Welcome to Your
January eNewsletter!

Well, it is a brand new year, and we hope 2016 has already gotten off to a great start for you. We are very excited about the upcoming year because we have got a lot going on and so we would like to share with you our list of...

10 THINGS WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO IN 2016!!!!

We are becoming a publisher!!!

Well, it is not a change of direction/focus for English Central, but we got excited by an idea that we had and we decided to run with it. We have now published a card game for mastering academic vocabulary called Academic Word List Cards, Sublist 1. How's that for descriptive? We will have downloadable games and activities for using them in the classroom and for self-access. The cards will be very affordable and available next month, so you can start getting excited too!

Fun and Games Campaign

We may specialize in adult ESL, but we know as well as you do that fun can be seriously good for learning at any age. For the next two years (maybe longer even - we are actors without a script), we will be publishing free games that we will give away on certain occasions. To find out what the certain occasions are, keep reading this newsletter every month. Our first game is a board game and it will be busting out very, very soon.

The American edition of Jetstream cometh!

Jetstream is a new general English, integrated skills book series that stands apart from the others for many reasons. What are some of these reasons, you ask? Well, let us share some:

Really interesting content... it rises above the mundane with interesting and unusual perspectives on contemporary topics
A video-based, “Language in Action” section in each unit exposes students to very useful language in everyday contexts
The regular “Cross Culture” feature offers students the opportunity to reflect on and discuss cultural differences and similarities worldwide
We could give more reasons, but we will save them for later. We will end by saying that the series has a great team of writers behind it, including our man Jeremy Harmer! (He's not really our man, but we love him like he is!)

More Jeremy Harmer, please!

Last year we had a great visit with Jeremy Harmer in Toronto and filmed a load of mini-videos that we have been slowly sharing with our newsletter readers.

This year, Jeremy will be helping us to promote the Jetstream series with more videos, a print interview a webinar or two and by joining us at TESOL Baltimore! Stay tuned for the complete list of workshops he will be doing at TESOL.

The TESOL 2016 Convention in Baltimore, baby!

It isn't just the crab cakes, pit beef and Berger cookies that have got us excited. Actually, we are excited to have some crab cakes and excited to find out what exactly pit beef and Berger cookies are!

Food aside, we are also excited about the conference itself. Not only is it is so great to connect with so many colleagues at once (it is like a house party for ESL professionals), but we also have plans to make our booth the center of the action. Not only will Jeremy Harmer be joining us to launch Jetstream, but we will also have some great promotions and...

MORE FREE STUFF!!!!

We are not going to divulge too much because we want to keep you excited too. The cats are staying in the proverbial bag, so let's just say:

if we are exhibiting at a conference, you want to visit our booth
if we are not exhibiting at a conference you are attending, check your conference bag because there is a chance we put something awesome in it
keep reading our newsletter - we will make it worth your while : )

A new edition of the Transferable Academic Skills Kit !

We have always been huge fans of this book with great content and a slightly weird name. With its work on the academic skills students desperately need but don't get enough of (with modules on critical thinking, group work and presentations, for example), this book has always been a phenomenal resource for the EAP classroom. The new edition is even better with updated material and modules, including Numeracy, Research & Online Sources and Referencing & Avoiding Plagiarism.

Professional Development Webinar Series

DELTA Publishing will be offering a new series of webinars this year aimed at Business English Teachers. Presenters will include the likes of Gavin Dudeney, Nicky Hockly and Julie Pratten. We will keep you posted on webinar dates!

A WARM WINTER?

We here in Toronto have been enjoying a mild winter and are looking forward to it staying that way. We probably have climate change to thank for this temporary break from shovelling because the weather has been freaky Friday all over the US and Canada. Maybe this shouldn't be part of our list. Opposite! Abort! Run away!

OUR INTERVIEW PROGRAM WITH AWESOME PEOPLE

We have spoken to some of our favorite authors - including Jim Scrivener, Jeremy Harmer and Lindsay Clandfield - and will be publishing our conversations with them. You can read the interviews in this newsletter over the course of the year, so you have got yet another bit of incentive to keep doing what you are doing now!

(Yes, you probably caught onto the theme here: keep reading this newsletter! Of course, this really is a case of preaching to the choir, so we'll stop this month's installment here. Happy New Year!!!!!)

Welcome to Your January eNewsletter!