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.

Teacher in Colombia listening to a student

Guided discovery

Guided discovery, also known as an inductive approach, is a technique where a teacher provides examples of a language item and helps the learners to find the rules themselves.

Teacher working with an adult student on a writing task

Guided writing

Guided writing involves a teacher working with a group of learners on a writing task.

Young learner with hand up asking a question

Higher-order questions

Higher-order questions require answers that go beyond simple information and as such both the language and thinking behind them is more complex.

Group of young learners in Vietnam working with their teacher

Holistic approach

A holistic approach to language sees it as a whole, which is not divisible in a meaningful way for teaching.

Two students looking at vocabulary cards

Homonym

A homonym is a word that has the same sound or spelling as another but a different meaning.

Two students in Bahrain talking

Homophone

A homophone is a word that has the same sound as another word but different meaning and spelling.

Young learners standing up in class

Horseshoe layout

A horseshoe layout is a way of organizing learners’ seats in a class in the form of a horseshoe.

A teacher in Dubai listening to their student

Humanistic

Humanistic language teaching is an approach based on the principle that the whole being, emotional and social, needs to be engaged in learning, not just the mind.

Woman in library sitting down looking at a book

Hypotheses

Hypotheses are possible ideas about language rules that learners form as they receive information.

Young learner sitting with a soft toy

Ice-breakers

Ice-breakers are speaking activities used with a new class in order to give the learners an opportunity to meet each other.