Articles | TeachingEnglish | British Council

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

young woman studying with a laptop

How to design engaging learning experiences for your Generation Alpha learners

What questions should we ask ourselves when planning lessons for Generation Alpha learners?

A group of learners from different ethnicities laughing around a classroom table as they learn

Communicative writing for the ELT classroom

Read this article by Jo Cummins, looking at strategies for communicative writing in English language teaching classes.

Online Storytelling: Engaging, Personal, Creative

David Heathfield looks at how storytelling can be used effectively in online English language classes and gives practical advice with clear examples.

Face-to-Face storytelling: Freedom to share physical and sensory space

David Heathfield looks at the benefits of using storytelling in face-to-face English language classes and gives practical advice with clear examples.

A creative approach to language teaching. A way to recognise, encourage and appreciate students' contributions to language classes

In this extract, Libor Stepanek presents 'The creative approach to language teaching', which has been developed, tested and successfully implemented at Masaryk University Language Centre.

Course planning

Being able to plan well is one of the key skills that a teacher needs to have. It involves being able to imagine what is going to happen in the classroom, and to make choices based on this imagined experience. Planning also involves the ability to zoom out, to see the bigger picture and know how a 2 hour lesson fits into a 100 hour course, but it also involves the ability to zoom in, and work out the mechanics of how a 15 minute activity will work best.

Teenagers and grammar

Say the word ‘grammar’ to teenagers and you might be met by yawns or icy stares. But don’t be daunted – the experience can be positive, or even fun.

Lesson planning

Lesson planning

When you are faced with planning whole lessons on your own for the first time it can seem like a daunting task.

Article: Not unit 5!

Not Unit 5!

In this article, Luke Meddings reflects on the constraints coursebooks can put on the learning experience in the classroom, and offers some suggestions on how we can overcome that.

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