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
Find the gap - increasing speaking in class - speaking article

Find the gap - increasing speaking in class

The communicative approach to language learning stresses the need for meaningful communication, emphasising that if students have a genuine reason or motivation to talk then they will learn to use the language more effectively.

Planning 2 - methodology article

Planning 2

Planning 1 outlined the rationale behind lesson planning. This article looks at some of the elements to consider when planning an actual lesson: aims, concepts, contexts and marker sentences.

Teaching mixed-ability classes 2 - methodology article

Teaching mixed-ability classes 2

You may often be teaching a class which has students who are clearly of different levels. They may have different starting levels of English or they may learn at very different speeds - for any number of reasons.

Teaching mixed-ability classes 1 - methodology article

Teaching mixed-ability classes 1

You may often be teaching a class which has students who are clearly of different levels. They may have different starting levels of English or they may learn at very different speeds - for any number of reasons.

Planning 1 - methodology article

Planning 1

Planning is one of those essential skills of the competent teacher. 

Research and insight

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