IN-SITES: ELT PUBLISHERS

by Hilary Plass

 This issue’s In-sites takes a brief look at the web pages of seven of the major ELT publishers producing materials for the Spanish market.

 All of them include on-line catalogues and a list of regional and local offices. The table below gives an overview of what else is on offer, followed by some comments and the relevant web site addresses. Be warned, many of the downloadable resources come in PDF format (Adobe Acrobat), and youll also need to install Flash in order to watch and listen to some of the activities. (Instructions are given on the relevant web pages.) In some cases registration is required, but its free.

Services

BB offers a limited selection of activities, activity packs and web links for their course books. In addition to teacher and student activities, CUP also has worksheets and sample chapters for their Readers, and the Copy Collection series offers a complete downloadable activity for each title. I particularly liked the links to company websites for Business English purposes a good source of authentic material. H/T is also useful on the Business English front, especially the site for New Business Matters. M/H’s Users Resource section for Young Learners looks promising, and they will shortly be incorporating new pages to include, among others, the ESO series, United. You can subscribe to their free on-line Macmillan Magazine (formerly known as Primera Clase). There are also links to useful sites where you can create your own crosswords, quizzes, cloze exercises etc and download song lyrics. OUP also provides plenty of downloadable materials in its Activity Bank, from flashcards to dictionary exercises, and you can also access materials for specific titles through the Catalogue section. Somewhat disappointing is the P/L site, unattractive and not very user friendly. For example, you have to register separately for the ESO and Primaria sites and the catalogue provides the bare minimum book titles but no sample pages, for example. Resources can be found in three of the six areas of the R/S site check out Community, which takes you into the interesting Richmond Park site, Resources and Bookshelf in this section you will find downloadable readers, an on-line dictionary and a trip to an on-line English school.

Links

A couple of comments here. It can be quite hard to find the pages with useful links to other bodies such as teacher organisations, EFL magazines, MOE sites etc. On the OUP site, for example, you have to go to Inteligencia, then Expertos Oxford and then Recomendaciones not completely obvious at first sight! CUP, M/H, OUP and R/S all offer a host of useful links including, in M/H’s case, to job offers! R/S’s Framework site is the only one that offers a link to the Council of Europe.

Communication with users.

OUP comes out on top here, with repeated invitations to air your views and comments on any aspect of language education. R/S’s Richmond Park has an online chatroom for teachers, and M/H invites requests for them to organise teacher development activities in your area.

Site design

As would be expected, the publishers with the largest market share are the ones who offer attractive, imaginative and inviting websites, with the exception of P/L. So hats off to CUP, MH, OUP and R/S and lets hope that P/L get their act together soon!

I hope you enjoy exploring these sites. And don’t forget to let the publishers and TESOL-SPAIN hear your views!

Sites:

Burlington Books: http://www.burlingtonbooks.com then click on Spain.

Cambridge University Press: http://publishing.cambridge.org/elt/ (NB The Spanish site, www.cup.es, is currently being re-designed)

Heinle Thomson: www.heinle.com/esl_d/

Macmillan Heinemann: www.heinemann.es, www.onestopenglish.com, www.businessenglishonline.net/

Oxford University Press: www.oup.com/es/

Pearson Longman: www.pearsoneducacion.com/ingles. Primary site: www.longman-funenglish.com. ESO site: www.longman-englishzone.com

Richmond Santillana: www.richmondelt.com/richmondspain, www.richmondpark.net, www.webframework.net