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Monday, April 16

Having arrived safe and sound in Britain, I managed to get some rest and look around Edinburghwhich, by the way, was bathing in sunshine - a somewhat peculiar thing. But then again, the Britishweather did itself credit; all four seasons in a single day. I also met Rathi, theotherRoving Reporter from India. I immediately felt we would be doing a great job. Her friendly attitudeand outgoing nature convinced me of the fact that she would be a great fellow reporter. Rathi is

currently a trainer and instructs people on writing e-mails. In comparison to her job, mine is boring Iteach a bunch of (ungrateful) teenagers at a General Education School in the South of Serbia! Yet Ishould mention that I feel extremely privileged to be one of this years Roving Reporters. I think thatnothing better than this could have happened to me.

Tuesday, April 17

Edinburgh, of course, was marvellous. For me, a first-time visitor to Britain, it was the first impressionof Britain all together. Anyway, Princess Street, the Jurys Inn, where we were staying, the surroundingarea and all the wonderful buildings I managed to take pictures of (thousands!!!) during the non-rainintervals, will remain carved into my memory forever.

Somewhere around two oclock, Rathi and I got a chance to meet the 21 Hornby scholars prior to theirrehearsal with Rod Bolitho, distinguished for his books on language and teaching. The Hornbyscholars are taking a one-year TESOL course at four different universities in Britain. Margaret, fromNigeria, whos studying at Leeds, for instance, commented on the huge change of environment thatshe experienced after arriving but otherwise thought that her two majors; Language Learning andTeaching for TESOL and Investigating English for TESOL will surely be of great value when returningto her home country. The same goes for Oybek from Uzbekistan, and Mauricio from Mexico; bothstudying at Lancaster. They, however, are taking a TESOL course with a somewhat different approachbased mainly on communicative and pedagogical grammar, language testing and multilingualism.

The dinner party later that evening was also a marvellous experience both thanks to the hospitality ofthe wonderful restaurant staff and the fact that Roy Cross, the Director of British Council Scotland,agreed to pay for the dinner as a sign of good will and as a special treat since it was his birthday. As areward we sang Happy Birthday. Being a good host, he entertained us with his sense of humour andmade us all feel just great despite the fact that we had had a very long day.

During the dinner party I was sitting next to John Joseph, professor of Applied Linguistics at EdinburghUniversity. We had a wonderful conversation ranging from PhD research on various linguistic topics tochild-raising as it turned out that our children are of similar (teenage) age. I found the conversation atthe table very instructive and entertaining especially because of the many different stories aboutdistinctive features in the English language variants, such as the length of the vowels, the diphthongswhere they are not supposed to be and similar things. We laughed a lot and had a wonderful time.

Wednesday, April 18

I should probably mention the bus ride from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. Apart from the fact that thejourney took us almost seven hours, producing a worse jet lag than any plane could ever do, the tripwas worth the anguish. Our driver, Frazer, not only drove but also kept us informed and educated usalong the way. We learned that everything worth inventing has actually been invented by the Scottishpeople such as, the telephone, golf, whisky, a special irn brw used to cure not hangovers but thethirst in the morning after a difficult night and last but not least, naturally, a marvellous way of savingmoney by sharing daily tickets with other fellow bus riders because the Scottish are wise with money,

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they dont like to spend it unreasonably. Along the winding road we learned lots of Scottish andGaelic words and we visited some lovely old buildings and really cosy towns.

Finally, we arrived in Aberdeen and forgot all about the exhausting trip after the really welcomingreception at Aberdeen University where we were greeted by Barbara Hewitt, on behalf of the BritishCouncil, and by the Vice Principle for Research and Commercialisation, on behalf of the AberdeenUniversity.

After so many eventful days we went to our rooms to have our well-deserved rest!

April 19

After a really early breakfast and the rain greeting us in front of the hotel, the day started with a warmand welcoming speech by Tessa Woodward. All the necessary announcements were made, important

people were introduced and even the names of the two Roving Reporters were mentioned. What an

honour! Right after that Guy Cook opened the conference with his wonderful plenary session. It isprobably unnecessary to mention all the things this distinguished Professor of Language and Education

at the Open University has managed to accomplish. The title of the plenary session, Unmarkedimprovement: values, facts, and first languages, proved to be a challenging title and a very

instructive approach to attitudes to translation teachers of EFL usually have.The most important statement, apart from the very humorous comments, informative quotes and

appropriate examples, was probably the fact that EFL teachers particularly, and many ESL teachers as

well, tend to take a monolingual approach thus neglecting the importance of translation in the processof teaching English. The EFL/ESL classroom cannot follow the motto One nation, one people, one

language, a somewhat overrated statement since it implies that a classroom is a state. Quite contrary to

that, the L1, i.e. the mother tongue of the students, should by all means be acknowledged. Theimportance is highlighted even more by the fact that the students culture is part of their language and

by neglecting their language, the teacher, in a monolingual classroom, neglects their culture which

leads to the danger of neglecting their identity as well.What is more, Guy Cook insists on the fact that there is no valid database that could confirm the

standpoint that the monolingual approach in teaching is the best one. The disregard of the studentsmother tongue can in fact demotivate the students and be counterproductive. Therefore, Guy Cook

believes, there is neither a scientific nor a pedagogic reason to exclude L1 from the teaching process.There are probably more reasons, utilitarian and political, to make the use of L1 quite valuable in the

process of teaching English. The former reason implies that the students would be motivated to think

more about appropriate equivalents in their own languages and the latter one, of course, emphasises theimportance of cultural diversities and tolerance among nations.

Personally, I think that this plenary session was a wonderful metaphor. When I looked around Boyd,

the conference room, I could see people from many different nations all over the world. Ifthe IATEFL, with a stress on the I meaning international, is to fulfil its aim and purpose, I could not

think of a better platform to launch the spirit of the whole conference from.