FROM THE EDITOR
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Letters to the Editor
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COLUMNS
arrowLanguage Interference
The land of coffee and carnival:
Reflections on Brazilian Portuguese and English

arrowFeature
Deck the hall with boughs of holly….’tis the season to be jolly
Making sense of Christmas vocabulary

arrowNew words of the month
A review of 2007 in twelve words

arrowBook review
Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of our Vanishing Vocabulary

Contributors

Sara Walker

Sara Walker

Sara Walker was educated in Britain, where she took a BA in Modern Languages and an MA in Latin American Studies, but has worked in Brazil since 1967. She is the coordinator of the English Programme for the Brazilian Diplomatic Academy, Ministry of Foreign Relations, Brazil and a freelance consultant. After 25 years in the private sector, she moved into the public sector as manager of the Tocantins English Project, a capacity-building programme for State school teachers in the North of Brazil (2003-4).

As a consultant, Sara wrote The Landmark Review of ELT in Brazil for the British Council (1997, 1999, 2005) and serves on Macmillan English Dictionaries’ Advisory Panel.

She is a passionate believer in English teachers’ associations, has helped to found several and is a former President of BRAZ-TESOL.

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Susan Jellis Susan Jellis

Susan is a freelance editor, lexicographer and writer. She was one of the original editors of the Cambridge International Dictionary of English and also worked on the Macmillan English Dictionary. Although her background is in languages and linguistics, she worked in science publishing for many years and has a passion for presenting science in clear, straightforward and accurate language, often advising on this for dictionaries. While working for Bloomsbury, she was Managing Editor of the Encarta dictionary series, including the Bloomsbury English Dictionary (the second edition of the Encarta World English Dictionary) and was General Editor of the Encarta Thesaurus. She is currently involved in an oral history programme in the Kings Cross Redevelopment Area, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, as well as lexicographic projects.

Working freelance has allowed her time to formalise a longstanding interest in garden history by taking a qualification at Birkbeck College, and time for field trips and related writing. She can also indulge more in theatre and ballet, as well as in reading.

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Martin Shovel

Martin Shovel is one of UK's leading freelance cartoon illustrators – his online portfolio can be viewed at www.shovel.co.uk. He is also a published author and an experienced teacher and workshop leader.

After studying philosophy at the University of Sussex, Martin spent a number of years teaching English to foreign students. During this time he developed his own innovative, cartoon-based approach to language teaching, and wrote and illustrated a best-selling language teaching book, Making Sense of Phrasal Verbs. Other writing projects followed, including collaborating with Robert O’Neill on a screenplay and book for BBC English’s award-winning video course, The Lost Secret, which starred Miranda Richardson and Tom Wilkinson.

Alongside his writing, over the past 18 years Martin has built up a successful career as a cartoon illustrator, with a distinguished client list including Ogilvy & Mather, DMB & B, Arthur Andersen, McCann-Erickson, De La Rue, Lehman Brothers International and Oxford University Press.

Prior to setting up CreativityWorks with Martha Leyton in 2001, Martin had run workshops on cartooning and creativity for a wide range of clients, including Nottingham University, the Office for Public Management (OPM), Brighton College of Technology, Lewes Tertiary College, Sussex Directors of Studies Association, Lewes Prison, West Sussex County Council, and Surrey County Council.

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Mairi MacDonald

I first became interested in learner's dictionaries more than 10 years ago while teaching English in Lithuania. I became a lexicographer with Cambridge University Press in 1999 and since then I have been involved in several ELT publications including Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Cambridge Learner's Dictionary, the CD-ROM versions of the Macmillan English Dictionary and Macmillan Essential Dictionary as well as the Macmillan Schools Dictionary website.

I have contributed to several websites – writing articles, designing web pages as well as adapting and creating interactive activities and games.

I work from my home in Perthshire and most of my spare time is taken up with my sons Aonghas (Gaelic for 'Angus') and Duncan and walking my parents' border collie, Misty.

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Kerry Maxwell

Kerry has a first degree in computational linguistics and an MA in theoretical linguistics from the University of Manchester, specialising in syntactic theory.

For several years she worked as a researcher at Manchester and Essex universities, where in connection with European projects on machine translation, she was involved in computational lexicography, co-ordinating research in computational descriptions of compounds and collocations, and presenting her work in various international academic contexts.

In 1993 she joined Cambridge University Press as a lexicographer/editor and grammar consultant, and worked on a large number of Cambridge learner's dictionaries, including the English Pronouncing Dictionary, the Cambridge International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs and the Cambridge Learner's Dictionary in print and CD-ROM versions.

In June 2001 Kerry moved to York where she now works as a freelance editor/lexicographer and is involved in a range of dictionary and grammar projects.

Among the publications she has contributed to are Advanced Grammar In Use (2nd Ed.) and the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary for Cambridge University Press, the Collins COBUILD Elementary Grammar (2nd Ed.), Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus and the Macmillan School Dictionary. As well as being the regular author of the MED website's 'Word of the Week' column, she regularly writes for MED Magazine and co-authors grammar reference material for onestopenglish.

Most of her spare time is spent looking after her two young sons Tom and Sam, though she enjoys walking, swimming and any opportunity to travel.

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Potter

Elizabeth Potter

Like most people who write dictionaries for a living, I became a lexicographer by accident. After several years working in Italy and Scotland as an ELT teacher and course organiser, and as a translator and teacher of Italian, I was looking for a change. In 1990, a friend spotted a job ad for bilingual lexicographers at Longman. I applied and got the job, and discovered something I had never suspected – that dictionaries are written by people like me. After two years at Longman, I moved to COBUILD, where I worked on monolingual learner's dictionaries. Since leaving COBUILD in 1999 to work freelance, I have contributed to a variety of monolingual and bilingual learner's dictionaries, and for several years I wrote a weekly web article about English.

When I'm not slaving over a hot dictionary entry, I like to spend my time gardening, and enjoying the company of my husband and two children. I also sing in a choir and go to yoga classes, though despite many years of trying I still can't manage the lotus position.

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Meet the Editor
Sharon Creese

I have a strong editorial background having worked as a journalist, technical writer and editor in fields ranging from the automotive and engineering industries, to finance, healthcare and education. As part of my Latin American Studies degree, I lived for a year in Colombia, working with a local children’s charity. I recently completed an Applied Linguistics Masters degree at the University of Newcastle, focusing on bilingualism among Spanish/indigenous-language speakers in Latin America.

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Cover photographs courtesy of SUPERSTOCK (The land of coffee and carnival) and BRAND X (Deck the halls with boughs of holly)
Cover illustrations by Martin Shovel (Book Review)
Cover design by Mairi MacDonald