Award winners
In First Impressions we take a look at new books, focusing on one particular area of teaching. For this issue we look at award-winning books and explore the world of ELT awards.
Forget
the GRAMMYs on February 1, the BAFTAS on February 8, the BRIT Awards
on February 18 and the Academy Awards on February 22 - the awards ceremony
that the ELT world is waiting for is the ELTons, which takes place in
London on March 4. The ELTons are perhaps the most glamorous of the
ELT awards, but there are others. In this edition of First Impressions
we take a look at the different ELT awards and the books (and other
products) that have won them or are waiting nervously to find out if
they're a 2009 winner.
The ELTons (British Council Innovation Awards) are offered to outstanding new language learning products and services, which use innovative ideas to help learners achieve their goals, or to innovative research which has clear practical benefits for English language teaching. According to the British Council, the awards are both a celebration of excellence in ELT and an incentive to the industry to keep on developing new products.
There are two categories for the ELTons: UK and International. Twelve products are shortlisted from the UK-based entries. Three of these are then selected for an ELTon award by a panel of judges. To give you an idea of the range of products and services that are recognised, last year's UK winners were Learning English Blogs (BBC Learning English), Bookworms Club Reading Circles (Oxford University Press) and The Flatmates (BBC Learning English), the weekly online interactive EFL soap opera.
In
the International category, one winner is chosen from six shortlisted
entries based outside of the United Kingdom. The 2008 winner was The
Vocabulary Course - a collection of blackboard WebCT and paper-based
materials produced by Dubai Women's College in the United Arab Emirates.
The 2009 awards ceremony will take place at the Delfina Gallery in London. The evening begins with a reception, followed by dinner and then the awards ceremony. Each of the winners will receive a £1,000 cash prize along with the famous ELTon statuette.
iT's colleague Lindsay Clandfield was shortlisted last year, so we asked him to describe the evening.
"It's a really good event. You arrive at the gallery and there's a red carpet outside and searchlights shining into the sky, just like at a film premiere. As soon as you walk in, you're handed a cocktail. There are lots of people there - nominees, publishers, people from the British Council. It's a great opportunity to mingle and meet people. Then there's a dinner before the actual awards presentation. By that time, everyone's feeling in a good mood. The great thing is, no-one knows who the winners are until they open the envelope and announce the names. The winners are given statuettes, and then there are the acceptance speeches. It lasts until around midnight."
This year's nominees include Jamie Keddie's TEFLclips, a website dedicated to the possibilities for using YouTube and other video-sharing sites in the classroom; the Consultants-E for EduNation, their free training facility in Second Life; and Cambridge University Press, which has been nominated twice, for its Kid's Box interactive DVD and for Professional English Online, a website providing online support for teachers and trainers of Business English and ESP.
The nominated innovations aren't all online or DVD products. Books can still manage to surprise and innovate. Macmillan's Aviation English is a new course in English language communication skills for pilots and air traffic controllers. And the Oxford Learner's Thesaurus is a synonyms dictionary written especially for learners. Further down the list in the International category you'll find Learn English by Cooking from Poland and The Language Teacher's Survival Handbook from the publishers of this magazine and written by Duncan Foord and ... Lindsay Clandfield. It looks like you're going to another awards ceremony, Lindsay.
You can see a complete list of nominees at www.britishcouncil.org/learning-eltons.htm, where you'll also find details of how to enter for the 2010 awards. Submitting an entry involves completing a very detailed online form explaining why your product is innovative.
The ELTons are sometimes described as the Oscars of ELT, but perhaps they're closer in spirit to the Golden Globes. The Golden Globe Awards ceremony, which is held several weeks before the Oscars, is a much more relaxed and entertaining event than the more formal Academy Awards. The formal ELT equivalent of the Academy Awards would probably be the English Speaking Union (ESU) awards. These are presented at Buckingham Palace, where the atmosphere is rather more restrained.
The English Speaking Union is an international charity founded in 1918 to promote "international understanding and friendship through the use of the English language." There are two ELT ESU awards. The annual ESU President's Award recognises and encourages the widespread and successful use of technology to enhance English teaching and learning worldwide. The award was first presented in 2003, and the judging panel includes experts from the fields of design, technology and English language teaching.
The
"interactive, empowering and educationally useful" Writeonline,
an online word processor produced by Crick Software Ltd., won the 2008
award. According to the judges, Writeonline "creates a learning
environment for the beginner writer and enables teachers to adapt authentic
materials to be of use to learners of varying levels."
The Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Award was founded in the 1970s to recognise the book published in the previous year that has contributed most to the understanding of the English language. The authors and publishers of the 2008 winning entry and highly commended works took part in a presentation ceremony at Buckingham Palace in November 2008. The joint winners were Oxford Student's Dictionary (Oxford University Press) for learners using English to study other subjects and Always On by Naomi S. Baron (Oxford University Press New York).
In
Always On, Naomi S. Baron reveals that online and mobile technologies,
including instant messaging, cell phones, multitasking, Facebook, blogs,
and wikis, are profoundly influencing how we read and write, speak and
listen, but not in the ways we might suppose.
