Dear HLT Readers,

Welcome to the to the October issue of HLT. We hope you like the new layout, but of course it needs getting used to. The home page lists the contents but if you want to read any of the articles you need to click in the left margin on one of the animated boxes.

As of August 2018 all the issues will be archived in the Previous issues section, click on the  upper box. If you want to access the archive before August 2018, you need to click on  the box below where it says Click here for over 20 years of archive issues. There you will recognise the old HLT layout and format. The archive works now, there is, however, some problem with the View by author feature. Sometimes when you click on an article by the author of your choice you get directed to their text, but sometimes you may get an error message. We are working on this problem and also on the View by categories feature which clearly has a layout problem. So bear with us. But we can assure you no articles have been lost.

In this issue in the Pilgrims News you can read about some upcoming conferences, especially the ELTForum Conference in Bratislava next June celebrating 45 years of Pilgrims and 20 years of HLT. It will feature many Pilgrims speakers and trainers, including Mario Rinvolucri. In the same section you can read about Mario’s donation of his ELT archive to Bridge School in Bartislava, and what will happen to it. We hope it will be available online one day.

In the Voices section in this issue we remember Simon Greenall who sadly is no longer with us. He was the author of many coursebooks and resource materials, trainer, presenter at conferences worldwide, and above all a wonderful colleague and friend. We will miss him greatly.

Bonnie Tsai Scholarship for 2019 Bonnie Tsai was everything we expect and respect in a Creative Pilgrims Teacher and Trainer. She inspired thousands of teachers across the world. The most rewarding way for us to keep her memory alive is to encourage other teachers to be brave and not afraid to express their creativity, to develop interests in innovative approaches to teaching, and to find ways to implement them.  So once again we are pleased to announce a Bonnie Tsai Scholarship, where the prize for the winning entry is a free 2 week Creative Methodology for the Classroom course or another course of your choice (in tune with the theme of the scholarship competition) at Pilgrims in 2019 including 2 weeks accommodation!  For more go to https://www.hltmag.co.uk/aug18/pilgrims-news Note: A number of articles in 21st Century Skills and Lesson Ideas in this issue are entries for the Bonnie Tsai 2018 Scholarship competition.

Two prominent Pilgrims trainers of the past: Mario Rinvolucri and Judy Baker now live on different continents. But some years ago they cooperated closely at Pilgrims, and as a result they brought out a book on using NLP in language teaching. You can read about some follow up to the book in  A Variation on an Old Activity: Present Perfect Spaces and Weathers.

In this issue of HLT there is a kind of reunion as Mario’s and Judy’s articles ‘meet’. In body and flesh they met last summer in Canterbury, and it was then that the idea of an Australian issue of HLT was born. Judy was kind enough to co-host the October issue of HLT, and she harvested articles which you can read in the Various Articles section, Golden Classics and Poems. So without further ado I would like to thank Judy for her hard work and ask her to introduce this issue of HLT.

Enjoy the October issue of HLT

Hania Kryszewska
HLT Editor
Email: hania.kryszewska@pilgrims.co.uk

 

Hi from Australia,

I am very happy to be able to introduce this issue of HLT to you. Many of the contributions in this issue come from UTS Insearch in Sydney, Australia. A large number of teachers beaver away here, providing aspiring students with enough English to enter courses at the University of Technology Sydney. And that it what this suite of articles is largely about: a group of teachers working towards the same goal in surprisingly diverse ways.

Jackie Spencer reminds us of the usefulness of starting a reading lesson with ‘bottom up’ activities in Bottom Up Matters with Reading with ideas that will work across age groups.   In Mobile Phone-ology, Nicola Turman evaluates two speaking apps exploring ways of providing more speaking practice for students in courses heavy with reading and writing.  Giving Explicit Feedback on Spoken Errors – the More the Better  Gabrielle Luoni reports on her research in Korea and Australia. Jonathan Collett in Collaborative Writing for Academic writes about how he has developed ways of teaching students who have histories of failure in writing. His ideas would work with secondary students as well. Giselle Carnemolla has written Asking questions to Enhance Critical Thinking in Academic Writing reporting on a way she found to foster the kind of thinking necessary to succeed in the Australian academic environment.  Her students were from the Middle East and China.

Something said by Roger  The Roger Federer Club – or How Extensive Writing Can Help Language StudentsFederer was the inspiration behind The Roger  Improving Grammatical Accuracy in the Writing of Pre-intermediate StudentsFederer Club – or How Extensive Writing Can Help Language Students.  Teachers Ann-Charlotte Stent and Vahida Berberovic found that encouraging students to write ‘extensively’ for just a short time each day made a difference to their writing and confidence. Jeff Millar in Improving Grammatical Accuracy in the Writing of Pre-intermediate Students describes how he made grammar rules explicit and user- friendly in the teaching of writing. In Interview Data in Action Research, Neil England argues that interviews are social encounters in which the data that is produced is co-constructed and encourages teachers to consider this idea when doing Action Research. Aurora Murphy shares her ideas in  Pedagogical Puppetry: Playful Tools to Engage Adult Learners of EnglishPedagogical Puppetry: Playful Tools to Engage Adult Learners of English.  She uses puppets and props to motivate even the most reticent students to create and refine their writing. Leigh Morgan brings her commitment to mindfulness to her students. Read her suggestions in Applying Mindfulness in ESL to Address Student Focus.  Finally, a group of teachers from Hunan Province write about their ideas on  Adapting Activities for Large ClassesAdapting Activities for Large Classes  at the end of a two-week methodology in Sydney, and Franca  Quirky Grammar VignettesTurrin uses her skills as a photographer to personalise contexts for students in Quirky Grammar Vignettes.

Tertiary Education for overseas students is estimated to be the Australia’s third largest source of income. In concentrating on issues that arise in this sector we do not mean to ignore the many other types of language teaching here: lessons for immigrants and asylum seekers, immigrant children and people in the remote areas of Australia. As a brief acknowledgement we add two articles. One in Golden Classics includes a story by an Afghan child asylum seeker in response to a question in the activity.  In the other, Manus Remembered, Judith Reen writes about her experience as a teacher on Manus.  This is an island in Papua New Guinea where asylum seekers, refused entry to Australia, are held indefinitely. She reminds us of what a difference a teacher can make and describes how bringing a few words of vocabulary to class might occupy a detainee’s mind ‘and make today different, in a small way from yesterday’

Judith Baker
UTS Insearch
Sydney, Australia  
Email;  judith.baker@insearch.edu.au