Materials writing news and views, March 2020

By Pete on March 11, 2020 • ( 0 )

One-year anniversary of these posts. Cool!

New releases

Congrats to Billie Jago, who has authored these practice tests for Cambridge C1 Advanced:

This is the first time I’ve come across the publisher Prosperity Education. Looks like they are mainly exam-focused, and they seem to like having smiley people on the front of their books.

Didn’t come across any other releases this month, feel free to add them in the comments.

Oh no, wait! I saw Bernardo Morales post on LinkedIn about ‘Practice and Pass A2 KEY for Schools’ (via Delta Publishing). Link to book here.

COVID-19

Work-from-home policies have been introduced by some publishers in response to Coronavirus. No announcement yet re: IATEFL but other conferences around the world are being cancelled (example) and publishers are cancelling talks/scaling back on unnecessary travel. Only essential travel permitted across teaching centres here in Bangkok. UPDATE: TESOL 2020 cancelled now too.

A lot of learning sites/apps are offering free access to help out those switching to online teaching. I won’t link to any – you can’t miss them on social media.

Alphabet Publishing

Alphabet Publishing are crowd-funding through kickstarter for their latest book. See here.

Fun Skills webinar

There’s a webinar on Friday 13^th March on genuine skills development for Starters, Movers, Flyers. Promo for the Fun Skills range by the looks of it. There seems a lot of focus on developing skills/strategies at Primary level these days, especially where I teach (British Council). It’s worth glancing over the rest of the key features of that book though (see link above). Topic-led learning at that age/level? Maybe I spend too much time around international school primary educators, but I’m not sure that approach is popular these days. Thoughts?

Delta Publishing webinars

Two of these coming up. I like the sound of the first one: Principles and practices of cooperative learning (Jason Anderson).

MaWSIG stuff

A few new posts on the MaWSIG site from Feb, which I don’t think I linked to before. This one on moving away from exams dominance in YL materials is a good Q+A.

Garnet and Quizlet

Garnet Education have partnered with Quizlet (announcement here). I guess they’ll be links to study sets (etc) in their new resources. Surely they can’t be the first publisher to do this, right? I mean, Quizlet has been around for ages…

I’d like to see a publisher partner with Wordwall. If Wordwall add a flashcard feature then they are probably Quizlet+1, and YLs go mad for the games. The multiplayers are too slow though, Quizlet Live much better. Apart from the issues on QL with images not loading ☹

Editor’s choice

Congrats to Marek from TEFL Equity. His article on ELF is Editor’s Choice for ELT Journal. This means it’s free to access! Seven principles for writing materials for English as a lingua franca.

Coursebook analysis

I came across this analysis of three coursebooks (Passport, Active, Touchstone) from Christine Pemberton (2018). Worth a look.

Project-based learning

I’ve been reading up a bit on project-based learning as the new British Council Secondary product fits that mould. Here’s a good article on how project-based learning focusing on drama promotes speaking skills. Open access, wohoo!

ELT Publishing Professionals featured freelancer

ELT PP are offering members the chance to become a featured freelancer. This involves doing a short video interview which will be circulated to the ELTPP mailing list crammed full of writers, editors and publishers. Sounds like good promo.

Reviews

NILE Membership – includes a few tools for writers (here)

ELT Publishing Professionals (here)

Jobs

There was a public call on LinkedIn for Primary teachers with an AmE accent for a new project with Pearson. Connect with Joanna Wiles on LinkedIn for that one.

A lot of roles at Macmillan right now – Development Editor (Adults) looks like a good one.

Itdi.pro courses

Creating ELT Materials course for 2020 is coming up, as is Self-Publishing for ELT Professionals. Take a look at the site for details (here).

Incidentally, there is currently a course running on task-based language teaching with Marcos Benevides. I attended the first session which was live-streamed on FB. Pretty good! Prob too late to sign up now but keep your eyes peeled for a rerun…