Pilgrims is very pleased to announce that Ekaterina Rudenko is the winner of the Humanising Language Teaching Scholarship for the 2011 IATEFL Conference. For more details see the Letters section of this issue

David R Hill to Receive First Milne Innovation Award
Honolulu, 1 November 2010

Prof. Richard R Day, Executive Director of the Extensive Reading Foundation, announced today that Prof. Emeritus David R. Hill, of the University of Edinburgh is the recipient of the first John A. Milne Innovation Award in the service of the Extensive Reading approach to language learning.

Prof. Hill has been the director of the Edinburgh Project in Extensive Reading (EPER) since 1981. He had previously taught English in secondary schools in Uganda, the UK and Malaysia before joining the Institute for Applied Language Studies at Edinburgh University. EPER was the first attempt to set some order to the growing number of "Graded Readers", grouping them into appropriate reading levels, evaluating their quality, placing them into sets suitable for various language proficiency levels and providing teacher support materials for them.

The Award is named in honour of John Milne. As creator of the Heinemann Guided Readers series in the 1970s, Milne believed that the traditional grading of vocabulary and structure was not enough to make a book suitable for language learners. He therefore took a different approach, basing his series on good, clear writing, relevant content, careful explanation and control of information, and intuitive word and structure control. These innovations have been crucial in the development of language learner literature.

The award will be presented to Professor Hill at the ERF Awards Ceremony during the IATEFL Conference in Brighton in April of 2011.

The Extensive Reading Foundation (http://erfoundation.org), founded in 2004, aims to promote Extensive Reading as a highly effective means of language learning. To this end the Foundation offers awards to the best new graded reader titles annually, maintains an annotated bibliography of research into Extensive Reading and conducts other activities to promote research and the implementation of Extensive Reading in schools. The Foundation will sponsor its first World Congress in September of 2011 in Kyoto, Japan.

IMPORTANT

The deadline for the EU funding for Pilgrims Summer Courses is 15th January 2011.

Pilgrims is not yet listed in Comenius database, however, all Pilgrims courses are eligible for EU funding as we are one of the recommended schools for professional training. For more on courses to choose from for Easter and the summer of NO OF HERE2011 go to our website:

http://www.pilgrims.co.uk/page/?title=Courses%2C+dates+and+fees&pid=69

HOW TO APPLY

Please bear in mind that we need your full registration form in order to reserve a place for you. As soon as we receive the registration form we will send your letter of confirmation and joining documents which you should include as part of your application for the EU funding.

You will not be required to make any payment before you hear from the national agency. However, it is essential that you let us know as soon as you have heard from them if you need to cancel your booking ( that is if you get a negative reply). Otherwise the payment is due no later than four weeks before the course start date. Please bear in mind that it is essential that you let us know immediately about funding results. In that way we can make sure that your place on your chosen course is reserved. There is no booking or cancellation . All relevant information will be available on Pilgrims website very shortly, in the meantime please contact me: lizzie@pilgrims.co.uk for further details.

AN ALTERNATIVE

If you came on a grant last year or a year before then you won’t be able to apply again in 2011, so we have thought of an even better way for you to come back to Pilgrims in 2011 – completely free!

All you have to do is ensure that a minimum of 6 of your friends and colleagues successfully apply and pay for any two week Pilgrims Teacher Training course in 2011 and we will give you a free 2 week Pilgrims Teacher Training course with Self Catering Accommodation included!

So please speak to your colleagues and help them apply for their grants and hopefully we will see you again much sooner than you thought!

FOR Full details of how this offer works – email: lizzie@pilgrims.co.uk

We very much look forward to welcoming you here in Canterbury next summer.

Good luck with the funding!
Best wishes

Lizzie

Lizzie Wojtkowska
Teacher Training
Pilgrims Ltd

Tel: 01227 818207
Mob: 07748 487013
Fax: 01227 459027

CONFERENCE THEME

In 2011 the Teacher Trainer Journal will be 25 years old! We want to celebrate that quarter of a century by bringing together readers, subscribers and contributors to the Teacher Trainer journal, together with new and experienced teach trainers, and those soon to enter the field, so we can share perspectives and practical ideas on teacher education.

On the agenda…..

• Plenary session on major issues in pre and in-service teacher training
• Participant presentations and practical workshops with the chance of publication as a follow up
• ‘Writer’s Workshop’ – Tips on publishing articles on work as a trainer
• ‘People who Train People’ – A live interview with someone from a parallel field

Proposals Accepted for:

• ‘An article comes alive!’ – Past contributors to the journal will choose one of their own articles, talk about why they wrote it and invite comments from participants
• ‘Case Study Hour’ – Participants present a case study based on a work issue and offer it up for analysis and comment by colleagues in small groups

The Venue

The Teacher Trainer 25th Anniversary Conference will be held at the University of Kent, on the hilltop overlooking the beautiful city of Canterbury in the county of Kent – known as the Garden of England. Accommodation can be booked on the campus which has easy transport links into Canterbury and London airports.