pretty good debates going there

On the exercise front , this issue brings you 28 activities for the primary classroom, Lesson Outline, while both Old Exercise and Teacher Resource Book Preview offer you exercises for working on vocabulary.

Student Voices brings you the words of a very proficient speaker of English, Spanish and German. plunged for a week into a French speaking environment. Some of her old school French came back but…..Click across and read what she has to say.

Dear Readers, I would love some suggestions from you as to new paths HLT could usefully follow, new areas we could explore, new fields we could approach.

Please write your thoughts to me.