Letter 1

Dear Hania,

hope you are doing well! Here the past few months have been really busy and challenging...

I'd like to update you on the latest news about our digital storybook:

First, it has become available for both ios and Android devices too. Up until now, the storybook has been downloaded by a total of 2.200 users and the feedback we're getting especially from young children is very positive. They seem to love the characters and the plot. :-)

I've just published a new blog post about the making of the App with 'backstage' info, tirivia and nice images.

The link to it is he bit.ly/1ms3edN

Please read it and let me know what you think because I was planning to edit this text adequately as well as add some extra stuff to make it appropriate for HLT magazine. I'd like to thank you once again for your invaluable help! You are the best and I'll never forget your support :-)

Hugs,
Christina

Letter 2

Dear Hania Kryszewska,

Books are our allies in spreading education, science, culture and information worldwide.

This month, Cambridge Scholars Publishing invites you to join us in celebrating ‘World Book and Copyright Day’ on 23rd April. UNESCO Member States around the world will be celebrating the power of books, providing an opportunity to reflect together on ways to better disseminate and access the culture of the written word. The 23rd April also marks the anniversary of the birth or death of a range of well-known writers, among them William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, and Vladimir Nabokov. We are offering our readers 50% discount on our best-selling titles related to their works. Click here to read more.

In our commitment to increasing the dissemination of our authors’ works, we are delighted to announce a new partnership between Cambridge Scholars and ISD, the scholarly and specialist book distributor based in the USA. For more information, please click here.

Our April discount campaigns, with a time-limited discount of up to 60%, include:

Book of the Month – this month’s must-read is Shamsad Mortuza’s ‘The Figure of the Shaman in Contemporary British Poetry.’ Deemed “brave and erudite, the first of its kind”, we are offering 60% discount. Please click here to find out more.

The Editorial Panel’s ‘Recommended Reads’ – our in-house Editorial Panel have selected their pick of our best-selling and critically acclaimed titles, at 50% discount. With a focus this month on Literature and Cultural Studies, please click here to view the selection.

New Releases – be the first to know about our new and noteworthy titles. Our Editors have hand-picked 6 titles that are generating a buzz, spanning the following subjects: History, Language & Literature, Fine Arts, Political Science, Social Sciences, and Women’s Studies. Best of all, these are reduced up to 50%. Please click on our homepage to view the selection.

Happy reading!

Christine
Christine von Gall
Deputy Editor
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
christine.von-gall@cambridgescholars.com

Letter 3

those in need. Earlier today, I noticed you were linking to the Accredited Online Colleges website from your disabilities page old.hltmag.co.uk/dec13/lett.htm

We share a common goal - helping to support students and families with disabilities. Our ask here is that we mutually help support the disabilities community by adding our free web resource to your website, to assist those in need access the exceptional information in this guide.

Online Colleges Database is a website and organization focused on providing post-secondary information for students and learners across the world. Our organization recently published a new resource that supports the families and students with disabilities: “OnlineCollegesDatabase.org: Online Learning for Students with Disabilities.” We were fortunate to have experts in the field contribute to this resource, which you can find here:

OnlineCollegesDatabase.org: Online Learning for Students with Disabilities
www.onlinecollegesdatabase.org/online-college-learning-for-students-with-disabilities/

Some of the important topics covered in the guide include: Resources online learning for students and families with disabilities, best practices for meeting the needs of students with disabilities, technology supporting the community, how to evaluate and online learning programs, and many additional helpful resources.

Would you mind adding the link to this guide on your page above (or on a similar page) and help us reach as many students and families with disabilities as possible?

Thank you for your help in supporting the disabilities community.

Doug Jones
Founder
OnlineCollegesDatabase.org
415-632-9326

Letter 4

Macmillan Seeks Sensational Sports Story-writers for Competition

Sport transcends barriers. Everyone does it, watches it and talks about it. It’s one of the first things language learners all over the world want to learn about. That’s why Macmillan Education, one of the world’s largest English Language Teaching (ELT) publishers, is looking for ordinary people to kick off its first community-contributed short-story writing competition with their own fictional tales on sport.

Macmillan is launching this special competition for ordinary people to celebrate an extraordinary year of sporting events including skiing in Sochi, soccer in Sao Paolo and gymnastics in Glasgow. 10 lucky winners will unique chance to see their work in printed form with the overall winner also receiving a Kindle eReader.

