Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 6; November 03

Guest Editorial

Tom Maguire

Welcome to this month's magazine which comes to you from language teachers in Catalonia. You will find contributions from teachers in the capital city, Barcelona, but also from all over this region, situated in North-East Spain.

Like the region itself the main articles have an upbeat tone and introduce you to the Catalan improvements in language teaching, the cutting edge online Open University venture in Barcelona and tips on using psychology to help learners learn.

True to the practical nature of the Catalan culture the short articles are based on the real experiences of local teachers, like the authoring programme to create multimedia materials; answers to teachers' identity crises; ideas on how to encourage extensive reading; project work with a bank(!); the new challenge of teaching students online, or the old one of how to use chalk, a board and the class itself as learning materials.

The students add more local flavour by recounting their experiences with English and giving us a taste of Catalan humour in the jokes section.

The reviews may encourage you just to reflect or even to purchase more books. Finally, to put paid to that myth of Catalans being too close to their cash, we have reviewed some of the free online resources for language learning there are in this part of the world. So happy learning!

Tom Maguire