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.

Dave Watkins is an internationally recognised teacher trainer currently working as the Teacher Development Manager at British Side.

Dave has 20 years experience training both pre-service and in-service teachers in 15 countries, including stints as a full-time British Council Trainer in Turkey, Moldova and Ethiopia, and working as a freelance trainer on a large number of international teacher development projects sponsored by the British government and other large stakeholders.

He is a CELTA trainer, holds a Cambridge University DELTA, and a postgraduate degree in Trainer Development in English Language teaching from Exeter University in the UK.