Hanna Kryszewska is a teacher, teacher trainer, trainer of trainers. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Gdańsk, Poland. She is co-author of resource books: Learner Based Teaching, OUP, Towards Teaching, Heinemann, The Standby Book, CUP, Language Activities for Teenagers, CUP, The Company Words Keep, DELTA Publishing, and a course book series for secondary schools: ForMat, Macmillan. She is also co-author of a video-based teacher training course: Observing English Lessons, and online course for Orient Black Swan on 21^st Century Skills and Teaching the whole person: Humanising language teaching. Hania is a Pilgrims trainer and editor of HLT Magazine.

Email: hania.kryszewska@pilgrimsteachertrainig.eu  

Psychology in Practice. M. Williams. H, Puchta and S. Mercer. Helbling Languages (2021). ISBN 978-3-99089-775-1, pp. 270. The book was published in The Resourceful Teacher series which established its reputation as a series which combines classroom routines with innovative and creative techniques. It addresses various issues and presents how new developments in linguistics, pedagogy and cognitive psychology can be practically implemented to enrich and deepen classroom practice. The authors of this book are teachers, trainers and educators well known in the EFL field for their interests in psychology. M. Williams and S. Mercer were editors of Psychology for Language Learning. Insights form Research, Theory and Practice reviewed in HLT in Dec 2012, while

M. Williams and H, Puchta wrote Teaching Young Learners to Think: ELT-Activities for young learners aged 6-12. reviewed in HLT in June 2012. The book under review offers a hands-on approach to various areas and new developments in psychology. These include findings in linguistics, cognition, classroom pedagogy and social cognitivism. The book presents concrete steps teachers can take to make learning and teaching a better experience; it certainly goes beyond how to teach a given language skill, grammar or vocabulary. Instead, it looks at ways to inspire learners, motivate develop positive self esteem, foster positive emotions and promote positive beliefs. The book contains around 80 ideas from which the teacher can select to create a mindful and respectful learning environment. The 10 chapters focus on such areas as working better together, facilitating a growth mindset, building confidence, promoting motivation and self-regulation, building resilience, exercising compassion and promoting learner wellbeing. The book has many strong points: it is very accessible even to teachers who think they are not ‘successful classroom psychologists’, the procedures are easy to follow, and there are all the necessary photocopiable materials. When you start working with the book, you will see that it is not only your students who benefit, but also you yourself as a teacher and as a person.

Activities for Mediation. Building bridges in the ELT classroom. R. Chiappini and E. Mansur. (2021) DELTA Publishing. ISBN-978-3-12-501744-3, pp 184. This book has been published in the Ideas in Action series. The aim of the series is to build a bridge between theory and practice in language teaching. It looks at how theoretical ideas can be illustrated by practical, motivating, and enjoyable ideas for classroom activities. Mediation has been the ELT buzz word ever since CEFR defined mediation and listed its descriptors. This was a process that took its final shape in 2020 and now most ELT coursebooks published for the European market must contain mediation, especially since it has become an obligatory element in language assessment and testing. Even though mediation seems to be a European development it is relevant to language teaching in other countries and contexts, as basically mediation is about teaching language in a way which is as close as possible to the way we use it in real life contexts. In the introductory part the authors present mediation in a very accessible and clear way. They discuss the various types of mediation which include among others cognitive or content mediation, intra-lingual mediation, inter-lingual mediation sometimes called translanguaging, concept mediation, cultural mediation and communicative / conflict resolution mediation. For these kinds of mediation to take place, we need to interact with texts or other users of the language. The sections in the book propose activities which address all the types of mediation we know: mediating a text for specific information, for selecting information or for processing texts, translating texts, mediating creative texts, mediating concepts and communication. There are over 40 activities for mediation proposed by the authors, but the ideas can inspire teachers to create their own. The book is therefore excellent resource for teachers who want to supplement their coursebooks and broaden the range of activities they use to practice mediation in an engaging and motivating way.

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