On the 14th of December, IATEFL's Materials Writing Special Interest Group (MaWSIG) will be holding their first online festival. Inspired by a recent online romance literary festival from Harper Collins, the festival will be a free event, open to everyone, to explore current themes in the world of English Language Teaching and materials development. The [...]
Last week Sophie attended MaWSIG's (IATEFL's Materials Writing Special Interest Group) first meet-up. And as she's part of the organising committee we thought it would be a good chance to find out more about the event and how it went. What is MaWSIG? The International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Langauge has special interest [...]
On Monday 10th November MaWSIG will be hosting their first meetup event in London. The aim of the night is for members to socialise and network with each other as well as commissioning editors from the elt publishing industry. The evening will also include a short talk by Nick Tims about the Society of Authors, [...]
In a five-part blog series I have been proposing to answer the question: Is English the ultimate global language? This is the fifth and final post of this blog series. Read posts 1, 2, 3 and 4 to catch up. In part 4 I considered how the English language has evolved to become a prime [...]
In a five-part blog series I am proposing to answer the question: Is English the ultimate global language? Read posts 1, 2 and 3 to catch up. In part 3 of this blog series, I explained how English has become the lingua franca (a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a [...]
In a five-part blog series I am proposing to answer the question: Is English the ultimate global language? Read part 1 to this blog series if you've missed it. Part 2: Esperanto – a universal language? There are somewhere between 3000 and 6000 languages spoken worldwide. Whilst a language makes the individuals that speak it unique, [...]
Part 1: Introduction In February 2012, I proudly handed in my university dissertation – 20% of my final Graphic Design degree. It was entitled “How an increase in world transport and tourism has created a greater demand for concise cross-cultural signage”. (Quite a mouthful, I know.) In this dissertation I explored the relationship between language, [...]
Last week Sophie, along with 1000's of other ELT professionals, congregated in Harrogate for IATEFL's 2014 conference. Along with helping to run the Material Writing SIG's first ever Pre Conference Event Writing for Digital and SIG Day Sophie was also asked to speak on the Future of ELT at eltjam.com's IATEFL fringe event. Below is a [...]
Next week 1,000's of ELT professionals, from all over the world, will be making their way to Harrogate for the 48th IATEFL (International Association of Teaching English as a Foreign Language) conference. And joining them is us! Sophie will be at IATEFL all week, kicking off by helping to organise the first Materials Writing Special [...]
On Tuesday 1st April IATEFL's Materials Writing Special Interest Group (MaWSIG) will hold its first ever Pre-Conference Event at IATEFL's yearly international conference. It's going to be a really hands-on and interesting day discussing the latest thinking on Writing for Digital. Guest speakers are: Lucy Norris, Jeremy Day, Kath Bilsborough and Laurie Harrison. As ELT publishing continues its [...]