To celebrate and highlight China's outstanding, innovative and dedicated non-native teachers of English, the British Council announced the first winner of the 'English is GREAT teacher Award' today.

The award was officially launched on April 23. Through video clips of applicants showing their teaching methods and classroom activities, the judging panel, comprised of experts from British Council's English in Education Systems (EES) team, selected Hu Conghui from South China's Guangdong province as the winner of the 1st English is GREAT Teacher Award.

"Hu did a terrific job of making the activity as practical and scalable as possible. She provided students the freedom to use a wider range of language and encouraged high-level of spoken interaction. It therefore not only met but exceeded our assessment criteria and was a worthy winner of May's English is GREAT Teacher Award," said the experts.

"Teaching English as a non-native speaker is an invaluable skill and one which requires true dedication and genuine enthusiasm for teaching as well as a deep understanding of the English Language," Kiran Patel, director of Strategic Communications and Corporate Relations of the British Council China, said.

"Ms. Hu's passion for teaching shone brightly throughout her submission and in a highly competitive field of outstanding teachers, this stood her out as a very worthy and inspiring winner."

As the first monthly winner, Hu will join the grand finale in December along with other winners along the year for the final prize – a 4-week study trip to the UK.

The 2018 'English is GREAT' campaign, aimed at empowering Chinese people with the confidence and ability to master English communication skills, was launched during the UK Prime Minister Theresa May's visit to China on January 31, 2018.

Since then a series of activities have been held which have engaged an audience of over 32.92 million people across China and gained the support of celebrity campaign ambassadors – Chinese actress Angelababy and British singer Jessie J.

The teacher award will continue to run each month open to all Chinese non-native speakers of English. The next round of nominations will close on the June 24.

Know more about the award, click here.