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.

A teacher sat in a circle, talking to his learners

Managing young learners

This article explores some very useful classroom management strategies for teaching young learners, which requires special knowledge of child development and specific skills to maintain a calm and controlled learning environment.

Teaching speaking skills

This article looks at how we can help our learners practise real-life speaking tasks so they are better able to deal with other English speakers outside the classroom.

Using the internet 2

In this, and an earlier article, we look at the internet and how it can be used by teachers of English as a tool for their own development and as a resource for classroom teaching.

Using the internet 1

In this, and a following article, we’ll be looking at the internet and how it can be used by teachers of English as a tool for their own development and as a resource for classroom teaching.

NLP in our classes - methodology article

Rediscovering silent grammar

Many of us may be familiar with aspects of the Silent Way, mainly because in recent years it has been popular to use "Silent Way" techniques for teaching pronunciation, for example in the work of Adrian Underhill in Sound Foundations (Heinemann, 1994).

Repertoire

This article explores what we mean by 'repertoire’ in English language teaching terms and why it is something that teachers should regularly review, revise and extend!

A coloured-in paper chain of people holding hands in a circle

Guide to setting up an English Learning Circle

If you would like to set up an out-of-class English Learning Circle with your students, here are 8 things you need to consider:

Write on! - Creative writing as language practice

This article looks at creative writing and answers a number of questions about the benefits of incorporating a focus on creative writing in the classroom and how to set up activities successfully.

teacher talking to primary learner in a classroom

From mother tongue to other tongue

This article explores the complex issue of whether or not to use the mother-tongue (L1) in the English language (L2) classroom.

Teaching large classes

In this article, teachers from around the world share their experience-based tips on how to deal with large classes and limited resources.

Teaching resources