E D U C AT I O N
Royal Awards for the English
Language Teaching Sector
WORDS CAROLINE MOORE
Caroline Moore is a judge for the ESU’s
English Language awards, and Director of
Constellata Limited. She advises digital
publishers, mainly in the ELT sector, and is a
Trustee of IATEFL.
Caroline writes for dialogue about this
year’s flagship awards.
T
he ESU’s Duke of Edinburgh
English Language Book
Awards have been an
important fixture of the ELT sector since
around 1971. Authors and publishers
have been thrilled by the honour of
winning an award for innovation and
good practice, and winners have attended
awards ceremonies at the House of Lords,
and hosted by the Duke of Edinburgh
himself at Buckingham Palace.
In 2003, at the Duke of Edinburgh’s
suggestion a second award was added
to recognize innovation and good
design in the use of new, free-standing
technologies in the teaching and
learning of English. His Royal Highness
wanted to future-proof the Award for
when he retired as President of the ESU,
and this is why he suggested it be called
“The President’s Award”.
30 | dialogue
Both awards have been highly valued
in the very competitive ELT publishing
sector, worth approximately £2bn a year
globally, and growing to serve the 1
billion or more people learning English
as a foreign or additional language.
A 2009 winner, Seattle-based
“Livemocha” commented:
“The ESU President’s award is a
highly coveted award that stands as a
benchmark within the English language
teaching industry.”
There is always a very mixed and
diverse field of entries, and often it is
difficult to decide on the overall winner.
How do you compare a course for young
children that includes adorable puppets
and picture books with a teacher
resource book or a course for University
level students? Somehow the ten or more
judges agree, though this requires some
skillful chairing by Hilary Parnell for the
book awards, and Professor Margaret
Buck for the digital entries. During
my time as a judge we have had some
fascinating and heated debates about
the entries, and I love how little-known
authors and publishers, or even selfpublished authors, can hold their own
against the better-known authors and
publishers, and often win.
The two awards have separate
judging panels but in the past year or
so it has been interesting to see how
the entries are beginning to converge,
with many book entries including very
sophisticated digital components, and
a couple of entries for the President’s
Award were in fact enhanced multimedia
digital books. It’s likely therefore that the
two awards will adapt to the changing
publishing and technological environment.
Also, although we have always had
many strong entries for the book awards,
the quality of the digital entries has
been quite variable. While we’ve always
been delighted with the shortlist and
winning entries, it has only been in the
past two years that we are beginning to
get more consistency and some really
exciting digital entries for the President’s
Award, including some excellent mobile
learni