Professional development for teachers

Here you’ll find a wide range of free, self-access training and resources designed to help you build the skills and knowledge you need as an English teacher.

All TeachingEnglish professional development resources are aligned with the British Council Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Framework for teachers, to help you plan your learning and develop the areas most relevant to your professional growth.

You can explore resources in a way that suits your goals:
- by professional practices – to focus on specific areas of teaching where you want to deepen your skills and expertise
- by professional development levels – to find resources matched to your training and experience and see how they can help you progress within each area.

Each resource includes a timer icon to show how much time you’ll need, helping you plan your learning effectively.

An Asian teacher explains something to his class of learners

Checking understanding

Find out how to check if your students really understand, and why asking “Do you understand?” is not enough. Learn simple ways to make sure everyone is following your lesson.

Young learner testing

Tests for people of any age can seem a threat or, at the very least, an obstacle that needs to be overcome. Testing children is even more fraught with sensitivities.

A stack of multicoloured books with a pen lying beside it

Theories of reading: Part 2

This article is the second of two parts. The first part looked at some of the shifts and trends in theories relating to reading. This second part will examine tips and guidelines for implementing a theory of reading which will help to develop our learners’ abilities.

Theories of reading: Part 1

This article is in two parts. The first part will look at some of the shifts and trends in theories relating to reading. The second part will examine tips and guidelines for implementing a theory of reading which will help to develop our learners’ abilities.

Proficiency

Proficiency is how good a learner is at the language they are learning.

Using intonation

Intonation is crucial for communication. It’s also a largely unconscious mechanism, and as such, a complex aspect of pronunciation.

Keeping teens interested

Many English teachers would probably agree that teenagers are the most difficult age group to teach. Sometimes our teenage students do not want to be in class in the first place and often their minds can be on other things when we are giving an English lesson.

CLIL: A lesson framework

In the first of these articles, Content and Language Integrated Learning, I gave an introduction to this field. In this second article I will look more closely at how CLIL is realised in the classroom and suggest a framework for planning CLIL lessons.

Audio exchange project

I was teaching a monolingual group of 12 teenagers (15-17) at upper-intermediate level who were following a course book. The students were motivated but they needed a 'real’ communication task.

A smiling teachers writes on the whiteboard while looking at her class

Planning a grammar lesson

Teaching grammar is a necessary part of any language course. Discover different ways to plan a lesson for teaching grammar depending on who you are teaching.

Teaching resources