Humanising Language Teaching
Year 1; Issue 7; November 1999

Welcome to Issue 7 of of Humanising Language Teaching which has now been in existence for nearly nine months.

If you find things in here of use to you, pass on the web address to your friends as we want to reach many more people than we have reached so far. So please help us!

The main article in this number has John Morgan, author of Once Upon a Time, explaining why doing apparently off-the-wall stuff in class may make highly principled sense. His article is just the sort of stuff that people doing MA's and the like need to quote from. (See our previous “long articles” for similar use ) John's article is entitled The Real World and the Classroom.

If you are not sure how native speakers of English understand the term “the real world” then have a look in Mike Rundell's column where he looks at computer concordances for this culturally loaded phrase.

This is a quite NLP-strong issue with Ana Robles Fraga talking about how to use NLP ideas to teach vocabulary (Short Article 1) and with a review of Revell and Norman's Handing Over which offers you NLP-inspired ideas to use directly with your students. (See Publications)

Any magazine can get a bit samey under the editorship of one narrow, limited individual, so we want to offer you something a bit different in our 8th Issue, the December one.

Malgosia Swaj and her colleagues at English Unlimited in Gdansk, Poland have complete charge of Issue 8 and will offer you a vision of the world as seen from the Southern Baltic, and so it is in their capable hands that we will round off the first year in the life of Humanising Language Teaching and close the 11th year of the Japanese Heian Dynasty, which some people think of as the end of the 2nd Millenium.

Since we put the last issue of HLT to bed, news has come through that Pilgrims has won its long struggle in various courtrooms against the UK VAT authorities. This is one of the biggest developments in the history of the UK ELT industry.

The following press release tells the story:

Pilgrims' Tax Victory makes UK EFL industry Jubilant

The UK EFL industry is rejoicing after Pilgrims has made legal history by winning a fight against HM Customs & Excise in The Court of Appeal over Value Added Tax (VAT) exemption for commercial providers of EFL.

VAT exemption for the teaching of English as a Foreign Language was introduced in August 1994 as part of the UK government's commitment to encourage more visitors to the UK. Since its introduction, Customs & Excise has maintained that tax exemption only applies to classroom teaching on any course and not other parts such as accommodation, food, excursions and all language practise outside the classroom. Now, thanks to Pilgrims the exemption has been extended to include all these areas.

As the EL Gazette reports this month "UK ELT certainly needs some good news at a time when other major British brands such as Bell, IH and now Swan are busy announcing losses, rationalisation and closures."

'This is fantastic news for Pilgrims, the EFL industry and UK Ltd' rejoiced Pilgrims' Managing Director, James Dixey.

"The Foreign Office and The British Council have been making huge efforts to encourage more students and teachers to learn English in the UK, and here was HM Customs & Excise making it difficult by taxing students when they got here " he explains.

"Pilgrims was not prepared to accept this, for over 25 years we have been leaders in the classroom; now it was time to lead from the Boardroom for the sake of UK EFL. This judgement puts UK EFL in a much healthier position " said James Dixey.

NEW Special Offer for Teachers

As a direct result of this judgement, Year 2000 sees the launch of another groundbreaking initiative by Pilgrims - The Pilgrims 2000 Offer to Teachers. This offer gives teachers all over the world the chance to receive FREE Pilgrims Teacher Training courses in 2000 in return for sending 2 or 4 students on Pilgrims children's courses.

James enthuses: "Pilgrims are making this fantastic offer and The British Council and Longman are fully endorsing it. It's an amazing opportunity for teachers and students to receive top quality training here in the UK effectively free of charge ".

For more details of The Pilgrims 2000 Offer to Teachers click on the banner below or email our Sales Department: sales@pilgrims.co.uk

Complaint over censorship

In Issue 2, April l999 Paul Davis wrote an article under the title: Language Jokes. In the article he used the popular words for having sexual intercourse and for anus. HLT printed the words in this form: “f**k” and “a***hole” Davis wishes to make clear that he feels this spelling of the two words amounts to censorship.

Has HLT been guilty of censorship? We would like to ask you, the readers.

Mario Rivolucri, Editor.