The highly commended entries were the "topical and innovative" Uncovering CLIL by Peeter Mehisto, Maria-Jesus Frigols and David Marsh (Macmillan Education) and How to Teach Listening by JJ Wilson (Pearson Longman), described as "a lucid and useful overview of current thinking."
You can find out how to enter the competition at the English Speaking Union website (www.esu.org), but be warned - there's a price to pay for the privilege of possibly meeting a member of the royal family. Unlike the ELTons, you have to pay a fee to enter for these awards, and there's no prize money.
Last year we entered The Language Teacher's Survival Handbook. It didn't win, even though the judging panel praised it, saying, "Every staffroom should have a copy! The panel concluded that it would make an ideal Christmas stocking book .... A clever idea and would fit nicely into a teacher's toolkit."
So we didn't get to visit Buckingham Palace but Lindsay has come to the rescue again. Not only was his book Dealing with Difficulties, co-authored with Luke Prodromou (Delta Publishing), shortlisted for a 2008 ELTon, it was also highly commended for the ESU Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Award in 2007. So we asked Lindsay how it felt to visit the Palace.
"It was cool. It was very different from the ELTons. It started at 2 p.m. and was finished by 6 p.m. I remember leaving at the end and wondering why it was still daylight. The Duke of Edinburgh presented the awards in a large room at the Palace called The Cinema, which I understand is where the royal family watches films. Then, after the ceremony we went across the Mall to the English Speaking Union headquarters, which is a beautiful old building with a British Empire feel to it. There was a reception, but it was much more low key. The winners received a bowl and we were given a certificate, which I have framed on the wall."
Lindsay
and Luke's book, Dealing with Difficulties, includes more than
150 techniques and activities for dealing with the everyday difficulties
and challenges of teaching. It addresses many of the numerous problems
faced by teachers, including working with large classes, mixed levels,
different learning styles and discipline. Apart from being shortlisted
for an ELTon and being highly commended for the ESU award, it was awarded
the 2007 Ben Warren-International House Trust Prize, beating some stiff
competition, including Jeremy Harmer's How to Teach English.
The Ben Warren-International House Trust Prize is a £2,000 cash prize awarded each year to the author or authors of the most outstanding work in the field of language teacher education. The prize was set up as a memorial to the life and work of Ben Warren, who was largely responsible for the existence of this magazine and was one of the key figures in the growth and development of International House, one of the world's leading language teaching organisations. The first Ben Warren Trust Prize was awarded in 1996; since then it has quickly become established as one of the most highly esteemed awards in its field.
A panel of three judges - two who are representatives from International House and one who is not directly connected with the organisation - evaluate all the entries. The prize-winner is then announced at the annual IATEFL conference.
Last
year the prize was awarded to Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly for their
book How to Teach with Technology (Pearson Longman). The book
is a practical guide for teachers wishing to use new technology in the
classroom. Areas covered include word processors; Internet-based project
work; email and chat; blogs, wikis and podcasts; e-learning and Web
2.0.
This year the shortlist is being decided on February 6, and the prize-winner will be announced at the IATEFL conference in Cardiff in April. And yes, we did enter The Language Teacher's Survival Handbook, so we'll be looking out for that shortlist at the IH website (www.ihes.com/warren).
Unfortunately, we couldn't enter The Language Teacher's Survival Handbook for the Language Learner Literature Award! The Extensive Reading Foundation is a not-for-profit, charitable organisation whose purpose is to support and promote extensive reading. One Foundation initiative is the annual Language Learner Literature Award for the best new works in English. This annual award for graded readers, established in 2004, aims to support the development of language learner literature in English and to encourage extensive reading in language education.
An international jury selects the shortlisted books from among those nominated by publishers. Teachers and students are encouraged to read the finalist books, and to vote for and comment on their favourites. Voting takes place on the Foundation's website during the months of May, June and July. The jury chooses the winning books, taking into account all the votes cast. The winners are announced at the end of August.
There
are winners in different categories. In 2008, Black Cat/Vicens Vives
won in the Young Learners category with Dorothy, written by Paola
Traverso with illustrations by Alida Massari. The book is about Dorothy,
who delivers dreams to adults, children and even pets every night. Usually
everyone gets the dream they want, but one dark night Dorothy can't
see, and she delivers the wrong dreams ....
In choosing the book, the jury noted the quality of this dreamlike fantasy. Voters in Italy called it "intelligent and beautiful", and in Belgium one reader said it was "a great and lovely book. I get lost in the illustrations."
In the Adolescents and Adults category, the winners were Horror Trip on the Pecos River by Paul Davenport (Egmont Easy Readers Aschehoug/Alinea), Billy Elliot by Melvin Burgess (Pearson Longman), and Body on the Rocks by Denise Kirby (Hueber Verlag). You can find more information at www.erfoundation.org.
So how does winning an award affect a book, its author and its publisher? In many ways, being nominated for a prize is a prize in itself. You can add a sticker to your book cover and present your book as a shortlisted title in promotional material. Being associated with an award brings prestige and can help you secure work more easily in the future. Ask any of the actors nominated for an Oscar and they'll tell you the same thing. Apart from the prestige, sometimes it's just nice to know that someone out there appreciates the work you do. Maybe all that work and suffering was worth it. Just maybe ....