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.

Asian student holding a paper while doing a speaking activity with another student another student

Teaching mixed ability classes 1

You may often be teaching a class which has learners who clearly have different levels of English. They may have different starting levels or they may learn at very different speeds – for any number of reasons.

Low-tech learners

Many teachers who have tried to take an English class onto the internet have often come back with a similar problem - students who are reluctant to work on computers.

Motivating pupils to read 2

This is the second of two articles that look at ways to apply the process model of motivation as proposed by Dornyei (2001) to a number of suggestions and techniques for making the challenge of reading authentic literature accessible and motivating.

Motivating pupils to read

This is the first of two articles that look at ways to apply the process model of motivation as proposed by Dornyei (2001) to a number of suggestions and techniques for making the challenge of reading authentic literature accessible and motivating.

Group work v. whole-class activities - methodology article

Group work versus whole-class activities

This article looks at the importance of using a variety of class groupings to keep lessons engaging and dynamic and to accommodate different learning styles.

An introduction to using visualisation

Visualisation has been widely used in sports psychology over the last 30 years to enhance all aspects of performance. In this article I will be looking at some of the ways that it can be applied to language learning.

Designing a WWW reading task

The world wide web offers a myriad of opportunities for authentic English reading texts.

Teaching children with additional educational needs

An in depth look at how English language institutions, schools and teachers can make their classes more inclusive by adapting their policies and approaches to cater for children with a diverse range of educational needs.

Professional competence 2

Here is a selection of top tips to help teachers of English develop their professional competence. They cover issues of professional conduct, strategies for dealing with students and their language production, the importance of meaningful communication and the example the teacher sets. This is the second of two such articles.

Three people sitting around a table talking

Teaching resources