1

Dear Hania,

Thank you SO MUCH for putting together this polyphonic choral piece about Mario… .

Małgosia

 

2

Hania, 

well done to all involved! A beast of an issue – well done to those in the background, I say!

Instead of going to sleep, I am devouring all this issue's content (with pleasure) – which is, as always, evocative and beautifully done. So many legends…so many thoughts and POVs (surely the mag’s endearing perennial ethos?).

BV

 

3

Good day Hanna! My name is Irina Grebennikova and I once had a pleasure of meeting Mario at the Conference in the Jewish Autonomous Region, the Russian Federation. He came here to share his experiences and English teaching practices. He had some difficulties with his return tickets and I helped him with that. On arriving to GB Marion sent me his books, which is a precious gift for me. I’ll always remember him as a humorous and positive person. And thank you for your letter.

С уважением,

Ирина Анатольевна 

 

4

Dear Hania,

 Thank you so much for this.  Mario deserves all the praise and love in the contributions, though he would probably have been horrified by it all!  He was quite simply unique.

Warm wishes

Rod

 

5

Hi Hania, 

Very good to hear from you.  It was very touching to read so many tributes - many from people I'd never met.  

Bruno and I are going to organise a Celebration Event for family/friends, probably in Canterbury in June.  Just have some food and a chance to share 'Mario stories ', everyone has a few!

We will let you know when/where it is, do hope you will be able to make it. Simon and Tessa have said they will help with inviting people.

All the best, 

Martin Rinvo

 

6

Dear Hania, 

Well done for editing yet another very interesting HLT mag issue. The ELT world is now poorer without Mario Rinvolucri whose work has had a profound impact on countless teachers and students. I'm sure his legacy will live through and all of you who have met and collaborated with him will treasure your special memories.  

Best

Chrysa

 

7

Dear Hania,

I have just begun reading the current issue of HLT. The tribute to Mario is incredible. A goldmine of information. The tone is pitch perfect. Thank you for inviting me to participate.

Best

Gerry Kenny

 

8

Mario Rinvolucri, by Jim Wingate

Principles and commitment

Mario went out to Chile to help the new Socialist Regime, but was imprisoned (under the Right-Way USA-helped coup) in the Sports Stadium. Many people in there were killed.

Mario refused to write coursebooks, despite many invitations. I argued against him, saying that the ideas and principles he shared could be exemplified in coursebooks. He respected our differences.

In 1976 James Dixey brought me into Pilgrims to design, market and run Language in Action courses for teenagers. Mario was an earnest mentor, and I learned a lot from him. I felt we were campaigning together in very practical ways to liberate teachers to be their best selves, and therefore the best teachers they could be.

Mario, Jean-Paul Creton and I created the course for the key teacher trainers of Spain. They said Mario was ‘the worst teacher trainer they ever had’. Yes! We took on their academic left-brain minds and trained them by using humanistic methods. They loved the course! It took them three years to understand what we were doing, though! They’d expected lectures and theory! Yuck!

Mario inducted me into his own job of organising the international teacher training abroad. On his principles I confronted inhuman teaching, and I exemplified Mario and Pilgrims in my plenary sessions at 43 international conferences in 37 countries. Spread the word!

Mario was a generous friend, a lively host at my many stays in his family. It was great with him, to learn, explore, argue, and be accepted. He always passed me connections wanting writers and executive minds.

Many happy, stimulating memories.

 

9

Dear Hania, 

I've just discovered from https://teflpedia.com/Mario_Rinvolucri#:~:text=v%C9%92%CB%88lu%3A.,passed%20away%20in%20February%202025. that Mario left this world just a few weeks ago. 

He was such a critical person, encouraging me when no on else had an inkling of what I was sensing could be possible.  Mario understood!  What a visionary he was! 

May your soul rest in peace, dear Mario!

Love from Ankara. 

Claire Ozel

 

10

How about this as a response to all the comments about Mario?

I read many of the heartfelt comments about Mario Rinvolucri in the last edition of HLT and none of them quite matched my own, sometimes contradictory, feelings about someone who made me think, reluctantly on occasions, about what I was doing and why. A world without him, to someone of my generation, isn’t really possible, for though he may not actually be physically around any more his presence and work continues to resonate through much of what we do.

