Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 3; May 2000

Welcome to Humanising Language Teaching 2000/3, a bumper issue.

In Bending Rules ( Major article 3) Janet Braithwaite, in giving a detailed account of working one-to-one with a Japanese business student, shares with us the thinking of a deeply committed humanistic teacher facing up to the whole reality of her student, not just the surface, language problems. Her article is a powerful answer to the vinegary people who snipe at humanistic teaching, people such as Gadd a couple of years back in The English Language Teaching Journal and Brutton in a recent issue of GRETA's magazine in South Spain.

As the Italian Ministry of Education swallows the Council of Europe's so-called "Framework " for language teaching hook line and sinker, Italy's 38,000 secondary EFL teachers struggle to find out what "portfolios" and other such things are. Pirjo Pollari comes to their rescue from up the near the Artic Circle with Portfolio Portraits from a Finnish Classroom ( major article 2).

Donald Freeman continues his Telling Teaching column, helping us to give shape and contour to those swirling thoughts and feelings before and after class that make us what we are: teachers.

At last HLT has something to offer primary school colleagues. A voice from Brazil, that of Juan Uribe, ably demonstrates the Bi-lingual story-telling technique that is such a powerful introduction to the language for early primary school kids. Lesson Outlines continues with the theme of judicious use of Language 1 in the language 2 classroom. The days when the idea that no L1 should every be heard in the L2 classroom are well over. Those days were convenient for slothful Brits, North Americans etc who did not know their students' mother tongues, and maybe did not want to.

John Yamamoto Wilson's You are what you speak is HLT's first venture into dealing with the teaching of culture. Having lived and lived deeply in several cultures, John's article is a real good start. I would love to publish more in this area. Any offers?

This time Publications deals with the area of "black pedagogy" and whole problem of sadism towards children and we review four texts that deal with the problem is very different ways.

Should you be a reader of Spanish then the new website Aprender a Aprender ( to learn to learn) may be of interest to you. You'll find it at :
http://www.galeon.com/aprenderaaprender/ It is written by Ana Robles, our secondary consultant, and is full of references to up-to-the-minute and really useful books eg:

An Unused Intelligence- Physical Thinking or 21st Century Leadership, Andy Bryner and Dawna Markova, Conari Press, 1996 ( ISBN: 0 943233 97 6 )

It is brilliant that the website is in Spanish and deeply sad that it is not in English. Could you make it bi-lingual, Ana?

Did you know that sunflowers sometimes speak to the Sun?
This is what the South Africa poet, Herman Charles Bosman has them say:

'Hey, you!' says the sunflower to the sun
Just like that,
In tones of mockery,
'Hey, you!
Where's your stem?'

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