November 2004
Lithuania
Debate Contest
The student debating championship "Vilnius Rotary International 2004" took place in the Law University of Lithuania (5-7 November). There were 20 teams participating (with 40 debaters) and about 30 judges and other participants from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus and Ukraine. Representatives of Rotary International and the member of the President's Valdas Adamkus team, Arnoldas Pranckevicius, were guests of honour.
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Using the British parliamentary debating style, students debated various resolutions: 'This house believes in a European language'; 'The final is near'; 'Politicians should stop buying their voters' among others. The winners of the tournament were students from the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) Riga, who were awarded with 12
Macmillan English Dictionaries. Prizes were given to finalists from Ukraine, Vilnius University, Kaunas University of Technology and SSE Riga.
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October 2004
Russia
Michael Rundell just returned from
a very successful visit to Moscow and St Petersburg, where he
spoke about the Macmillan dictionaries and linguistics and
lexicography in general. The tour included eight lecture sessions,
to an audience of over 300 in the case of one at the Moscow
Linguistics University, as well as an impromptu class with a big
group of 16 year olds, "definitely the most scary assignment
of the lot", according to Michael!
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September 2004
Jordan
Demonstrations of Macmillan dictionaries were included in three sessions in Amman, Jordan run by Cairo-based teacher trainer, Jon French. Jacqueline Sabri, Macmillan's representative in Jordan, ran a prize draw for the participants to win a copy of the
Macmillan English Dictionary and goody-bag.
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September 2004
Kenya
Gwyneth's Kenya tour
Gwyneth Fox enjoyed a hugely successful tour around Kenya, including
Nakura, Nairobi and Machakas. She gave daily workshops to between 70 and 125 teachers, which were also attended by provincial school inspectors. She spoke on how learners’ dictionaries are written and why they include the information that they do, and incorporated a number of different activities. Her audiences were hugely enthusiastic, enjoyed participating in the activities and question-and-answer sessions, and the workshops generated a huge amount of interest in the
Macmillan English and Macmillan School Dictionaries. Gwyneth also attended the Nairobi Book Fair at the Sarit Centre with Mary
Mbuthia, Sales and Marketing Manager at Macmillan Kenya.
Macmillan Kenya also organised a press conference, with about a dozen members of the media, including newspapers, magazines, radio and television. She and David
Muita, Managing Director of Macmillan Kenya, appeared on TV, and there were photos the following day in the papers.
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September 2004
Poland
IATEFL Poland 2004
The Macmillan Poland team excelled themselves again with a wonderful stand at the IATEFL Poland Conference, which took place at the Foreign Languages Department of the Wroclaw University of Technology. They celebrated five years of Macpolska with a Macmillan anniversary cake, and
Michael Hoey's plenary was the highlight of the conference, enjoying a long standing ovation.
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August 2004
Estonia and Latvia
Gwyneth's Baltic tour
On 19th August Gwyneth Fox paid her first visit to the Baltics. She gave two talks at a two-day Summer Seminar of Estonian Association of Teachers of English in Pärnu, Estonia. “The Attraction of Words” went deep into the collocations speakers of English use in their everyday speech. “Using Dictionaries in the ELT Classroom” gave ideas how to make more use of a dictionary in one's language studies and highlighted the advantages of the
MED. She received a warm welcome from the attendants and questions by individual teachers followed.
Two days later, on 21st August Gwyneth talked in Riga, Latvia, at the big LATE Conference. There her topic was dedicated to metaphors which play an important role in our language, their culture-specificness and why metaphors can be somewhat confusing to learners of English. Gwyneth was a guest of honour at the reception sponsored by Macmillan.
At both conferences there were sales of Macmillan courses, dictionaries and other study material.
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August 2004
The Macmillan English Dictionary on the BBC World Service
The Macmillan English Dictionary featured prominently in the last of a six-part radio series from the BBC World Service called 'Innovations in Teaching'. This series looked at challenges and changes in the world of ELT and suggested innovative ideas and products for teachers to take away.
The episode, 'Reference revolution' discussed what goes into producing a dictionary, and why English language dictionaries are at the forefront of the Reference Revolution. Cherry Gough, Deputy Director of ELT (Research and Innovation) at the British Council, spoke about why they had chosen the
MED range as the winner of the 2004 Innovation
Awards:
“The thing that we really liked about the Macmillan dictionary was that to start with, the data seemed to be very good: it was based on a language corpus, and was completely up to date – that’s very important... We also liked the usability of it... We felt that the dictionary from the learner’s point of view gave the important information about a word first, and gave it clearly. And then the other thing was that it was backed up with a whole range of other information sources. We felt that they’d looked with a fresh pair of eyes at each aspect of the dictionary and produced it to the highest standards.”
Sue Bale, International ELT Publishing Director at Macmillan explained what Macmillan had set out to do with the
MED, and gave a demonstration to listeners of the key features.
Innovations in Teaching was a BBC English production for BBC World Service. It was written and presented by Warrill
Grindrod, Production Consultant and Trainer for BBC English, with studio production by Series Editor, Frances Cox.
To hear the programme in full, click here.
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14th May 2004
Macmillan sponsors the English-Speaking Union International Public Speaking Competition Final
For the second year running, Macmillan awarded copies of the Macmillan English Dictionary to all 60 finalists in the recent ESU International Public Speaking Competition, held at South Africa House in London. The competition is an annual event which brings together the individual winners of national competitions organised by the ESU network in 34 countries. The theme of this year's final was 'A Borderless World'.
