Mrs Opal Dunn, an honorary chairman of ICBA, received the Outstanding Achievement Award at the ceremony for the British Council ELTons Outstanding Achievement Award on 15th October 2020. The Award recognises and celebrates people who have made a lasting and extraordinary impact on English language teaching and learning. The Award is said to be equivalent to an Oscar in the English education.
Mrs Dunn is a pioneer who developed the teaching language technique by using picture books. She also published some picture books which have been translated into various languages. She started the English language Bunko in Japan for those bilingual children who learn the second language.
The Award selection committee recognised and highly appreciated her continuous support for children, teachers and parents with her rich ideas for teaching and learning language. The Committee commented “There are now an increasing number of children in the world who grow up with multiple languages. Time has caught up with you. There is no one like you who has dedicated their life in children’s language education for so long.”
In her speech at the ceremony, she mentioned that it is important that children self-study through feel-good experience and that adult’s role is to prepare the right environment and sow the seeds. Things that children absorb naturally without any logic when they are young are important and bound for life. She quoted Kazuo Ishiguro’s words; “Many of our deepest motives come not from adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from early childhood‘
The seeds sown by Mrs Dunn are evident and developed in the ICBA bunko and are still carried on. “Children First”. Mrs Dunn always put children first and practiced what she believed in in her support for teaching and learning languages. We would like to express our thanks and respect for her achievement. Congratulations on her winning the award.