ELT Concourse: a development programme

This area of the site is not linked to particular qualifications or training courses (although most require some consideration of how we develop as professional English Language Teachers).

The image on the left was not chosen randomly. Development is a continuous process of change and adaptation.
As new ideas, new materials, new technologies, new approaches and new learner needs arise, we need to adapt and evolve.

The ideas here are divided into strands and you can follow each one independently as far as you want to go.
You can follow one strand only, skip from strand to strand or weave strands together to suit your objectives and resources.

The process

develope

Whichever strand you follow in this section of the site, there are commonalities in the procedures. Development is a process you can visualise like this.

Where are you now?: Which areas of your teaching are the strongest and the weakest?
Set an objective: Choose a realistic and achievable goal
Implement changes: Read the materials and select the ideas that appeal to you most and contribute to your evolution as a teacher
Measure / evaluate the outcomes: What effects did the changes you made have?
Are things measurably better?
Reflect and consider: Which areas of your teaching still need attention?
Start again!

Before you start a development programme, you may like to ask yourself What makes an expert teacher? There is an article on this site intended to answer that question.

Training to Train

The link on the left on all pages in this section takes you to a completely free six-part course in converting from a language teacher to a language teacher trainer.
If you have ambitions to train teachers, that is a course worth taking.

Teaching online

Currently, because of the Covid-19 outbreak, many teachers are moving their face-to-face work to online and virtual classrooms.
ELT Concourse is an online resource, of course, and help is at hand.
There is a guide you can access here to how to teach online, what facilities you will need, how to plan online teaching and how to find materials on this site to help you.

Test yourself

If you don't know where to start, you could try a test. In the Delta section of this site, there is a 100-item terminology test which will help you identify areas you know too little about. It is to do with theory, not practical classroom skills.
Click here to take the test and shut it to return to this page.

The strands

Here are the development strands which form the heart of this section of the site.
Click on the one that appeals most to you.
Then you can access some suggested targets, ways of hitting them and some ways to assess and evaluate what effects any changes to your behaviour have.

Gauging progress	Strand 1	Strand 2
Measuring outcomes	Giving and getting feedback	Planning lessons
Strand 3	Strand 4	Strand 5
Teaching grammar	Teaching language skills	Some interesting techniques
Strand 6	Strand 7	Research in the classroom
Learn phonemic transcription	Recording and transcribing classroom talk	A guide to doing action research in the classroom

If you are considering taking a Delta course, there is a page for you explaining what it involves and providing links to some crucial guides (including this page). Click here to go to it.
If you have ideas for your own development programme which are not covered here and you are in need of help, tell ELT Concourse and your idea will go in the list.