The British Council’s ELTons awards celebrate the best innovations in English language teaching and learning worldwide. This year's winners can be found here.

Excellence in course innovation

Widgets Inc.: A task-based course in workplace English - Atama-ii Books

Widgets Inc. is a course employing a “strong” task-based approach to language learning.

Now in their nineteenth year, The British Council ELTons Awards for innovation in English language teaching and learning celebrate the newest and most original courses, books, publications, apps, platforms, projects, and more, which find new ways to meet the real-life needs of English language learners and teachers around the world.

There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world -- and they all have different sounds, vocabularies and structures. But do they shape the way we think? Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky shares examples of language -- from an Aboriginal community in Australia that uses cardinal directions instead of left and right to the multiple words for blue in Russian -- that suggest the answer is a resounding yes. "The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is," Boroditsky says.

I was chatting to a neighbour the other day, or rather, she was chatting to me. I don’t see much of her and her family, as happens in a typically modern suburb community, and I’ve always known – as one does – that we’d never be more than neighbours. After our chat the other day, I am definitely going to keep her at a distance.

ANSWER:  We suggest you try “The Writing-Go-Round”, a group writing activity which works well in  Exam-Preparation classes to help ease the tension and make writing fun!

PREPARATION:  The teacher prints out strips, each with writing task instructions.  Sources for these tasks can be coursebooks or past exam papers.  Here are three examples of B1-level writing task instructions:

Strip A: "Write an essay about a celebration in a country you know. Remember to:

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Μέχρι εχθές η καλή εξυπηρέτηση του πελάτη, όπως και αν ορίζεται αυτή από την εκάστοτε επιχείρηση, αποτελούσε σημείο αναφοράς για την αύξηση του τζίρου της. Τα χρόνια πέρασαν, οι εποχές άλλαξαν, το ίδιο και οι ανάγκες των πελατών αλλά και των επιχειρήσεων. Σήμερα το να προσφέρεις το προϊόν που πραγματικά χρειάζεται ο πελάτης, λέγεται εξυπηρέτηση και δυστυχώς στις μέρες δεν είναι αρκετό.

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