Resources by title

Click on the banners below to find online resources specific to these Cambridge titles:

Blog

And the winner is...

28.Feb.08

Eric looks at the upcoming British Council Innovation Awards

Seems like this is the time of year for award celebrations. Some of you may have stayed up into the wee small hours to watch the Coen brothers clean up at the Oscar ceremonies. I’m now looking forward to watching No Country for Old Men – the Coen brothers are without doubt my favourite filmmakers.

Closer to home the ELT equivalent to the Oscars are now about to take place, namely the British Council Innovation Awards, also known as the Eltons. In their 6th year now, the Eltons bring together both British and international movers and shakers and serve to highlight what’s new and great in the industry.

There are two sets of awards: one for UK-based organisations or individuals, and one for international organisations or individuals. In both cases there are three categories for which awards will be given. These are:

ELT research
ELT materials e.g. coursebooks, supplementary materials; resource books for teachers
ELT products and services e.g. English language courses, examinations.

As with the Oscars there are nominations for each category, and Cambridge University Press has been nominated for two awards. The first is for a title already featured as Book of the Month on this site ─ Good Practice. It has a highly communicative approach to teaching doctors and medical students, and focuses on the skills needed to make consultations with patients more effective. Good Practice comes with an excellent DVD that lets students observe a range of doctor-patient encounters.

And if you haven’t already, you should listen to the podcast where the authors of Good Practice talk about the importance of cultural awareness for medical practioners.

The second nominated title is World Englishes which, with an accompanying audio CD, is a very useful addition to any teacher’s toolkit both for reference purposes and as a classroom resource. It is a highly pertinent book for English teachers since it discusses different ‘flavours’ of English and their implications for us in the classroom. The author, Andy Kirkpatrick, in particular disagrees with the view that English should be taught monolingually and that the ideal teacher is a monolingual native speaker. He argues that being multilingual and knowing the language of their students should be seen as important strengths for any language teacher.

I think the following quote from World Englishes is particularly interesting:

‘It is hard to conceive of any other field in which a powerful part of the profession could seriously argue that teachers with a limited knowledge of the subject should be employed ahead of those with a wider knowledge of it. But when arguing that monolingual native speakers are ideal language teachers, the language teaching profession is in danger of doing just that.’

I would be very interested in hearing what you have to say about this. Email me and let me know what you think

The award ceremony is always a good place to see old friends and make new ones and is inevitably a great party. This year’s event will take place on 6 March and the results are usually announced the same evening or the day after. I’ll be there, though, so will also be posting the results shortly thereafter.

All the best

Eric