materials writing

Lesson Share Winner!

I don’t often win things – just like the football team I support! However, I was lucky enough to be the Onestopenglish Lesson Share winner for February. Woohoo! Check out the competition here.

What was the lesson?

Resources based on my own short story called ‘Instant Coffee’. The resources should last around 2.5 hours of class time. They follow a text-driven approach (see my lesson here). B2 Level +.

The short story in 10 words…

Popular social media foodographer gets ‘eye camera implant’. It malfunctions.

I was really chuffed that Onestopenglish chose to edit and share my lesson. Some reasons why… (more…)

Materials writing news and views, April 2019

April update has got a bit long, sorry. It’s mainly because of IATEFL and ELTONS.

 IATEFL talks

There were some interesting talks related to materials writing. Equality, diversity and inclusion was certainly a theme.

Two interesting points from John Gray’s talk, Gender and sexuality in ELT…

  • Gray notes from his analysis of 10 top-selling ELT textbooks that there was ‘a blanket avoidance of any LGBT representation’
  • He promotes ‘… a collective effort on behalf of teachers, teacher trainers, materials writers, textbook reviewers, etc to come together to create learning environments that address gender and sexual diversity.’

View the talk here. (more…)

Materials writing news and views, March 2019

A longer post this month – some overspill from the last post and then happenings over the last few weeks…

What’s new out recently?

Here are some recent coursebooks from publishers that I’ve clocked mainly on LinkedIn…

  • Oxford Uni Press have a new Pre-Primary series out – Archie’s World (shared by Jen Dobson). That link suggests it’s for the Spanish market, but I’m not sure.
  • Macmillan released Language Hub earlier in the year, and were promoting this at the English UK Academic Conference. I was involved in the digital content for the product so it’s great to see it on the market…

(more…)

Materials writing news and views, Feb 2019

Thought I’d start sharing a semi-regular post on materials writing for those (semi-)interested. Just news, views, jobs I see and stuff. Whatever, don’t know yet!

9 ways to get noticed by an ELT publisher

This is a new blog post from Atena Juszko, ELT Editor. It has some really useful ideas and some good links. The ones for publisher blogs might be of interest to some. I do/have done most of the stuff on the list, but I shy away from presenting at conferences. I might do more in the future, who knows. Anyway, useful post. Atena mentioned an old post of mine about writing for ELT magazines – I saw a tweeter share this recent post from Tim Thompson on the same topic, which may be useful for those looking to build their presence in the industry.

Digital Learning Associates

I have an article coming up in ETPro about the benefits of having a LinkedIn account for materials writers. While that won’t sound particularly riveting to most, I had a useful ‘LinkedInteraction’ (see what I did there…?) last week. A new contact had some work with ‘Digital Learning Associates’ listed on their work history. I did some research on these guys and some speculative emailing. Turns out…

  • they are keen to hear from video narrators/editors in the industry, so get in touch if this is your thing
  • they have an online platform of video-based resources, which sounds good. They’re going to let me review it, so watch this space if interested
  • they produce quite a bit of video-based content for big publishers. I wondered where a lot of that came from…

Anyway, they look like a company worth checking out. (more…)

Webinar notes: What about principles for materials development? (Brian Tomlinson)

Here is Brian Tomlinson’s recent webinar in written form: ‘What about principles for materials development?’ The session was delivered as part of the MaWSIG ‘What about…? Webinar series. It was full of take home points so this post is pretty long! (more…)

Developing into a materials writer

Here are a few general tips for skills to develop if you’d like to write for publishers or big teaching organisations.

This is not a ‘How to become….’ post. You can find good tips about how to actually get into materials writing here and here. Also there are more general tips here. (more…)