It’s been a while! Thought I’d get the news and views back up and running. Where to start?

Well, it can’t be with research. I haven’t read any research into materials development in the last few months. Just been super busy. So I guess I’ll start with…

New releases

I was looking forward to this one (you can check it out here), but having delved into the syllabus a bit more, I realise it’s not what I expected. I thought it was going to have much more oomph on the subject content front, going into academic and discipline-specific language. I got the wrong end of the stick, it looks more Tier 1 vocab and quite general (more MFLy) topics. Still looks good though.

This one from Sergio Pantoja:

Check it out here.

Hall Houston’s latest book:

See my review here.

Christopher Graham’s latest book for Wayzgoose Press:

Check out my review here.

A new one from ELT Teacher to Writer by Sue Kay:

Find out more here.

I think this is a new one from Teresa Bestwick and Prime Press, but not 100% sure…

This CLIL book is definitely new(ish). Find out more here.

Finally, OUP are partnering with Century Tech to create adaptive learning resources. Find out more here.

IH CLIL course!

Here’s my old buddy Katja promoting the IH Introduction to Teaching CLIL course.

What a legend. I haven’t seen her for 11 years, since our Yangsan days. Time flies. Anyhow, ELT Planning readers get an exclusive discount on the course! Check out the link in the recommended resource section.

New materials writing course

John Hughes and Kath Bilborough are running a new training course on writing ELT materials. You can find out all the info on their site, click here. There are quite a few vids about materials development on their YouTube channel now too, I need to catch up on those.

Blog posts

• Kath Bilsborough on packagers
• Russ Mayne’s last post from easily one of the best ELT blogs out there. Sad to see it go.
• 20 years of Ellii (formerly ESL Library). Read the CEOs post here. Ellii have recently partnered with Bridge Education Group.
• Adri on working with assessment criteria.
• Is grammar the alcohol of ELT? via Jamie Keddie
• A review of Dorothy Zemach’s latest book, via Martin at TEFL in Colombia.

Things I’ve written about materials writing since the last news and views:

• An imaginary conversation about ‘friends’ who want to get into materials writing
• Reflections on how I approach the brief when writing samples
• Reflections on going freelance
• Reflections on where my writing opportunities come from
• An imaginary conversation about writing ESP resources
• An overview of EAL resources on Ellii. This was an awesome project to help get off the ground.
• An imaginary conversation about lost contracts
• An imaginary conversation about being ghosted by publishers

Jo Gakonga

Jo promoted her video creation course on my blog last year. There’s a new iteration of the course coming up I think! Check out her showcase post here.

Randall’s Cyber Listening Lab

Here’s a blast from the past! I remember this site from my time in Korea. How about you?

MaWSIG PCE line-up

NILE Materials Development module

Huge congrats to Anthony Schoch for getting a Distinction on the Materials Development for Language Education module through NILE. Anthony summarized his take-home points on materials development from the course, useful thoughts:

Somewhat connected, as Anthony focused on the text-driven approach quite a bit… I saw this cool infographic doing the rounds:

Shared via Ross Mulkern at Bath Academy.

Memorial for Vicki Hollett

Zoom link here.

Sponge Chat with Martin East

I’m more bookmarking this one as I still haven’t got around to watching it. A chat about TBLT with Martin East.

Another one I’m bookmarking: Materials that make a difference – task variety (Silvina Mascitti).

ELTons

Tracey Gibbins shared this news of a judge’s commendation for a book she worked on.

I saw that Ethan Mansur and Riccardo Chiappini won for their book on mediation. So happy for them!

Multilingua FC

The British Council showcased Multilingua in a recent podcast on learning English through football.

Metacognition in Language Learning

A free download of a book on Metacognition in Language Learning and Teaching (published 2018). Shared by Sandy Millin.

Avallain Author Training

I’ve seen a few other people sharing their certificates for this training course recently. Here is my review of the course in case you missed it. I haven’t done a news and views since writing that, wow.

ChatGPT

Everyone’s talking about ChatGPT. My favourite thing about it is… wait, I have no idea. All I keep seeing is this:

Can you criticize coursebooks if you’ve written a few of them?

Scott Thornbury’s views, via the Teacher Talking Time podcast.

Instructional Design Course

I did that Instructional Design for Course Creation course on Eduflow. Really good. Check it out here if interested.

Spotted!

Found our book in Se-ed, Kinokuniya AND Asia Books over here. Royalties are in, time to crack open a Beer Lao.

Twenix

I don’t know much about this site…

But I have seen that Tim Warre has been writing some courses for it, which probably means the content is good! Find out more here.

Recently I’ve been…

• Writing my first ever scope and sequence
• Writing lots and lots of guidance on formative assessment
• Talking at a conference (whaaaat?)
• Turning down good work, unfortunately. I just didn’t have the time. Typical – all comes at once.
• Co-authoring a self-published resource… Watch this space!

If you only read one materials writing related thing this month…

Dr Amina Douidi has put together a list of DEI consultants in ELT. Well worth sharing with your publishing contacts. I’ve passed it on to one of my commissioning editors who said it’s super useful.

Click here for more info.

Categories: General, materials writing

Tags: book reviews, ChatGPT, DEI, materials writing, news and views