A teacher praises her student

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.

Fluency

Fluency refers to how well a learner communicates meaning rather than how many mistakes they make in grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary.

Student in Sudan taking a test

Formal assessment

Formal assessment uses formal tests or structured continuous assessment to evaluate a learner’s level of language.

Teacher talking to student at a desk

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is the use of assessment to give the learner and the teacher information about how well something has been learnt so that they can decide what to do next.

student focusing on writing

Fossilization

Fossilization refers to the process in which incorrect language becomes a habit and cannot easily be corrected.

Teacher and young learners talking at a table

Free practice

Free practice is a stage in a lesson where learners produce language using the target content freely.

Group of students eating pizza together
Knowing the subject

Functions

Find out what functions are and why they’re important in the classroom.

Gap-fill

A gap-fill is a practice exercise in which learners have to replace words missing from a text.

A close up of the dictionary page for the word 'Grammar'

Generative grammar

A generative grammar is a set of rules that tries to include all examples of correct language and predict how these will be formed.

A young boy and young girl laugh while reading a book together

Genre

Genre is a term used to classify types of spoken or written discourse.

Two students in South Korea reading on a tablet

Gist

Gist is the general meaning or purpose of a text, either written or spoken.