The English Association - over 100 years at the forefront of English

Fellowship

The English Association has a long tradition of honouring distinguished figures who have made a special contribution to the promotion of the language arts in all their many facets. Past presidents have included John Galsworthy, Harley Granville–Barker, Sir Kenneth Clark and Dame Rebecca West. In 2000 the Association established the new membership category of Fellow in special recognition of those who have significantly enriched and promoted English in all fields, including the creative, academic and educational.

We have over 350 Fellows, including writers, educationalists, librarians, journalists, critics, and editors. Fellows, who may use the letters FEA after their names, are invited each year to attend the English Association’s Annual General Meeting and Reception (normally held in central London) at which the year’s activities are celebrated and new Fellows welcomed. Opportunities to attend a range of Association events, including conferences, are available. We encourage Fellows to network widely within the Association, and Fellows may join or establish Special Interest Groups on topics appropriate to the Association’s interests. We have plans to sponsor regional lectures in which Fellows would also play a central role, and other plans for enlarging the activity of our Fellowship are in hand.

We note with sadness the recent death of Founding Fellow Angela Wilson - December 2011
Angela Wilson died just before Christmas 2011 after a short illness. She was a Founding Fellow of the English Association and a great advocate of excellent English teaching for all age groups.
She served in many roles: as a secondary school teacher of English; as a School Inspector; as a Lecturer at Breton Hall College and then as a Senior Lecturer in Education at the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education in Wrexham where she taught students preparing to be primary school teachers. Her books were both scholarly and practical and often had a welcome touch of humour which was appreciated by her readers. Perhaps her best known book, co-authored with Julie Scanlon, is Language Knowledge for Primary Teachers which has recently gone into a fourth edition. Always highly critical of the 'language deficit' model, in this book Angela makes it clear that speaking and writing are of equal importance for the young learner and she argues passionately that the roots of language are in the everyday speech of our home and our community. She writes '...we are very fortunate that the 'tree' of the English language, developed and enriched over hundreds of years, has very many branches. Some of them are a great way off the ground, but they are accessible to those who are prepared to scramble up'. Angela believed we should aim to give all children 'scrambling skills'.
She will be very much missed by her husband, Andrew, her family, her many friends and by her former students and colleagues.

Margaret Mallett

We note with sadness the recent death of Founding Fellow David Holbrook - 11 August 2011
Tributes to David will appear in the January 2012 issue of the EA Newsletter and the Spring 2012 issue of The Use of English

Margaret Mallett wins UKLA author award for Choosing and Using Non-Fiction 3-11 - July 2011