In this section, you will find a number of articles, which have been written to help you develop your skills and knowledge as a teacher in the professional practice 'Understanding learners'. From primary-aged students to adult learners of English, the articles you will find here are practical, insightful and full of ideas to support your teaching and planning for all kinds of classrooms.It also involves dividing lessons into coherent stages, planning board work, selecting and describing interaction patterns for different activities during the lesson, and planning for differentiated learning. 

Planning lessons and courses includes anticipating problems that may arise during the lesson, and planning how to respond to these, describing how learners’ understanding will be checked or assessed and describing when and how feedback will be provided. It is important to be able to describe how a lesson is linked to those before and after it, plan a broad outline for a sequence of lessons, including the recycling of learning content and reflect on the approach and effectiveness of lesson planning, incorporating learner feedback and other evidence.

Find useful articles

Planning a writing lesson

Writing, unlike speaking, is not an ability we acquire naturally, even in our first language - it has to be taught. Unless L2 learners are explicitly taught how to write in the new language, their writing skills are likely to get left behind as their speaking progresses.

Grouping students

When you’re planning your lessons how much time do you spend thinking about how you’re going to group students for the activities in your plan?

Personalised speaking

People spend a huge chunk of their everyday conversation time talking about themselves and the people they know, so the most natural thing in the world is for us to invite our students to do the same.

Pre-listening activities - listening article

Pre-listening activities

Listening skills are hard to develop. Students can do a variety of work before listening to help them understand.

Public speaking skills

For many people, standing up in public and doing a speech is one of their greatest fears. For many language students in particular, this is the ultimate challenge.

Jazzing up grammar

Making grammar more interesting for students is one of the great challenges any EFL teacher faces.

A framework for planning a listening skills lesson - listening article

A framework for planning a listening skills lesson

By developing their ability to listen well we develop our students' ability to become more independent learners, as by hearing accurately they are much more likely to be able to reproduce accurately, refine their understanding of grammar and develop their own vocabulary.

Research and insight

Browse fascinating case studies, research papers, publications and books by researchers and ELT experts from around the world.

See our publications, research and insight