The Extensive Reading Foundation is pleased to call for nominations for the John Milne Innovation Award in Language Learner Literature. The Award is named in honour of John Milne. As creator of the Heinemann Guided Readers series in the 1970s, Milne believed that the traditional grading of vocabulary and structure was not enough to make a book suitable for language learners. He therefore took a different approach, basing his series on good, clear writing, relevant content, careful control of information, flexible structure control, and intuitive vocabulary control. These innovations have been crucial in the development of language learner literature.

There is no definitive definition of innovation. Proposers will themselves make a judgment as to the significant innovatory qualities of whatever they propose. Normally however, the JMI Award will not be made to a single title of a reader, as this is already covered by the annual Language Learner Literature Award. Some possible categories of innovation are:

1. A new product (e.g., a new concept series of readers)
2. A new publishing concept (e.g., e-books)
3. A piece of ground-breaking research into language learner literature (LLL).
4. A new book or other publication promoting LLL in a novel way. ( e.g., A teachers' resource book.)
5. A scheme for promoting LLL and making it more widely available to teachers and learners
6. An individual or organisation that has provided vision and initiative in LLL and which changed the lives of people they worked for.

Note that these are suggestions only.

Nomination Procedure

• Submit your nomination to rday@hawaii.edu, who will forward it to an anonymous Advisory Panel for vetting.
• Nominations must be accompanied by a rationale for the nomination.
• The candidates are then discussed among the members of the ERF Board of Directors and a decision is reached.
• If no worthy candidate is identified, no JMI Award will be made.
• The recipient of the JMI Award will be announced in October.
• The JMI Award is in the form of a certificate. There is no monetary award.

Nominations for the 2007 Award must be received by July 31, 2007.