| Humanising Language Teaching Year 3; Issue 4; July 2001 The Magic of Metaphor 77 Stories for Teachers, Trainers and Thinkers, Nick Owen, Crown House Publishing, 2001 www.crownhouse.co.uk Let me introduce this book with an abridged version of a story from it that I really like: Assumptions Two cars were driving in opposite directions along a winding country lane. They were fast approaching one another. It was impossible for either driver to see round the corners. The driver of one car was a woman and of the other a man. The final bend between them. They stood on their brakes and just managed to slide past without scraping the paint work. She shouted: " PIG!" to which he screamed: " COW!" Round the next corner he crashed into a pig. Nick Owen, who comes from socialist beliefs, from Freire thinking, from drama training and, more recently, from work on NLP, offers us a very usable set of symbolic stories which he has set in an NLP framework, but which you can use in whatever framework you find most comfortable. My hope is that Nick's book will entice more teachers into telling their classes stories in their own voices and in their own special way. Story telling should not be a niche activity in EFL, but part of the great central highway. Nick has done a workmanlike job in gathering together a wide range of Oriental stories, NLP metaphorical tales and many other stories from here and there. The main downside I can see to the book is that he uses too many words in telling the stories and this can clutter the core meaning. The book would be better were it sparser with words. And here are two more stories: An Apprentice complained to a Magician : " You tell us stories but don't explain what they mean." " And when you go to the fruit shop to buy an orange, do you ask the shopman to taste it for you, leaving you with just the skin?" A woman came to Gandhi and asked him to tell her fat son to stop eating sugar. He told her to go away and come back again in three weeks' time. Though surprised, she did as he asked. When she came back Gandhi looked at the boy and said " Stop eating sugar". She asked him why he had not given the boy this advice when she first brought her son to him. " Madam, three weeks ago I myself was eating sugar." Knowing Me, Knowing you Classroom activities to develop learning strategies and stimulate conversation Jim Wingate, ETp Delta , 2000. www.deltapublishing.co.uk Jim Wingate has been a regular contributor to HLT and this book of crisp, clear, humanistic teaching ideas is most welcome as a counterweight the way some teacher resource books lists are going …. You may have seen some of the recent Cambridge Resource Book titles that deal with areas like Blackboard Use, Spelling etc….. These may be useful books but we need a flow of ideas with more imaginative lift to them than you will find in such titles. Jim's book does just that. To give you a flavour of his work here is an abridged version of the Table of Contents: Teaching and Learning Six exercises including Good teacher, Bad Teacher and Toxic Teaching. The Brain Three exercises Sensory Learning Six exercises, including VAK Learning Preferences and Study Techniques Intelligence Four activities including Study with Multiple Intelligences. Future Planning Three activities. Me and others Four activities : Ways of listening Opposing Views Team making Team work. If you have enjoyed Jim's work in previous publications, at conferences, in articles in HLT , English Teaching professional and many other places then this book is a sensible one to get. If you do not yet know Wingate's work, then this book is a MUST.