British Council Award for ELT Writing - 'Teaching Spelling' awarded Special Commendation

I am delighted to tell you that my book, Teaching Spelling to English Language Learners, has just won an award. It has been given a Special Commendation in the British Council Award for ELT Writing.

The British Council Award for ELT Writing

The inaugural British Council Award for ELT Writing is a £1,000 award that recognises an outstanding contribution by an English Language Teaching author or authors, and is administered by the Society of Authors.

The judges said my book:

"confronts the apparent vagaries of the English spelling system with both diligence and charm ... ground-breaking ... makes a potentially dry topic fascinating"

and they called it

"a little gem of a book".

Nice, eh?

Below are some photos from the Society of Authors Awards Party where I received the great news:

 Receiving the award from Clare Tomalin.

There it is!

 So happy!!!

 With winners Michael Swan and Catherine Walter

My book on display with other prize winners 

(most of them fiction, not ELT)

All the prize winners .

The judges were Ingrid Freebairn, Judy Garton-Springer and Alan Maley.

Johanna

https://plus.google.com/u/0/113434236014721990067?rel=author

Audio downloads

If you've got a copy of Teaching Spelling to English Language Learners, I've got good news for you! You can now download audio mp3 files for some of the activities ... for free! Just click on the appropriate links on the Downloads page.

The dictations are read like this:
1) The full text at a slow natural pace.
2) Chunks of text repeated, with pauses for learners to write.
3) The full text at a slow natural pace for checking.

You will just hear other texts once.

They are all mp3 files, so you should be able to play them in class on a computer, mp3 player or burn them onto a disc.