Steve N. was part of a last-minute focus group I pulled together at the Kitakyushu JALT conference back when Chris and I were still in the final stages of selling the concept to the publisher. Steve being Steve, he immediately saw a new angle and bombarded us with keen insights. This and the whole group’s enthusiasm really tipped the scales in term of making the publisher more confident that teachers would potentially get behind the title.

Besides, it was kind of fun to have the Longman research editor bug his eyes out a bit when I managed to get some of the busiest people at the conference in the same room at the very last minute–Steve N, Steve Brown, Malcolm Swanson, Andrew Zitzmann, and, to sweeten the pot, Jim Swan too!

In fact, it all happened just a few doors down from where we held last month’s presentation, which really made it a bit of a full circle, homecoming kind of thing for me. Funny how these things work out!

Very best regards,
Marcos

I, and a think a few others, were quite impressed by Marcos’s presentation of his text in Kitakyushu last month (and afterwards we enjoyed ourselves at a new tapas bar). I’m going to be trying out his text with a class in the new academic year; like many others I’ve been trying out task-based methods in my classes over the last few years, but in nowhere near as structured an approach as Widgets offers. But based on my experience, I think this will work well, and am looking forward to trying the text out.