Well, it’s been a busy year so far, with little time for luxuries or writing – I must apologise. The TEA ‘jornadas’ have been and gone, the TESOL Spain conference has been and gone, along with IATEFL in York, various ‘jornadas’ in Barcelona, Turkey and other points of the globe. Unfortunately it is impossible for us to be at all of these events, though we hope to bring you write ups of some. If any reader would like to contribute their opinions on these events, we’d be more than grateful.
Other issues in the teaching world? Plenty. The plight of the ‘interinos’ continues, there is unrest in the English sector of state education as a lack of coherence in local policy screams at us. The state exams or ‘oposiciones’ have a very poor show of places for languages this year, though the situation varies from region to region. The fate of English as a teachable language is under debate in TEFL circles as English as a Lingua Franca grows and grows; ELF rather than EFL? We’ll be commenting on this a little later (look for a friendly face to click on!).
We held our fourth get-together in March, courtesy of Arion Idiomas who hosted the ‘serious’ part, and El Momento, who provided a discreetly lit back drop for wine and ham. The do was quite a success, and you’ll find a report or two on it in News.
Finally, I would like to apologise for our tardiness in getting editions out on the web; the only reason is that we are all working teachers/professionals and time is gold dust.
Many thanks to the wonderful team who put all this together and get very little credit, namely Samuel, our web-maestro, Tomás, Leslie, Javier, Víctor, and “coming soon”, Anthony.
Enjoy your reading,
Fiona.
NOTE: if you do enjoy this, I suggest two more things you could try
a) write to us on anything that motivates you, anything you feel strongly about, or any ideas you would like to share (info@atlanticls.com) and
b) check out Mario Rinvolucri’s HLT magazine at http://www.hltmag.co.uk/