Look inside our innovative ELT readers

Innova Press is a brand-new ELT publisher, launched in late 2017 with a mission to create true innovation in language education. Innova creates readers, test preparation materials and other titles based on the latest research into language education, with a specific focus on actual learner needs.

The Innova Reading Bookshelf for young learners was published in May 2018. Accompanying these readers on this website are free downloadable audio and comprehensive notes to help parents use the readers at home, and teachers to use them in class or online.

Innova now publishes a range of practice and preparation tests and self-study books for many of the most popular English language exams, including IELTS, TOEIC, TOEFL and CEQB,  with more titles added regularly.

Staff

President – Richard Peacock

Richard Peacock has worked as a teacher and publisher for nearly 40 years. He began teaching children and businesspeople in Japan, and then moved into curriculum development with Time Life in Hiroshima and Osaka. After a few years away from ELT, working in corporate communications, he set up his own publishing company in Tokyo, developing both ELT and corporate communications materials. In 1997, he moved to Thailand to help establish one of the first bilingual schools in the country. In 2001, he became General Manager of Garnet Publishing in the UK, a position he held until leaving to set up Innova Press in 2017.

Business Development – Terry Phillips

Terry Phillips has worked in ELT for more than 40 years as a teacher, teaching supervisor, manager and language school owner.  As an ELT consultant, he has worked in more than 25 countries in all parts of the world, advising state and private universities and language institutions on all aspects of educational management including finance. For the last 25 years, he has been a freelance writer with his wife Anna, producing more than 180 published books in ELT, including the award-winning multi-level EAP course, Progressive Skills in English [Garnet Education]. Terry is also the originator and series editor of the English for Specific Academic Purposes series for Garnet, which prepare students for entry into a particular English medium university faculty. The series won the ESU award in 2009.

Research & Development – Sufang Li Brassington

Sufang Li Brassington has worked in ELT for nearly 20 years, starting in 1998 in China – first as a lecturer of English, then an editor of ELT coursebooks, and now the Research and Development Officer at Innova. In addition to her professional expertise in ELT, she has first-hand experience and years of reflective observations of ELT teaching and learning in various aspects. Her unique insight also benefited from her personal experience of growing up in China as an EFL learner, being the parent of an EFL young learner who now speaks near-native English, and mentoring new overseas students on studying in the UK. She holds an MA and a PhD in Education, both from the University of Reading.

Marketing & Production – India Rose Humphreys

India Rose Humphreys attended Exeter University for a BA in English; she then went on to complete a Masters in Digital Publishing at Oxford Brookes University. She has had internships at Mary Evans Picture Library, and Omnibus Press, including managing their stand at London Book Fair 2018. She was part of a cultural exchange trip between Oxford Brookes University and the Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press in Beijing through the Confucius Institute. She worked at Oxford International Sixth Form College for a year before being hired at Innova Press.