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Pictured here is Patricia Evangelista from the Philippines, who won the competition with her speech Blond and Blue Eyes.
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April 2004
38th International Annual IATEFL Conference
Liverpool, UK
Visitors to the 38th Annual IATEFL Conference were seeing red this month thanks to Macmillan’s prominently placed stand at the main entrance to the event. As expected, the conference played host to a wealth of international delegates and boasted a full programme of presentations from some of the world’s most renowned ELT authors, lexicographers and ELT specialists.
Macmillan’s own authors appeared at the conference to speak about some of the company’s best-selling titles.
Pete Sharma gave a presentation on the benefits to teachers of the Macmillan Essential Dictionary CD-ROM, and the Macmillan Dictionaries' Chief Advisor,
Prof. Michael Hoey gave a paper on ‘writing better academic prose’.
Macmillan hosted a party on the second night of the conference and what better theme to choose than The Beatles for a Liverpudlian event. The party was hosted at the famous
Cavern club, a regular venue for Beatles gigs in the early 1960s. More than 400 people managed to squeeze into the venue to enjoy the free wine and food not to mention music from The
Beatalls, Liverpool’s best Beatles tribute band. ELT delegates packed the dance floor to show off their dance moves and request their favourite Beatles songs. The party was an ideal opportunity to celebrate the success of the Macmillan English Dictionaries range of products at the
British Council Innovation Award ceremony in March.
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Seeing red - The Macmillan stand at this year's IATEFL
conference
The party in full swing during Macmillan's packed
IATEFL event at the Cavern Club
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The IATEFL festivities did not end with the Macmillan party. On Thursday evening
Prof. Michael Hoey (member of the Campaign for Real Ale,
CAMRA) led 60 delegates from the conference on a pub crawl around central Liverpool.
As always the IATEFL conference was a great event and we hope to see you next year in Cardiff!
To find out more about the annual IATEFL conference click
here.
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April 2004
Hungary
Macmillan Hungary sponsors English Speaking Union competition
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Macmillan sponsored the English Speaking Union's Public Speaking Competition in Hungary at the British Embassy in Budapest on 16th April. Each of the 12 finalists received a
Macmillan Essential Dictionary, and the winner, Aniko Balint from Budapest, was given a copy of the
Macmillan English Dictionary with CD-ROM (winner of the ESU English Language Book Award 2002). The jury included Jim McGrath, director of The British Council in Hungary, and the prizes were given out by John Nichols, the British Ambassador.
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Aniko Balint receiving her dictionary from Petra Vanik,
manager of Macmillan in Hungary.
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April 2004
Hungary
The Macmillan Hungary
team held their 13th Methodology Conference for teachers of English in Budapest on Saturday, 3rd April. After 12 successful conferences, the Ministry of Education’s World Language Programme supported the conference this year. The opening ceremony took place in the main hall of Almássy téri Szabadidő Központ. Mr Jim McGrath, the director and cultural attaché of the British Council in Budapest, gave an opening speech. The various talks and workshops held in Madách Imre Gimnázium included a presentation of the award-winning
Macmillan English Dictionaries by Péter Rádai.
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Stop
Press
The
Guardian
Weekly's report on the British Council Innovation Awards is
now online.
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On March 4th, the Macmillan
English Dictionary
triumphed at a
glittering ceremony for the British
Council Innovation Awards for English Language Teaching
products and services. The awards were held at the Delfina
Gallery, a stylish London venue, and have come to be known
as "Eltons", the Oscars of the ELT world.
MED's
success was celebrated with a champagne reception for staff at
Macmillan Education in Oxford the following day.
The MED range of products and online services was
one of the three main winners, and was summed
up by one judge as "a really impressive piece of work".
Judges took account of the complete range, including the CD-ROM,
Network and Online
editions, magazine and e-lesson
service, as well as the book
itself.
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Sue Bale and
Michael Rundell on stage with Elton Photo
courtesy of Greig Fensome © British Council 2004
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The
British Council Innovation Awards are offered to outstanding new
language learning resources which use innovative ideas to help
learners of English to achieve their goals. The awards were the
first in a series of events marking the 70th
anniversary of the British Council.
This
award is the latest addition to the Macmillan English
Dictionary's already crowded mantelpiece, and it's a tribute
to the inspiration and ongoing commitment of Macmillan's
outstanding dictionary team led by Sue Bale (Publishing
Director), Gwyneth Fox
(Dictionaries Publisher) and Michael
Rundell
(Editor in Chief).
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The stage is set
before the ceremony
Photo courtesy of Greig Fensome © British Council 2004
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The Macmillan
English Campus was singled out for a special
commendation by
the judges - "a
genuinely innovative
product". The
twelve shortlisted innovations also included Keith Johnson's Designing
Language Teaching Tasks from Palgrave Macmillan.
The
high-profile award for MED and commendation for Campus
provide recognition of Macmillan’s ongoing pioneering and
innovative publishing programmes, and reaffirm the company's
position as a market leader in the ELT world.
MED's
fellow award-winners were Richard Cauldwell's Streaming
Speech, and Natural Grammar by Scott Thornbury,
who also wrote Uncovering
Grammar for Macmillan. Click here
to read the official press release.
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