Under the tempting title 'Teaching Real English', the joint regional coordinators for Euskadi, Blanca Sanz and Yolanda Gómez have just put together a magnificent one-day conference for TESOL-SPAIN members in their region. Anybody who has done anything like this knows just how much hard work is required to get a conference up and running, even when it is only for a day. But there can be no doubt in anybody's mind that Blanca and Yolanda's efforts bore their fruit, with over 90 people turning up, with around 70 of those being new members.

Just walking into the superb Europa Conference Centre in Vitoria set the scene. To the right on entering there was the much visited TESOL-SPAIN table, which Cara Whittecar, the Local Coordinator for Guipuzcoa, kept manned throughout the morning. Next came registration, which was efficiently and cheerfully run by the staff of 'Level English Services', Blanca and Yolanda's school in Vitoria.

The conference hall itself was perfect - the right size, the right feel, the right equipment. You couldn't ask for better!

First off was Tim Bacon, from the British Council. Tim brought the audience to life with a talk aptly named 'Bringing the Skills to Life', where he looked at a range of practical activities for exploiting both receptive and productive skills. An early coffee break gave everybody the chance to fully charge their batteries, to chat to old friends, to make new ones, and to look at the book displays.

Next on was Katherine Bilsborough, who really got the audience participating when she raised doubts as to the validity of a number of frequently unquestioned notions about teaching pronunciation. Her presentation was called 'Pronunciation: A Realistic Approach', and whenever she asked the audience to discuss the issues raised, they needed no encouraging.

Andrew Walkley rounded the day off with a talk entitled 'Directions to Fluency', which took a look at the need to think about the language students need in order to hold conversations, and of things we can do to get away from thinking just about grammar and words.

A splendid mini-conference, then, which follows up so well on the seeds sown the year before in San Sebastián, Our thanks to Cambridge University Press, Heinemann-MacMillan, Oxford University Press, and Thomson-Heinle for supporting the event in various ways, to Carlos for volunteering all his professional conference know-how, to the staff at the Europa Conference Centre for the willing help at all times, and last, but not least, to the staff from Level English Services for all they contributed to the success of 'Teaching Real English'.