FROM THE EDITOR

Welcome all readers!

Spring has come and nearly gone. For any practising teacher the current months mean a particularly demanding time – from middling tough up to outright gruelling on the scale of workload and stress. I guess it is the same for our learners. And I know that members of our SIG are for their part concerned about diminishing the level of stress for both parties – true to the innermost spirit of partnership in the learning\teaching process. I wish you all success in this and all other endeavours.

While you may be too busy to think outside your immediate academic duties, I hope you will stop for a moment and peruse the pages of the newest, seventh issue of our Newsletter. This time it will be possible again to do it literally, since we are coming back to a “hard copy” – a traditional paper print-out. For the aficionados of the electronic, the e-zine continues on our website.

I am quite satisfied with the issue: there is a nice balance between "the computer bend" and "the traditional classroom". CALL may be tremendously overrated (according to some) or grievously neglected (as others cry), but the information and computer technology has come to stay and we might as well learn to handle it as a tool. Especially as – quoting from Beata Opałka’s article – “it seems that computer work is very motivating and even the ones who are weak at English get highly engaged in language tasks”. Jarek Krajka, practising what he preaches, has noticed, that “students are extremely enthusiastic about learning English with technology and it seems that teachers should try to exploit that powerful motivation”.

I also like the predominant aspect of practicality. Marcin Kleban has described a procedure – which, I hasten to add, I have also initiated on the advanced gymnasium level and found student-motivating and extremely awareness-raising. From Richard Bradford (with thoughtful care for all those, unable to have made it to Cieszyn this year) comes a description of a captivating format of a testing procedure. It is contributions such as this which give our Newsletter its particular flavour of “our own forum”, which is so dear to me.

As the editor I would like to encourage our SIG members and all other readers to share any activities they have tried out in the class and found successful. Hopefully even those who shy away or simply have no time to write a full-blown article may feel tempted to come out with a short description of the rewarding moments they experienced with their students. For such short contributions I hereby open a column (rubric), “Sharing Autonomously”. Feel free to send even a rough description, which you feel might enrich the experience of your colleagues and their students.

Lots of work means that we cannot always spare a day to travel to any of the SIG meetings. This year I have felt from my own experience, how unfavourable circumstances plus work overload hinder one’s activity. And while I know I should wait patiently for the turn of the current, I certainly feel a little cut off and… nostalgic. And these feelings gave rise to my other idea, which I put forward for consideration: would you like to have a column (rubric), where SIG members could present any material of literary, poetic or philosophical value, providing it is the product of their own pen (and mind!)? It would mean opening the forum for contributions outside the immediate focus of interest of the SIG.

Please feel free to contact me or David with feedback on any of the above-mentioned topics.

Meanwhile – happy reading!

Zosia Grudzińska zosia_g@wp.pl