Ready to improve your language teaching skills? Ready to take your teaching to the next level?
This is a multi-part teacher training and development programme focusing on the core principles and strategies of effective language learning and teaching. It is designed for both newer teachers as well as experienced professionals wanting to consolidate and extend their practice.
What makes this series distinct is that Teacher and Teacher Educator Jamie King guides you through observations of authentic English language lessons, complemented by expert insights into both theory and practice.
The videos can be combined into a complete programme of professional development, or each topic can be approached independently.
Teaching Language Skills
Teaching Listening
Teaching ListeningMaking Listening Work
Listening is more than simply playing a recording and checking answers. So how can a teacher support learners to become more confident and effective listeners?
This video is for teachers who are building their teaching skills or refining their existing practice. It explores what successful listening involves, why learners often find it challenging, and practical strategies for developing listening fluency in the second language classroom.
Description
Using authentic footage from a real English language lesson, Teacher Educator Jamie King leads you through a guided observation of the lesson, combining classroom practice with expert insights into the theory and practice of teaching listening skills.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the video, you will be better able to:
- Plan and stage an effective receptive skills lesson using the Pre-While-Post approach
- Identify a range of listening sub-skills
- Distinguish between top-down and bottom-up listening processes
- Recognise key factors that can make listening lessons more engaging, meaningful and successful
- Observe and evaluate how these principles are applied and managed in practice
Teaching Reading
Bringing Text to Life
Reading is more than simply presenting a text and answering questions about it. So how can a teacher support learners to become more independent and effective readers?
This video is for teachers who are building their teaching skills or refining their existing practice. It explores what successful reading involves, why learners often find it challenging, and practical strategies for developing reading fluency in the second language classroom.
Description
Using authentic footage from a real English language lesson, Teacher Educator Jamie King leads you through a guided observation of the lesson, combining classroom practice with expert insights into the theory and practice of teaching reading skills.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the video, you will be better able to:
- Plan and stage an effective receptive skills lesson using the Pre-While-Post approach
- Identify a range of reading sub-skills
- Distinguish between top-down and bottom-up reading processes
- Recognise key factors that can make reading lessons more engaging, meaningful and successful
- Observe and evaluate how these principles are applied and managed in practice
Teaching Speaking
Real-life Communication
Speaking involves more than simply giving learners opportunities to talk. So how can a teacher support learners to become more proficient speakers?
This video is for teachers who are building their teaching skills or refining their existing practice. It explores what successful speaking involves, why learners often find it challenging, and practical strategies for developing oral fluency in the second language classroom.
Description
Using authentic footage from a real English language lesson, Teacher Educator Jamie King leads you through a guided observation of the lesson, combining classroom practice with expert insights into the theory and practice of teaching speaking skills.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the video, you will be better able to:
- Plan and stage an effective productive skills lesson using a Task-Based Learning (TBL) approach
- Identify how input and preparation before speaking tasks can scaffold skills development
- Identify how task, content and/or language feedback after tasks can promote further skills development
- Distinguish between weak and strong forms of TBL
- Recognise key factors that can make speaking lessons more engaging, meaningful and successful
- Observe and evaluate how these principles are applied and managed in practice
Teaching Writing
Product vs Process
Writing involves much more than merely having learners write something during a lesson. So how can a teacher support learners to become more proficient writers?
This video is for teachers who are building their teaching skills or refining their existing practice. It explores what successful writing involves, why learners often find it challenging, and practical strategies for developing written accuracy and fluency in the second language classroom.
Description
Using authentic footage from two real English language lessons, Teacher Educator Jamie King leads you through a guided observation of the lessons, combining classroom practice with expert insights into the theory and practice of teaching writing skills. You’ll observe two different teachers working with different learner groups at distinct levels, providing a direct comparison of Product and Process approaches, showing how each can support learners in different ways.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the video, you will be better able to:
- Plan and stage an effective productive skills lesson using both Product and Process approaches
- Identify how genre, text type, audience and purpose can shape the way writing is taught
- Identify how input, preparation and models before writing tasks can scaffold skills development
- Consider how self and peer evaluation can facilitate written accuracy and metacognitive awareness
- Identify how task, content and/or language feedback after tasks can promote further skills development
- Distinguish between Product and Process approaches
- Recognise key factors that can make writing lessons more engaging, meaningful and successful
- Observe and evaluate how these principles are applied and managed in practice
Future Releases
More courses. More insights. More opportunities to grow. Coming soon!
Watch this space for courses designed to enhance your teaching of grammar, vocabulary/lexis, and language functions — exploring and observing practical approaches, techniques and principles that can make learning language systems more effective for learners.
Watch this space for full-length videos of authentic, real-life language lessons focused on each of the same areas covered in the Teaching Language Skills and Teaching Language Systems series. Here, you will be guided through an in-depth observation of the lesson, fully commentated from start to finish by Jamie. Not only will he provide insights into the theory and principles of how learners learn the various aspects of language, but he will also highlight how we put these into practice — not just in terms of teaching strategies and techniques, but also in terms of the specifics of effective classroom management — addressing the question of why we do the things we do the way we do them. The videos in this series also come with a detailed lesson plan, as well as a full set of lesson materials.
Watch this space for videos on how to up your game and take your teaching to the next level, exploring more sophisticated topics, approaches and techniques, taught by Jamie himself and other expert practitioners.