Seeking entries from English learners of all levels, ages and nationalities, the competition aims to get people writing in English and to read fiction to enhance their language learning experience. The winning stories might come from individual budding writers or might be a creative project involving a whole class. They might be about football heroes, rock climbing adventures or bobsleigh teams. The possibilities are endless – as long as the stories are fictional.

Macmillan’s Readers are some of the best-loved among English learners of all levels and ages. From short story collections like Love Stories and Food Stories to specially-adapted James Bond and Sherlock Holmes classics, they make reading English accessible and enjoyable for learners.

Last year’s Macmillan Cultural Readers competition enlisted the help of over 50 schools across the world for engaging factual accounts about their own countries. The winning entry – Ukraine, by students at a school in Kirovohrad – was printed by Macmillan in 2013 and was a hit with the Ukrainian media.

This year’s Readers competition is open to submissions until midnight GMT on Sunday 13 July 2014with the winners announced on 29 August 2014. Entries can be sent to social.media@macmillan.com with the subject ‘Short Story Writing Competition 2014.’

Letter 5

Free Lesson Plan Download
'Barking up the right tree'

Hi Hania,

We're giving away more free english lesson plans.

This lesson is for upper intermediate learners. It is based on a News article from the China daily about a street artist.

This lesson focuses on:

• related complex vocabulary and
• phrasal verbs

Click here for this and many more news based lesson plans.

Thanks, Ian

Letter 6

Dear Teacher,

We would like to congratulate Danila Di Gennaro, who last week graduated from the Università di Bologna (Europe’s oldest university) with a thesis based on Tune Into English’s activities and methodology. We are proud of and honoured by Danila’s work and hope to publish it in the coming weeks.

The first of this month’s three additions to the Downloadable Worksheets page on www.tuneintoenglish.com commemorates Kurt Cobain, who died twenty years ago this month, on the 5thApril 1994. Regular contributor Mena Bianco has prepared an opposites activity based on Nirvana’s Come As You Are.

I Knew You Were Trouble was a big hit for Taylor Swift last year, and Colm Boyd, based in Barcelona, Spain, has contributed a high-level activity to practice prepositions.

With Easter just a few weeks away, this is a good time to publish Next To Meby Emeli Sandé - she has said the song refers to her relationship with God. This phonetic activity was sent in by Sabrina Civiero from Turin.

Thank you to all teachers who have submitted worksheets – I look forward to receiving your contributions in the future.

The Tune Into English Roadshow has completed its most intensive period, but will continue throughout April (with four dates at the Cinema-Teatro Roma in Portici) and May. Thank you to all those who have hosted the show – you can read the latest comments here and see a large selection of videos andphotographs facebook.

You can sing along with the UK Top 10 Charts on the Speak Up site – updated weekly, there is a link on the Tune Home page too. The Karaoke page of Tune Into English now features over 9,000 songs. There is also a specialEaster Karaoke page, so why not have a sing along with your students before the break?

New Team Up in English, the ideal course for the Scuola Secondaria di I° Grado, published by ELI, is now available – click here for more details.

Remember, a 48-page worksheet based on the film Once, an Irish love story with a difference, and the 95-page e-book Notes from an ELT Consultant are available to download on the site.

A very Happy Easter – it’ll be here soon! Oh, and keep an eye on the Tune facebook page for news of an exciting new collaboration with Speak Up – coming soon!

Best wishes,
Fergal Kavanagh
Tune Into English
www.tuneintoenglish.com

Letter 7

ELTons award nomination

Dear colleague,

We are pleased and proud to inform you that the voluntary campaign Disabled Access Friendly has been given two significant votes of confidence.

• The campaign has been nominated for a British Council ELTons award in the field of “Innovation in Teacher Resources”. The ELTons, sponsored by Cambridge English, are the only international awards that recognise and celebrate innovation in the field of English language teaching. The award ceremony will be held in London on 22nd May 2014.
• Disabled Access Friendly’s free teaching resources have been approved by the Institute of Educational Policy of the Hellenic Ministry of Education and Religion for use in state primary and secondary schools in Greece.

Disabled Access Friendly would not have been able to grow and achieve such recognition if it weren't for the voluntary efforts and invaluable support of numerous kind-hearted and committed people. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who believes in what we are doing and helps to promote and support this campaign, as well as the teachers from over 100 countries around the world who use our material in class.

