Nine-week Course in Teaching Language Skills

Welcome to our Teaching Language Skills Course

Although many teachers claim to teach English in a ‘communicative way’, there is very often no clear consensus about what this means in practice!This course is designed to help teachers understand why a mastery of teaching skills is essential to helping learners to become effective language users.

By the end of the course, participants will have:

• Gained a better understanding of the basic principles of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
• Considered the role of warmers, lead-ins, ice-breakers, stirrers and settlers in language teaching
• Understood the role of language skills in CLT
• Understood the basic principles of receptive skills lessons
• Developed their ability to teach listening in a more focused and effective way
• Learnt how to use texts to practise a range of intensive and extensive reading skills
• Extended their ability to adapt authentic materials to practise listening and reading
• Learnt how students can develop their writing skills through both parallel and process writing approaches
• Been introduced to a range of activities to enhance students spoken fluency
• Developed a clear understanding about why, when and how to correct students oral and written English
• Been exposed to a range of integrated skills activities (and also considered the role of Project Work in developing students’ language over time)
• Explored the use of stories and storytelling to develop all four language skills

Why should you take this course

• It will provide you with clear models, approaches and ideas about how to teach language skills both in isolation, and in coordination with other skills.
• It will offer you the opportunity to reflect and apply this input to your own specific teaching context so as to become more effective in the classroom.
• It will give you the confidence and background knowledge to vary the way you teach language skills, using both coursebook and authentic materials.