The lagniappe
In case you are wondering, the term lagniappe (/ˈlæŋ.jæp/) entered English from a Quechan word used by Andean
people via Spanish and then via Louisianan French.
It refers to the small gift that it is customary in many cultures
for a merchant to add to a purchase by way of saying thank you.
If you buy a dozen slices of cake, for example, the confectioner
might happily add a 13th by way of a small token or lagniappe.
Mark Twain is recorded as saying that it is
a word worth traveling to New Orleans
to get.
The custom, if not the term, is widespread and continues in
Spanish-speaking countries, South-East Asia and in Europe in The
Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Greece in particular.
Here it refers to additional material for teacher trainers which is
not part of the six Units of this course proper but which may ease
your way to converting from a master language teacher to an expert
teacher trainer.
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The first little gift, if you like
to see it that way, is the opportunity to take a 25-item,
multiple-choice test on the content of this course. If you get a lot of it wrong, you may be well advised to re-do whole units or parts of the units. Click here to do the test. |
Here are some other little gifts.
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Teacher development |
An entire section on this site is devoted to ideas and advice for
personal teacher development. The guides were not written with
teacher training courses in mind but contain a number of ideas and
exercises along with teaching suggestions and ideas for
experimenting with new techniques and methodologies.
The first section, in particular, is helpful on teacher training
courses because it suggests ways in which course participants can
measure their own progress and that is an introspection skill many
courses are concerned to develop in trainees.
The index to that section is
here (new tab) and you will find that it contains the following
sections (which do not open in new tabs)
| Gauging progress | Strand 1 | Strand 2 | Strand 3 |
| Measuring outcomes | Giving and getting feedback | Planning lessons | Teaching grammar |
| Strand 4 | Strand 5 | Strand 6 | Strand 7 |
| Teaching language skills | Some interesting techniques | Learn phonemic transcription | Recording and transcribing classroom talk |
A further section of that area is a guide to doing classroom-based research: experiments, descriptive and analytic surveys which is a skill many participants require on teacher training courses.
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For teacher trainers |
This section of the site contains materials and ideas for teacher
trainers and you can access
the section index from this link.
It is not a course in becoming or being a teacher
trainer but does contain material which may be helpful for you when
you are planning and delivering training sessions.
The section is divided into some general advice, materials and
workshop tasks for people on initial or pre-service courses and
people training teachers in-service with their eyes on, for example,
the Cambridge Delta qualification or another at a similar level.
Topics covered include:
| Initial training | In-service training |
| Sentence elements Tense and aspect Modal auxiliary verbs Word class Meaning and lexical relationships Collocation Word formation Skills introduction Transcription essentials Methodology background |
Types of modality Adverbials Determiners Deixis Complex sentences Multi-word verbs Lexical relationships Transcription Methodology refined |
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In-house development programmes for Academic Managers |
The section of this site for Academic Managers contains a guide
to
setting up and running in-house development programmes.
Whether you are an academic manager or not, if it is your task to
set up internal development programmes, you may find some ideas
there.
There is also a guide in that section to
observation of teachers which repeats much of the material in
this course.
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Training courses on this site |
The following links to other courses on this site all open in new
tabs.
Most of these courses are not designed for teacher trainers to use
because they are for individual self study. However, you are
welcome, with proper, professional referencing and accrediting, to
use and build on the materials on training courses.
| learn to transcribe | A course in transcribing English phonemically |
| a basic training course | This is a very basic course for people who are preparing for an initial training course and/or have not taught English before |
| a language analysis course | The basics of language analysis, focusing on phonology, morphology, lexis, tense, aspect, phrases, clauses, sentences and text structures |
| a pre-CELTA grammar course | This is a short course intended to help people prepare for an initial training course in ELT such as CELTA or the CertTESOL |
| a CELTA teaching toolkit | A short course for people taking CELTA covering key teaching techniques and behaviours |
| TKT | A complete training course for Modules 1, 2 and 3 of the Cambridge English Teaching Knowledge Test |
| Delta Module One | A course to prepare for the Cambridge English Delta Module One (Understanding language, methodology and resources for teaching) |
| Delta Module One revision | A separate shorter course to help people revise for the Cambridge Delta Module One examination |
| language typology | A mini-course in comparing languages |
| doing classroom research | A guide-cum-mini-course in how to carry out usable experiments, surveys and other classroom-based research |
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Other resources |
You will probably be aware that this site also contains:
- Language, methodology, skills and other guides at
pre-service and initial qualification level.
The index is here. - Language, methodology, skills and other guides at in-service
level and beyond.
The index is here. - About language (and English in particular) is an index of
guides unlinked to the practicalities of teaching but
concerning matters you should know about.
The index is here. - An A-Z index of all the training guides on the site.
The index is here.
If you are training explicitly for CELTA, Delta or TKT, there are sections of this site devoted to those qualifications and preparation for candidates. The links on the left will take you to them.
Here, too, is a very short annotated bibliography of books you
may like to consider having on your shelves in addition to those
guides and resources for teachers which you have already
accumulated.
The focus here is on generalised references, not references to
specific areas.
| Title etc. | Comment |
| Aitchison, J, 2008, The Articulate Mammal, 5th Edition, Oxford: Routledge | A very accessible and thought-provoking introduction to psycholinguistics which covers a good deal of ground at just the right level. |
| Chalker, S, 1984, Current English Grammar, London: Macmillan | An accessible traditional grammar above the level of those intended for learners. |
| Crystal, D, 1987, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press | A mass of information, accessibly presented and authoritative. |
| Crystal, D, 2008, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (6th edition), Oxford: Blackwell Publishing | A go-to reference for tricky terms and concepts. |
| Ellis, R, 1994, The Study of Second Language Acquisition, Oxford: Oxford University Press | A comprehensive survey of how language is learned and much else. |
| Harmer, J, 2015, The Practice of English Language Teaching, 5th Edition, Harlow: Pearson | Basic but a good reminder of essential ideas. |
| Lock, G, 1996, Functional English Grammar, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press | An alternative grammar which focuses not on form but on function. |
| Quirk, R & Greenbaum, S, 1973, A University Grammar of English, Harlow: Longman | A shorter version of the next reference. |
| Quirk, R, Greenbaum, S, Leech, G & Svartvik, J, 1972, A Grammar of Contemporary English, Harlow: Longman | The authority in a range of areas. Do not let the date fool you – the language hasn't changed that much. |
| Stern, HH, 1983, Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching, Oxford: Oxford University Press | A comprehensive and surprisingly up-to-date review of major ideas. |
| Wallace, MJ, 1991, Training Foreign Language Teachers: a reflective approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press | Useful for stepping back and looking at the structure of training rather than its content. Some interesting case studies and ideas for timetabling longer courses. |
| Widdowson, H, 1990, Aspects of Language Teaching, Oxford: Oxford University Press | Linking theory and practice consistently. |
| Woodward, T, 1991, Models and Metaphors in Language Teacher Training: loop input and other strategies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press | Some interesting and thought-provoking ideas once you get past its somewhat prescriptive approach. |
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Support |
This is not a taught course and it's free so you can't
realistically expect consistent tutorial support.
However, if you have questions or need some specific help, feel free
to write to ELT
Concourse and, time and
personnel permitting, we'll try to help.
No promises, OK?