With best wishes,

the Disabled Access Friendly team

Disabled Access Friendly
www.disabled-accessfriendly.com

Like Our Facebook Page:
http://www.facebook.com/DisabledAccessFriendly

Follow us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/DAFCampaign

Letter 8

Dear Teacher

The second “Speak Up Explains” video will be published next week – it examines the phonetics in Pharrell Williams’ ubiquitous Happy and you can see a preview of the video here. This is also the first of this month’s three additions to the Downloadable Worksheets page onwww.tuneintoenglish.com, with an activity prepared by regular contributor Mena Bianco.

A new explanation video will be published every two weeks, and Let Her Go by Passenger will be online in mid-May. This is our second new worksheet this month, with activities sent in by Lilian Mierez, Argentina.

Bonnie and Clyde, America’s most famous bank robbers, were gunned down 100 years ago this month (on the 23rd) – Claudia Cantaluppi from Como has written a simple gap fill activity for The Ballad Of Bonnie & Clyde, a Number One forGeorgie Fame in 1968.

Thank you to all teachers who have submitted worksheets – I look forward to receiving your contributions in the future.

The Tune Into English Roadshow is now in its final month of this year’s tour, and well as visiting six Italian regions will also return to Andalusia in Spain. Thank you to all those who have hosted the show – you can read the latest comments here and see a large selection of videos and photographs on facebook.

With the end of the school year in sight you may be looking for a Teacher Training course this summer. If your school has applied for an Erasmus+ grant you may be eligible for funding for these courses held in my hometown of Cork – you can read full details here.

As temperatures rise the Tune Into English T-shirt is an essential addition to your and your students’ wardrobe. Made of high quality material and featuring the Tune logo, it is available exclusively through this newsletter at a special reduced price for the month of May – click here to avail of this limited offer. All orders come with a free badge!

You can sing along with the UK Top 10 Charts on the Speak Up site – updated weekly, there is a link on the Tune Home page too. The Karaoke page of Tune Into English now features over 9,000 songs.

Teachers at the Scuola Superiore di I° Grado may be interested in Up To You!, ELI’s holiday book, consolidating and revising vocabulary and structures presented during the year. Written by Kavanagh and Morris, you can read more about this here.

Remember, a 48-page worksheet based on the film Once, an Irish love story with a difference, and the 95-page e-book Notes from an ELT Consultant are available to download on the site.

Finally, Tune Into English supports the research on PCDH19, the rare genetic children’s disease. Full details of how to donate your 5 x 1000 are here.

Best wishes,
Fergal Kavanagh
Tune Into English

Letter 9

Digital marking restores teachers' work-life balance Teachers and a strong educational background are some of the most important cornerstones of our society. Teachers provide their students with some of the essential lessons and skills that they will use for the rest of their lives. However, one of the foundations of improvement and learning is effective and relevant feedback for students who are struggling. Regardless of the subject or area of study, feedback is a measurement of progress and success for students, but marking papers is also a time-consuming task that weighs heavily on teachers’ work-life balance and is often overlooked by students when done improperly. English Teachers teach English to at least 150 students and giving thorough and individual feedback to 150 students is simply a daunting task!

To address this problem, LangCorr has devised an exciting new approach to marking papers to give students feedback that not only encourages them to actively improve their skills, but also saves teachers’ time and energy that they can devote to helping more students and restoring a healthy work-life balance. The best news is that we are expanding the range of our programs so teachers and students in the UK can begin benefitting from this exciting new approach to education.

• The revolutionary Language Corrector program is an innovative marking and feedback system that has already changed the way that large numbers of teachers provide corrections and grades for papers.
• It provides multimedia approaches to feedback that engage students with exercises, interactive videos and games that focus on problem areas.
• Predefined grading comments and suggestions help teachers save time during grading and give more specific help to their students.
• Teachers can also monitor the progress that students are making in relation to the feedback to determine whether additional help is required.

LangCorr is happy to announce that services are being extended to UK markets and we are very excited to begin this partnership with a new market. Language Corrector has already made its mark on the Danish school system and we are confident that this interactive, innovative, and proven correction program will have a similar effect in the educational system of the United Kingdom.

• Danish teachers have praised the program due to the benefits of extra time spent away from marking papers and more energy to help students in more effective and customized ways!

Whatever your role happens to be in the world of education, Language Corrector is a powerful new tool that will help bring the educational standards of your institution even higher!

Contact:
Diana Voru
diana@langcorr.com www.langcorr.com