If you are a busy English language teacher or trainer looking for support and development materials for your classroom???

If you are a busy English language teacher or trainer looking for support and development materials for your classroom, we can help you with this weekly collection of links to free materials from our British Council websites for teachers.

We are having a break for IATEFL 2010
Join us at http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/

Next update: 16 April 2010

LATEST UPDATES

Counselling learners
There are various ways of measuring learners' progress. Whichever method you choose, you should take time out to counsel your learners. Counselling involves talking through their strengths and weaknesses. It is an interactive process in which they are able to say how they feel about their learning, the course, and their teacher.
Read more

How green are you?
This lesson looks at ways the learners can take to reduce their impact on climate change. Learners will carry out two surveys and summarise their findings as a report. It gives students the chance to interview others to complete a survey and summarise findings in a report and develop questionnaires on current behaviour using present perfect forms.
Read more

Premier Skills
Your students can win a trip to the UK to watch a Barclays Premier League game in a new global competition from the British Council on premier-skills. Premierskills is a joint project between British Council and the UK’s Premier League which enables learners and teachers to communicate in two of the world’s global languages – football and English.
Read more

Constructivism in Saint Petersburg
This week I have participated in the Philological Conference in Saint Petersburg. It is an indispensable part of a university lecturer life to keep up with innovations or contribute to the progress in your field speaking to colleagues or writing articles. About a thousand speakers took part in it and the Lingvodidactic section welcomed about 30 researchers mostly from Russia and Ukraine.
Read more

Lesson Suggestions Please
I am giving one-one-one private English conversation lessons to two teenagers (separately) and I'm not sure what to do. They are elementary students and can express themselves but their pronunciation and vocabulary are not very good, although I can understand what they are trying to say. Should I be correcting this?
Read more

Gobbledygook
Put students in pairs and give them a scene to act out. They are going to have a conversation using an invented language. Explain to your students that gobbledygook is a made up language that is total nonsense. The pair should act out the scene using the correct intonation as if they were really talking to one another.
Read more

Zero Materials
Do you find yourself spending hours preparing your lessons? Are you getting very little support from colleagues? Is it difficult to know what to teach your children without a syllabus? Would you like some tips on how to create a good lesson when you find yourself with ten minutes to prepare a lesson, a broken photocopier, and your bag of teaching goodies safely locked up at home?
Read more

PREVIOUS UPDATES

Using the Board
Do you have a blackboard, a whiteboard or an IWB? Whatever type of board you have in your classroom it is important to be organised and to put yourself in your students' shoes for a moment. What do they see when they look at your board? In this article we will consider ways of getting the best use out of your board and perhaps give suggestions for exploiting your board in a different way.
Read more

Save water
This lesson looks at the causes of water shortages locally and internationally, and learners will produce a poster giving advice on saving water in the home or in the school. The lesson gives students the opportunity to talk about the use of water in every day life and to give advice to others on their role in water conservation.
Read more

ELTons 2010 Winners
The winners of the ELTons 2010 have now been announced! The ceremony, sponsored by Cambridge ESOL, took place on 3 March in London, marking the seventh year of the prestigious awards. Find out who won.
Read more

Teacher problems
This week’s poll is about the challenging job of teaching and the many problems we face as teachers. Which of these do you think is the biggest problem? What are your views on this topic? If you have any comments you would like to make on this topic, visit the post them below.
Read more

Teaching English in large, multi-level and multi-lingual classroom
I teach in mid-eastern hill of Nepal. One of my classes has 90 students. I found 9 native languages of their own in this class. Similarly, many students have come from different lower secondary schools with different abilities. It is very difficult to teach English in this large class with mixed abilities. Their own native languages has also created problem in correct pronunciation as well. I would like some practical ideas or techniques to teach in this type of classroom.
Read more

Computer Games Can Teach Schools Some Lessons
Some parents might see video games as an impediment to children keeping up with their schoolwork. James Gee, however, thinks video games are some of the best learning environments around. He says that if schools adopted some of the strategies that games use, they could educate children more effectively.
Read more

Getting adults and children to talk
Both adults and children need practice at talking to be able to develop their speaking skills, but that things that stimulate them to talk are often quite different. This tip contrasts the different approaches to getting adults and children talking.
Read more

Mobile phones
This lesson is about mobile phones and the issues that surround them. Students have the chance to learn some vocabulary related to phones and to do a quiz to test their knowledge of mobiles. Task 3 looks at text messaging and the language used for sending text messages. Students are given the chance to teach you about some of the text short-hand in their own language too.
Read more