The first Your Turn tour of Austria finished on Tuesday December 4, 2007 in Velden, Carinthia. Your Turn is a course for Austrian schoolchildren, and we had great fun introducing it to a large number of Austrian teachers in nine different locations (Götzis, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Linz, Krems, Vienna, Eisenstadt, Graz and Velden).

‘We’ is the Langenscheidt team from Vienna, together with many members of our writing and advising team. We were thrilled to be joined ‘on stage’ by Herbert Kerzendorfer (from Lower Austria), Laura Bergmann (from Graz), Georg Hellmayr and Stephan Waba from Vienna and Günther Ihrenberger from the Tyrol. Stephan and Laura were able to tell people how they have been getting on teaching Your Turn in their lessons, Georg talked about his role as the Teachers' Book author, workbook co-author Gaynor Ramsey joined us in Vienna, and the other members of the team were there to explain why we took the decisions we did - and what fun we had doing it.

The presentations were greatly enhanced by film clips of children in Vienna and Graz being taught using Your Turn. You can see two of these short clips at the end of this article.

We were lucky that our evenings started and concluded with the singing of Sonja Romei (click here to see her singing her compositions with one of her bands: she is also a member of the fabulous a capella girls’ group 4she). Sonja sang two of Rotta’s songs (Rotta is a space creature who appears in our course when the children are 10 and 11). Sonja has a lovely voice and charmed everyone who heard her.

It is interesting to do a nine-venue presentation. It allows you to reflect on how the evenings went, just as experienced teachers reflect when they come out of lessons. As a result we frequently made changes between one presentation and another, sometimes including more activities or changing the sequence of events. It made the whole process invigorating and enjoyable. Each stop on the tour was like a new event for us!

Of course we couldn’t have done it on our own. And we didn’t. We were managed - and helped to show our material - by a team from Sonovista films, led by Melissa Saavedra. Without them we wouldn’t have been able to do half of what we did.

 But best of all, from a personal point of view, I got to know more and more Austrian teachers, and to learn more and more about a country that is becoming increasingly important in my life.