Romania
The 10^th anniversary Gaudeamus International Book and Education Fair (26^th-30^th November 2003) attracted 75,000 visitors. With the help of the blimp, the Macmillan Dictionaries were once again the stars of the event.

The President and the Prime Minister were each presented with a copy of the Macmillan English Dictionary.

Network Edition of MED CD-ROM is published
We're pleased to announce the publication of the long-awaited network edition of the award-winning MED CD-ROM, which comes hot on the heels of MED Online and completes the range of MED products and services.

MED Network offers all the features of the original CD-ROM, and it's available in both British English and American English versions. It's been designed with complete flexibility in mind, so the standard licence for 10 simultaneous users can be upgraded easily for 25, 50 or more users.

Click here for more information about MED Network, or e-mail your enquiry to mednetwork@macmillan.com.

October 2003
Iraq
The British Head of Mission in Iraq, Christopher Seger, presented a copy of the MED to Dr Wael Noureddin al-Rifaie of the Baghdad University of Technology.

Japan
Gwyneth Fox just returned from a week’s trip to Japan:

“I gave a talk at the British Council in Osaka, and then went to Kansai Gaidai, a university specialising in foreign languages. I’d been there before, on my last visit to Japan in December 2002, and was keen to go back, as they are just about the nicest group of students I’ve ever met. They set up the talk, introduced me, thanked me, and then six or so came out to dinner with us and one of their professors, Professor Akano, a well-known Japanese lexicographer. It was a lovely evening, so friendly, full of chat and laughter, with all the students at least as talkative as me.

I didn’t want to leave Kyoto, but duty called, so I caught an early shinkansen to Tokyo the next morning. In Tokyo I gave a number of talks – but the highlight of my visit was being taken to the Kabuki-za Theatre to see two Kabuki plays, one very traditional and first performed in the 18^th century, the other more light-hearted and written in the 19^th century. This second play was incredible. All Kabuki players are men, and one played seven female parts, with the quickest costume changes you could imagine. It was great fun. I’d wanted to see Kabuki ever since I was at university, so you can imagine what a treat this was for me.  Such a treat that I went back the next day!  And would have done the same thing again if I hadn’t had to return to England. 

I’m already planning my next visit to coincide with the Kabuki season!”

The MED was, according to many, the most talked-about dictionary during the conference. One of the featured speakers, Adam Kilgarriff, cited the dictionary several times in his plenary lecture. Professor Minamide, one of the best-known Japanese lexicographers, mentioned the MED more often than his Japanese-English dictionary in his plenary lecture on English-Japanese lexicography!

Michael Rundell not only featured the MED in his presentation but also used it in his two-day pre-conference workshop. All the 35 attendees were delighted to receive a free copy of the MED during the workshop to put in their official MED conference bag.

Romania
The 3^rd Macmillan Romania Conference, from 5^th-7^th September at the Sala Palatului in Bucharest was as successful as ever with 600 teacher-participants. Gwyneth Fox was one of the four plenary speakers, and generated genuine interest in the dictionaries. She spoke on the importance of corpora to the learner in her plenary talk ‘Doing Things with Words’, and also spoke more specifically about the Macmillan Dictionaries. All plenary speakers appeared on TV.

Professor Michael Hoey       

The Macmillan Polska dictionary stand featured the Macmillan Essential Dictionary - the younger (and smaller) ‘brother’ of the award-winning Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners. The Macmillan representative in Wrocław, Przemek, offered teachers an exciting and instant word-search with the dictionary CD-ROMs.

For more pictures and memories, click here.

Romania
The 3^rd Macmillan Romania Conference (5^th-7^th September 2003) proved to be another real success. 600 English teachers met at Sala Palatului to attend workshops, share experiences and have fun. The plenaries were delivered by Gwyneth Fox, Ken Wilson, Adrian Underhill and Vaughan Jones.

Ever since its debut in 2000, the conference has become more and more attractive and useful to English professionals and according to the feedback received from participants, it can now be considered one of the most important events in Romania involving teachers of English, inspectors, textbook writers and teacher trainers.

MED Online is launched
We're delighted to announce the launch of the online edition of the Macmillan English Dictionary. It's the perfect companion to the award-winning book and CD-ROM.

MED Online allows you to:

• Search both the British English and American English editions of the dictionary
• Listen to the pronunciation of every word in both British and American English
• Use a spellchecker to find the correct spelling of a word
• Double click on any word in the definition to see the appropriate dictionary entry
• Scroll through the entries as easily as you can browse through the book
• Increase your vocabulary with the regularly-updated Word of the Day and New Words features
• Use MED wherever and whenever you're surfing the Net

MED Online is compatible with Apple Macintoshes running OS 9 and above, and IBM-compatible PCs running Windows 95 and above.

