Pictorial report

Three weeks into the trip, when time and words fall short, a pictorial account of the events of the last few weeks will have to suffice ... A trip through Korea, China, the UK and Holland - people, conferences, meetings and meals.

Unfortunately I can´t display the slideshow in this blog anymore, for some reason, so click here to see it.

And now?

Whilst Tess is doing her HSC exams (halfway point!), Yarrow has started her Year 12 (final year!), Anjes is settling in with her Beau (see you soon!), Niki is battling with heat, drought (although it did rain the other night!) and work at home, I've wooshed through Korea, China, Korea again and am now in London at the Olympia Hilton to do my presentation today.

These are some of the people I me / had meetings with. On Monday I we recorded the promotion video for English Grammar for Teens, and I had lunch with / met the editorial team for the course. The names of the members of the editing team are: Wu Yina, the editor for level 1 (3rd right) Ma Xuemei, the editor for level 2 (3rd left);Tan Zhiheng, the editor for level 3 (1st right); Cynthia, the commissioning editor (2nd right); Zhaojing, editorial dean of the department (1st left) and Lang Song, another editorial dean (2nd left).

The editing team for our three-part course English Grammar for Teens in the reception hall of the Beijing based language publisher FLTRP. .

On Wednesday and Thursday I had meetings with my partners in the iRead series, Professor Zhang Lianzhong (left) and the commissioning editor of Qingdao Publishing Group Vincent Kim.

Professor Zhang Lianzhong, moi and Vincent Kim.

Off to the gym now for some necessary cardio, breakfast in the Executive Lounge (privilege comes with the room rate ...), and then preparing for the talk later today.

 

Nice to meet you

Wings have once more taken me out of Oz, and this time to Korea where I am attending the 2013 KOTESOL conference and have presented my workshop on Reading skills (linked to the graded readers series we are developing). How nice was it to be told by one of the conference delegates: 'Oh, but your name is on the OUP stand'. And lo, it was - which was very nice to see. It's nice to know that publishers take the trouble to scout the presenters list (or, in this particular case, the 'invited speakers'  list) to see if they (and the author) can make a buck or two. 

 

 

 

I also found my course Take Shape in the Macmillan stand. Nice to know that the course has also made it to Asia (via Mexico and Latin America). Next to Take Shape was a course called Next Move, for which I wrote a workbook, and below Take Shape was Brainwave for which Niki and I developed online materials and I wrote a teacher's guide. Small world.

 

It's been an interesting conference - the Koreans are very friendly, humble people who are keen to watch and learn and make you feel welcome; the largely American contingent of expats are an interesting bunch, many of whom seem to have walked straight out of a Dickens novel or Harry Potter book. Very nice group of people whom I hope to work with more often in the future.

 

I had a meeting with our publisher Collins as well, to discuss future projects which may well lie in the area of EAL (English as an additional language), which aims at non-native speakers learning subjects through English, rather than learning English per se.

 

Tomorrow morning, at sparrow's fart (although I haven't see a single sparrow here, of course), I am off to China (Beijing) to meet with FLTRP publishers (to make a promotion video for our course English Grammar for Teens) and Qingdao Publishing Group (to discuss the progress of our new series iRead New English Readers). I am looking forward to having Chinese food again, which I love as long as its eaten in China...

 

I'm TWO

Raffi would like to say that it is his birthday today and he is now all of two. And he has his friend Radha over for the weekend and they are having lots of fun! And here's a video to prove it.