Mario could be provocative and sometimes pretty harsh. One day, for example, I came back to my Cambridge house to find, on the mat, a scrap of paper torn from an envelope on which there was scribbled, in almost unreadable handwriting, the following (I think my memory is accurate here) “I read your article in English Teaching Professional. It had almost nothing to say. You can do much better than this. Rinvo.” Hmm. Then there was the time, at the beginning of my career, when he sent a message to all the publishers telling them that none of their authors knew how to present and all would benefit from a session with him (I can’t remember the wording but that is a true summary of the communication’s tone). Both myself and my publisher were intrigued so I went along. There were only about seven of us there and it was mostly OK, but one thing he said, about how to get going if you were nervous at the start changed my presentation style for ever. Or the time when in a session on reading he interrupted, dismissively, to say that comprehension questions were a waste of time; the only question that mattered was whether the student had enjoyed the text and why. That told me, didn’t it?! But it shifted my thinking, which was why he said it, I believe.

You get the idea. Mario (who I got on with fine on many levels and many many of whose presentations I attended, to my benefit) could be challenging, sometimes almost insulting and had the power to make one deeply uncomfortable. But even on those occasions he had the extraordinary ability to make you damn well think. I will never forget that or cease to be grateful for it.

Jeremy Harmer

 

11

Dear Hania

Thank you very much for sending this latest issue of HLT.

We are looking forward to some more  time next week to read it all carefully - see that there are a tremendous number of wonderful tributes to the wonderful Mario. He has left a huge hole in all our hearts… what a privilege to have known him. 

Just this weekend we were visited by an old old friend who was a contemporary of his at Oxford. Although not in ELT, he remembered Mario quite vividly. :-) 

RIP Mario.

With love

Charlie and Jill

 

12

It was Mario who asked me to write my first ever ELT text.  He gave me the title "Give me mistakes"... and he set me off on my way. 

Bless him.

Claire Ozel

 

13

Mario

Transcript from a story David Heathfield is spontaneously telling you recorded on 28 April 2025. You can watch the video, read the transcript, do both or do neither https://youtu.be/bKVUsJbxt6Q?si=XLTnfJiw2Z2QkZHn 

There was a change of teacher. And when the unfamiliar teacher came into the classroom, they stood at the front and asked the whole class, "Do you know what you're going to learn today?" But the students turned to each other, shook their heads. "No, we don't know." And that teacher walked to the door, turned around, and said to the students, "Well, if you don't know what you're going to learn today, why am I here?" And he left. And the students were confused. 

I first met Mario Rinvolucri when he came to Exeter on a train to run a workshop. And I’d kind of known him through his writings for several years. And I was influenced as a teacher that was interested in drama and story by a couple of things. Perhaps two of those things were the idea of there being a tyranny of there being one correct answer to any question.  And another thing that really appealed to me was the focus on live interaction, live speaking and live listening rather than what was generally accept accepted in the EFL world of listening being to cassettes in those days or CDs: dead listening where there was no interaction and no chance to respond. 

So, I'd been writing drama courses for teachers where I was working at a language school for a couple of years and had enough ideas that I’d tried out and tested that I thought they could do with publishing. And so, when no responses came from any of the main publishers, I was about to give up. But when I saw Mario was coming to Exeter, I naively, perhaps cheekily, attached everything that I'd written to an email and sent it to him saying, "Any chance of meeting and any chance of you looking at what I've put together?" And he said he would have a look on the train on the way down. 

And at St. David's Station, there I was. And he literally ran and almost jumped into my arms. We hugged and he cried, "This must be published." And I didn't know Mario before that. But I think that was such a Mario response. We went for a drink. We had a fantastic workshop where I participated. He even got me up to tell a story, which I had never done in front of a group of teachers before. And at the end of the workshop, he said, "Well, you're a storyteller." So, within a short time of meeting him, he had… no, anointed is too strong a word, but he had called me a storyteller, which is what I then became. 

