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.

A Black teacher stands in front of his classroom while learners put their hands up

Register and degrees of formality

Learn how language changes depending on who you speak to and the situation, and how to teach students to choose between formal, neutral and informal language.

Increasing student interaction - listening article

Increasing learner interaction

This article explains the importance of encouraging as much learner-to-learner interaction in the class as possible and looks at why learners are sometimes reluctant to speak to each other and what teachers can do to overcome this.

Lexical exploitation of texts

Reading and listening texts are often used in the ELT classroom to practise receptive skills and / or as the introduction to a topic or language point.

Using dictionaries

Why should we encourage students to use dictionaries? Dictionaries develop learner autonomy. They are a handy resource for researching different meanings, collocations, examples of use and standard pronunciation.

Analysing language

Learn how to analyse language clearly so you can teach it more effectively, focusing on meaning, form, pronunciation and usage.

Checking answers

When checking the answers to an exercise or activity, teachers can often revert to a more traditional role, where they stand at the front of the room, and they ask students for their answers and tell them whether they are right. I am going to tell you about my practice at the British Council in Cameroon.

The child as a learner - methodology article

Teaching resources