Dear Readers,
When you receive this issue, the New Year will have set in. The snow
will be sparkling outside, and indoors the tinsel will be glittering, and in its glare the
presents unpacked will be admired, and the new year resolutions will be still
accomplishable.
One of the crazy things about our work here, at the newspaper, is that
we have to do issues in advance, so we’re doing this New Year’s issue in the
atmosphere of lingering autumn weather, as well as (to be more accurate, as bad as) a
shilly-shally mood. It is rather hard to be in tune with the holiday spirit of the New
Year’s when it’s drizzling outside and you hardly believe in winter coming, and there
are still so many debts and things unfinished of the parting year.
BUT… Still New Year is a very special occasion. Are there many of us
who have never said (or thought): “Starting from Monday…” and such? New Year engages
us all mightily in this everlasting pledging. There is something about the hanging of a
new calendar. Here, in Russia, we haven’t had (at least until recently we haven’t used
this name) New Year’s resolutions. However, don’t we all, no matter how serious,
materialistic, and important we are, have this happy childlike feeling on New Year’s
Eve? This sincere feeling of new incredible hopes and unbelievable wishes, which just might
happen to come true? And we do need changes (for the better, of course), don’t we?
So, here we are, the editorial board of English, thinking
of the New Year coming, of you, our readers. We are trying to guess what changes in our
common edition might happen to bring extra joy and happiness into our common lot.
Therefore, we decided to introduce some new features, which hopefully
will be interesting for you to use in your classroom, as well as to contribute to.
First of all, we are glad to inform you that Galina Goumovskaya, a
devoted member of our team and our main academic expert, has come back from Poland (where
she spent two years of teaching at Warsaw University) and rejoined the English
editorial staff. She has written a topical book on ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and
we are lucky to have the extracts from this book in a new ESP section of the
newspaper. This urgent material will definitely be appreciated by university teachers, and
can be of use to school teachers who work in so-called “profile classes”.
We do hope that a new section Building Vocabulary will be
helpful to teachers working in all kinds of classes and on different levels.
A new feature Calendar will give you additional materials to
increase students’ knowledge of British traditions and customs. It will appear in the
first issue of each month and will recount not only the well-known holidays and events,
but also some unusual and special ones.
We hope that our most inquisitive readers will like the Streeeetch
Your Mind! column. You will have a chance to try yourself in accomplishing rather
complicated tasks.
Our regular subscribers will probably notice that we have made some
changes in the structure of the newspaper, a new Pull-out section will appear
instead of the familiar section on language skills. We’ve called it Theme Park, which
indicates that each time the materials will be united around a particular theme (or
topic), but will be various in levels and focused on different skills. Just pull out the
pages, and you will have ready-to-go materials to use in your classrooms.
We would like to remind you that many of our best ideas come from you,
the readers of English. We want you to keep telling us what you want and need to
see in the newspaper to help you make your teaching effective, your students attentive,
and your life creative. Send us your ideas and suggestions!
Happy New Year to all our readers and authors! We do hope that 2007
proves to be a successful year for you all.
The editorial staff of English
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