What's in this issue?

In this issue you will find articles submitted to Mario or articles which I commissioned during my trips to conferences or via e-mail exchanges. In this issue there is a strong IT theme I believe that in the 21st century humanism and IT can compliment each other very well.

In major article 1. Valentina Dodge and Sheila Vine introduce us to the world of chat rooms for ELT purposes: eChatBox-Dynamically Creating a Resource for Real-time Moderator. They show us how our students can exercise learner autonomy and learner independence, bond and use language in the context of e- reality in the 21st century, a reality which is becoming a new and real learning environment. In major article 2.: Making Friends with DDL: Helping Students Enrich their Vocabulary María Belén Díez Bedmar shares her expertise and experiences of using DDL with her students. DDL is Data Driven Learning, which in laymen terms means using the corpus to aid learning. At the editorial planning stage I thought Belen's article would appear in the Corpora Ideas section. However, when I received the article I had no doubt it had to be published as a major article. So instead for the section Corpora Ideas I wrote up my experiences in using lexical chunks for teaching culture: Lexical Chunks Offer Insight Into Culture. I hope you will find it useful if not fun. Warning: it can be addictive.

In major article 3. Juan Ráez Padilla shows us how to use power point in class: More Power to PowerPoint: ideas, examples and resources for the ESL classroom. With the present day technological progress we can soon envisage most classes equipped with power point facilities. So it is a good idea to become familiar with the potential. But beware. In major article 4. Jeremy Harmer shares his views about ppt presentations: 10 Things I Hate about PowerPoint. Jeremy took a bit of persuading to write this article but just take a good look at the outcome. This is all you ever wanted to know hence his text features as a major article although on is on the shorter side.

In short articles the IT theme is continued by some more authors. Mónica Valicenti and María Laura Conte in Ploys to Play offer lots of ideas for interactive language games. In Phone Call to America: Use of Mobile Phone to Strengthen Motivation and Promote Interaction in the English Language Classroom, Daniel Martín del Otero shows us how to use the cursed mobile phone to our advantage. Can you imagine that a student could be told off for not bringing a mobile phone into class or running out of credit? In the next short article Janina Zawadzka, my colleague, has helped me to solve a major problem I have. I cannot remember students' names which is a real problem for a humanistic teacher. In her article: Visual Aid for the Teacher, Janina takes us step by step through the making of an IT visual aid which solves the problem of name learning forever. She simply uses a digital camera and then processes the photo to the teacher's advantage. Finally, in the role of technology in language teaching and learning, Eliana Pachero Frerreira offers some ideas how to use the Internet and search engines for teaching English in general and also for teaching across the curriculum. To balance the IT software content, Anna Turula and Bozena Pawlowska go into hardware mode and talk rubbish in: Let's Talk Rubbish. But they do not talk nonsense. Talk rubbish is about authentic teaching materials that are often underestimated, overlooked or even thrown away.

In Book Preview Bonnie Tsai and Judit Feher present their recent publication: The Individual as a Resource : From Creative Resources. When I read their ideas the following words sprang to my mind: elegant, congruent, wise and stimulating. If you think I am not objective read Tessa Woodward's review in the Publications section. Tessa is the editor of TTJ and she has also been kind enough to share some more reviews of books she has looked at. See: Publications section. The Teacher Trainer Journal is our sister magazine, so if you want to know more about it or you think you might become a trainer yourself make friends with TTTJ . It is worth it! Also Tessa invites us on a sentimental journey to explore how TTTJ developed in her article: Good Lord! Has It Really Been Twenty Years ???

Humanism is about people. People are also about culture which in this issue it means talking about cross cultural experiences like Which Side Are You On? by Alice Svendson. Also there is a poignant piece by Lou Spaventa ( the last one in the series of case studies) in which Lou presents the story of Anne Hayashi. In the next issue Lou will write about mobbing at work ( originally an American term now becoming a more globally recognized problem). Not a nice but a very important issue. In A Tale of Many Journeys : The Teacher As Train Manager: Attempting to deal with classes which change all the time, John Feakings uses an extended metaphor to make the point who we,teachers, are. Jelena Kovacevic in her short article: What do Sanctions and Bombing have to do with English Coursebooks shares with us her views on the impact Western culture rooted coursebooks have or don't have in a war torn country in Europe. Exploring the world and being in a new cultural environment is also echoed in Never tired of London. Part two in which students from Ljubljana share some more of their impressions of London, and Fotik and Abbas, teenagers from the Sylhet area of Bangladesh offer us a glimpse of what it is like for them to be in a state school in the UK. Finally the world of business and its discourse culture is brought to us by Amalia Babayan in her article: Discourse Build-up on Business English Crossroads .

Last not least in the Old Recipe section Mario Rinvolucri looks at jazz chants. On old idea but as usual in the hands of this creative mind it begins to live a new life. The article : Jazz Chants, at secondary level - but whose?, goes really well with the new book by Carolyn Graham: Creating Chants and Songs, OUP. I am sure between the two of them, Mario and Carolyn will encourage you to create your own jazz chants with various levels and age groups. By the way, it is the second time Mario has contributed an article to the Old Recipe section. This is NOT Mario's new column. This is just a coincidence. In the next issue Mario will star as the author of a major article.

And of course there are some jokes and poems, talking of which I must recommend you read the letter from Philip Prowse who shares with us information about a literary competition. Why don't you respond?

As you will see there is a pretty strong Spanish presence which resulted from a conference in Jaen, Spain, and a strong IT presence after I followed some of the Learning Technologies SIG presentations at IATEFL in Harrogate, UK. I am also very pleased that some contributors took the initiative in their hands and wrote to me themselves, attaching their articles. Remember I cannot reach out to everyone who would like to contribute but I am aware there is so much humanistic expertise in the world out there… So Dear Reader perhaps you also have an article in mind that you could contribute.

Talking of contributions, I would like to simplify a few things for all of us. When you write an article for HLT, please follow the contributor's guidelines (see link below) so that your material does not require a lot of editing, e.g. changing font, layout, paragraphing, etc. If you follow the guidelines I will have more time and energy to focus on the academic side, better proofreading and establishing more contacts.

At this point I would like to apologize to the authors in the March issue whose names I misspelt (usually first names not surnames) or who spotted some slips or typos which resulted from my editorial intervention. I appreciate your good humour about the whole thing and at this point I can only promise I will do my best not to disappoint you again. However, judging from your feedback, see Readers Letters, I seem to have done well in my first issue. There have been many voices of praise and encouragement, a few of which I have included in the Readers Letters section.

In one of the letters Rakesh Bhanot asks about the times when the new editions of HLT come out. Well, it may seem a bit unclear and I am not surprised. HLT is supposed to come out every two months. In my short experience of editing the magazine I have experienced a few technical glitches resulting from taking over and then a few other problems which jeopardized the timing of the present edition. This is the settling in period which I hope you will be sympathetic about. In the future in each editorial I will state when the next issue is due. I hope this is a satisfactory reply.

I hope you will enjoy this issue.
Next issue end of July/beginning of August

Hania

The Contributor's guidelines can be viewed here.