It's available free of charge to anyone who already owns the dictionary.

To become a registered user, you need to answer three simple questions about MED. To sign up, please go to www.macmillandictionary.com/online

August 2003
Uruguay
The MED and the Macmillan Essential Dictionary were the talk of the town during the 5th Southern Cone TESOL Convention that took place in Montevideo, Uruguay (23^rd-25^th August) with more than 700 participants from Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

María Ema Mira, a renowned Uruguayan teacher, teacher trainer and presenter was a huge success with her presentation ‘Developing our students' learning strategies: making the most of our dictionaries’, an academic and practical workshop based on the Macmillan English Dictionary. She also presented at the  Insituto Cultural Anglo Uruguayo and for A.U de P.P.I. (the association of private teachers) in October.

María Ema Mira holds the Cambridge University Diploma of English Studies and the UCLES/RSA Diploma in TEFLA . She is an experienced teacher and teacher trainer, having lectured on COTE  and DTEFLA courses. She is a Cambridge oral examiner and IELTS examiner. At present she is doing an MA in Technology and TEFL with the University of Manchester.

The programme is a very popular educational entertainment programme, broadcast every morning and watched by 7 million families all over Korea (SBS statistics). On the Saturday morning programme, a famous celebrity visits the house of a foreign Ambassador to Korea, to introduce their culture, education and history. At the end of the programme, the Ambassador donates something special from their own country. On 5^th July, the programme was broadcast from the British Ambassador's House. He and his wife donated two copies of the MED with a bottle of Scottish Whisky and a bag.

He presented the MED with the words “The world’s greatest English-English dictionary”.

16th May 2003
English-Speaking Union International Public Speaking Competition Final

Macmillan awarded copies of the Macmillan English Dictionary to all 60 finalists in the recent ESU International Public Speaking Competition, held in London. The competition is an annual event which brings together the individual winners of national competitions organised by the ESU network in over 30 countries. Thanks to Macmillan, this was the first year that the ESU had been able to offer each participant a prize.

Pictured here, left to right, are Arthur Krebbers (Best non-native English speaker) from the Netherlands, Palesa Mohapi (Winner) from South Africa and Patrick Caldwell (Runner-up) from Australia.

May 2003
Switzerland
At the Macmillan English Day in Zürich, 60 delegates attended talks including one by Gwyneth Fox. Feedback from teachers was very positive and many said that they immediately tried out dictionary activities with their classes. Gwyneth also gave talks to teachers and students at the University of Lugano, and again at the ETAS SIG Day in Weinfelden. 150 teachers attended this one-day event and we had great feedback on the dictionary.

‘The MED is great’ continues to be the general opinion. Everyone coming across it from the first time is bowled over!

Peru
Macmillan Peru welcomed Michael Rundell with a huge MED banner hung on the façade of a well-known bookshop in Lima. He gave a talk in the presence of VIP ELT Peruvian personalities including government officials, co-ordinators from international schools, deans of universities, bookshops and distributors.

Thailand
Macmillan sponsored the finals of the English Speaking Union Public Speaking Contest in Bangkok which was opened by the Minister of Education. Thirteen finalists competed in the secondary and university categories for a chance to represent Thailand in the UK finals in May. The winners, who spoke on the theme ‘Local Value, Global Worth’ and the first runner up in each category won a copy of the MED.

TESOL Arabia

March 2003
United Arab Emirates
At TESOL Arabia, Macmillan donated copies of the MED as raffle prizes to be drawn each day. The MED was presented at the first conference held by the Ajman Chapter of TESOL Arabia in February to a large audience of tertiary lecturers and schoolteachers, many of whom bought copies of the dictionary at the end of the session.

Morocco
The MED went down such a storm at the Casablanca Bookfair in January that our distributors ran out of copies to sell. Following on from this success, Macmillan sponsored the regional final of the Moroccan Spelling Bee Championship for non-native speakers in Agadir in March.

Click here for more details of the Moroccan Spelling Bee Championship.

Italy
At the British Council conference in Acireale, Sicily, Macmillan gave out 100 dictionaries at a prize draw as teachers clamoured for their copy. Even those who were unlucky still went away happy, owing to the presence of exceptionally good rum babas. Donned in kilts to reinforce the Scottish associations of the name Macmillan, the Macmillan Italy team became celebrities!