THE British Council is continuing its search for excellence in English language teaching (ELT) this year with a new international category in its annual innovation awards for ELT products and services, or “Eltons”, which are the Oscars of the ELT world.
“Eltons” are offered to outstanding new language learning resources, which use innovative ideas to help learners of English to achieve their goals, or to innovative research, which has clear practical benefits for English language teaching. The awards are both a celebration of excellence in ELT and an incentive to the industry to keep on developing new products.
For the past six years, the “Eltons” have only been awarded to British innovation. But this year, the new international category celebrates the scope of high quality ELT products and services developed outside of the UK. Nominees from Spain, France, UAE, India, Thailand and Nigeria have been included.
Eighteen entries have been shortlisted and three winners in the UK category and one winner in the international category will be announced at the awards ceremony in London in March 2008. The shortlist includes a weekly online interactive EFL soap called The Flatmates from the BBC, a course that teaches medics how to break bad news in English and linguistic advice for priests in Nigeria on giving better sermons in English.
