Carol Read

Our most recent guest was Carol Read. You can read Carol's article on 'Three wishes' for teachers of young learners and also watch a workshop by Carol on 'The SECRET of working with young learners'.

Below, Carol writes about her life in English language teaching. 

I am an educational consultant, teacher trainer and writer based in Madrid. As part of my work, I have frequently acted as a young learner consultant for organisations such as the British Council, the Council of Europe, Cambridge ESOL and Ministries of Education in many different countries. I am also an assessor of courses leading to the Cambridge ESOL Young Learner Extension to CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults). 

As a teacher, I have over thirty years' experience working with adults, secondary students and primary school children in a number of different countries, including Venezuela, Portugal and Spain. For several years, I worked as Assistant Director of Studies at the British Council Young Learner Centre in Madrid, where I was responsible for academic management and teacher development, and also introduced new courses for very young learners from the age of five.

Teacher Education has long been one of my main interests and I have over twenty-five years’ experience working with teachers, teacher trainers and educational managers in a wide range of contexts in both the private and state sectors. I have run numerous in-service teacher education courses for organisations and teaching institutions in many different countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

For many years, I have also been actively involved in doing voluntary work for IATEFL. For eight years, I was on the committee of the Young Learner Special Interest Group and joint editor of its newsletter. For three years, I was a member of the Publications Committee, which has overall responsibility for the Association’s publications and website, and I am currently in my second year on the Conference Committee, which assists in setting up the annual IATEFL conference.

I first started out in ELT after obtaining a first-class BA Honours degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia. An initial teacher training qualification gave me a passport to travel and I got my first job teaching English to children and university students at the British Institute in Caracas, Venezuela. Some time later, I worked for the British Council in Lisbon, Portugal where I taught English to students of all ages and levels. During this time, I obtained the RSA Diploma, became a teacher trainer, did an MA in Language Teaching and Linguistics at the University of York and wrote my first book. My desire to specialise in working with young learners grew considerably after having my own children (now adults), when I became increasingly interested in child development, bi-lingualism and foreign language teaching and learning within the context of mainstream education – all areas which continue to fascinate me and form a central part of my work.

Over the years I have published widely in ELT including course books, supplementary materials and articles on methodology and teaching children. Examples of titles include a pre-school course, Hello, Robby Rabbit, a six-level primary course, Bugs, which won a British Council Innovation Award, Footprints, a higher level children’s course (all with co-authors) and 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom which was Highly Commended in the Duke of Edinburgh ESU English Language Book Awards. I have also written teacher support materials for the Magic Pencil Exhibition which you can find on this site www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/teaching-kids/magic-pencil 

My blog, an ABC of teaching children www.carolread.wordpress.com contains 26 articles on various aspects of teaching children, one for each letter of the alphabet. You may also like to watch three Macmillan Education webinars I have given recently on ‘Using praise in the Young Learner Classroom’, ‘Picturebooks and cross-curricular themes’ and ‘Control or chaos? Managing classes of primary children in a positive way’ http://www.macmillanenglish.com/BlankTemplate.aspx?id=56230 There’s also more about my work as well as downloadable articles, materials, handouts and powerpoint versions of some of my talks on my website www.carolread.com