Dear HLT Readers,

Welcome to the August issue of HLT. First some Pilgrims news… In June we had the most inspiring and successful ELTForum Conference in Bratislava,  Slovakia. A big thank you to all the participants and the organisers. In Pilgrims News you can find a personal memory of the conference by Mario Rinvolucri, sixteen powerpoint presentations from the Conference and some photos.

Right now many of us are at the Hilltop in Canterbury, UK, enjoying an inspirational summer of teacher training and language development for teachers. Soon we will be announcing our new exciting Pilgrims courses for 2020 to be held in the UK and in other European countries.

Before I hand over to the host editor I would like to draw your attention to the Publications section where you can read about a great variety of new titles, and to the To the Editor section where among others some of you can find out about a present you may receive from, the author of ‘Hellyer’s Trip’, Philip Prowse.

I have received a number of emails letting me know that some of our subscribers to the regular mailing list seem not to receive my emails. I checked with IT who suggest the first thing you should do is check the ‘spam’ box. If you find the message form me in your 'spam' folder make sure that you mark it as 'not junk'.  This will help your email program learn that you would like to receive these messages.  Also note I cannot change your e-mail address. You have to register once again at http://hlt.news.e4education.co.uk/  .

Now I would like to hand over to Malu Sciamarelli from Brazil who is the host editor of the August issue. I would like to thank her for her hard work and dedication. Now you can appreciate the outcome and even read some early feedback on the articles from Mario Rinvolucri in Questions  to Brazilian Experts and Panel of Writers. Malu, working with you has been a great pleasure. Thank you from all of us for putting together this Brazilian issue.

Hania Kryszewska

HLT Editor

Email: hania.kryszewska@pilgrims.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the special issue of HLT Mag, which brings together contributions from some leading professionals in Brazil. This special issue coincides with the launch of Pilgrims Brazil in collaboration with Seven International and the C Group. The first in a series of events ‘Creativity in Language Learning – Be Inspired, Be Inspiring’ - took place in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo in May 2019 focusing on the humanistic and creative approaches to teaching and learning a language. Such elements can be found in many of the contributors’ articles in this special edition, reassuring all ELT professionals that they can be reinforced through collective action. The result of our working together is a cornucopia of ways for making teaching more creative and inspiring.

I am deeply grateful to Hania Kryszewska, HLT Mag editor, for giving me the opportunity to use this space to share the contributions by ELT Brazilian authors. To open this special issue, Elaine Hodgson and Viviane Kirmeliene discuss in their joint article The Cry for Inclusiveness and Diversity – Can There Be Light at the End of the Tunnel? the reasons why there is still so little variety in representation in teaching materials, when the cry for diversity has been there for so long. They also present what can be done to ensure all of our students feel represented in the classroom. Isabela Villas Boas explains why it is so hard to change the way people generally see assessment and states that only when we understand why people think they way they do, can we lead them to change in Changing Mental Models on Assessment – Start With The Why!.

Priscila Mateini looks at some strategies to adapt general English materials to English for Academic Purposes, which might help not only academic students but also students in general in Building Up Strategies to Adapt Oral Production for EAP Students. Vinícius Nobre reflects upon the role teacher trainers play in the process of helping teachers think of the act of teaching and learning a foreign language in Critical Thinking in Teacher Education. Marcela Cintra outlines the current observational practices in in-service teacher education in Current Practice and Future Perspectives in Teacher Education: Lesson Observations. Roseli Serra generates reflections on the process of teaching / learning and visual literacy and how effective the use of images can be in engaging students in the learning process in Visual Didactics: The Use of Image in the Teaching- Learning Process in EFL.

Sweder Souza seeks to articulate some concepts of language present in the guiding teaching documents in Language, Teaching and Interaction: Reflections on the Concept of Language Present in Brazilian Teaching Documents. Fernando Guarany asks why we in the ELT community are so concerned about teaching grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation but seem to care little about our professionals’ mental health and discusses the answer in The Black Dog in the Classroom: Mental Health in ELT.

21^st Century Skills  section offers only one article: Blended Learning and the Rotation Model: Teaching a Foreign Language to Adults by Antonio Henrique Coutelo de Moraes, Laura Manuela Gallindo Lins and Madson Góis Diniz, but one very much worth reading. In this article the authors share the results of their research and discussions regarding the concepts and practices of blended learning, especially the ‘station rotation’ model, and the teaching of English to adults.

In the ‘Lesson Ideas’ session, Clarisa Rosa states that reinforcing resilience and self-esteem in our classroom should appear in our lesson plans more frequently and presents a lovely lesson based on the book “I Like Myself” written by Karen Beaumont and illustrated by David Catrow in  An Ode to Self-esteem: Raising Self-love in the English Classroom. Iole Vitti explores factors which prevent people from finding and implementing win-win solutions regarding homework teachers assign in Homo Ludens. Malu Sciamarelli explores the effects music has in our senses to write poetry in The Sounds of Writing Poetry.

In ‘The Creativity Group’ session, Leticia Moraes discusses the main challenges teachers face when planning CLIL lessons in Five Challenges of Planning CLIL Lessons.

In the ‘Voices’ session, Hugo Dart’s article focusses on one episode from 1991 to look at what the language teacher can learn from ‘Star Trek’ about working together in an unfamiliar environment to reach shared goals in Live Long and Teach – Star Trek and the ELT Classroom.

Finally, Francisco Gomes de Matos closes this special issue with some of his poems.

I hope you will enjoy this special issue dedicated to contributors in Brazil and that you will be inspired to work on what was presented in the articles in your own contexts.

Malu Sciamarelli

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Malu Sciamarelli is a teacher, teacher trainer, and conference presenter. Her main interests are literature, creative writing, and creativity in the English language classroom. She is the current coordinator of the Creativity Group (http://thecreativitygroup.weebly.com/ ) and the IATEFL Literature SIG Web Manager. Website: http://malusciamarelli.weebly.com/