So, there was definitely a massive influence from Mario. I didn't know what I was going to learn from him, but I learned so much. 

The next time the teacher came into that classroom full of students, he stood at the front and asked again, "Do you know what you're going to learn today?" 

And now the teachers, rather the teacher trainees or do I mean the students had met him before and said “Yes, we know.” 

And the new teacher went to the door turned and cried “Well, if you know what I'm going to teach you today, if you know what you're going to learn, then why am I here?” 

And he left. And now all of those gathered were perplexed. 

Well, after that my book got published. Mario had put me in touch with Mike Burghall who edited many of Mario's books in the Delta series. And now Mike Burghall edited both of my books, the first one being Spontaneous Speaking. And it was all thanks to Mario. Within days it was in process. And Mario got my first article published in HLTmag which I've contributed to on many occasions thanks to Mario and Hania. So, Mario was active in making it happen for me that I could become a teacher trainer and he invited me to conferences to speak for Pilgrims. And he gave me every encouragement and seemed to have no doubt that it would all be okay, which was extraordinary  because I was so new to it all. So many influences. It was the times of Neural Linguistic Programming, um, Howard Gardener and Multiple Intelligences, using mother tongue: all of these ideas that Mario was bringing from all feeder fields and bringing to the world of EFL. And I was gladly learning as well. 

I remember once I was with Mario in those days and he had a bag full of books that he was pulling along on wheels and I grabbed the bag from him and started pulling it along and he said, "What are you doing?" 

And I said, "Well, I'm just giving you a hand." 

And he said, "I'm not that old." 

And he was astounded. What a what an impudance that this young man, I was 40, was grabbing the bag of a man who was the same age as I am now. I mean it's a ridiculous notion but I just wanted to show respect to this elder who was giving me so much wisdom. I felt um..

That teacher came back to the classroom and all of the students were gathered. They were wondering what would happen. They were ready. There were even more students than there had been before. The room was crammed full of students from other classes, too. And the teacher stood at the front and said, "Do you know what you're going to learn today?" 

And the students were prepared. Half of them said yes and half of them said no. And the teacher walked to the door, turned, and with a slight smirk said, "Well, I then suggest that those who know tell those who don't know, why am I here?" And he left. 

Well, some of you might recognize this as a Nasrudin Hodja story from Western Asia, and it is, slightly adapted. But it feels very appropriate to be telling a Nasrudin story when I heard Mario himself tell the story about finding the keys where there's light, or rather not finding the keys because that's not where Nasrudin had left them. And he told that story in different languages. And that was again one of those impactful moments. 

Mario's workshops acted as a model for me of how to pack a workshop full of activities, which was unusual and still is even more unusual these days. And I strive to take a leaf out of Mario's book in that regard. But I don't think I've ever packed as many activities into one workshop at IATEFL or any other conference as Mario has always managed to do. 

So, other images: Sophie sitting on the sofa with my wife Tammy and my boys Tom and Sam when they were little, while and and knitting and talking and having a cosy time while Mario and I were at the Society for Storytelling Gathering which happened in Exeter one year. Mario wanted to have that input from the storytelling world and, like me, often enjoyed stories told not by the smooth honed professionals but by those who were struggling to get their ideas out but did it with such authenticity, just like learners of English.

I loved when I stayed at Mario's house his book about hitchhiking that really resonated. I was a very ardent hitchhiker as a young man. 

Mario's handwriting, scrawled over articles that he himself had written and then photocopied and passed around to people he thought might be interested. I was always eager to read more of Mario's words.

Writing, creative writing: what an influence! The last workshop I went to at IATEFL that Mario led was all about creative writing and what insights we gathered in those few minutes together about ourselves and the people we partnered! 

Thank you, Mario Rinvolucri, for taking me on a journey, through your ideas, through your presence, through your friendship.  And I know that I'm not the only one, having read all of the wonderful tributes and memories in Humanizing Language Teaching, in today's Voices, which just came out. We owe it. We owe so much to your innovation and your your feeding from so many fields of interest and and expertise into the world of English language teaching. 

Muchas gracias.

David