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Unit 2: Training course content

Whether you are designing a training programme from scratch or designing a programme based on someone else's idea of a syllabus (such as Cambridge Assessment English or Trinity College), you are going to have to come to terms with deciding on the content of your programme.
As a novice trainer it is not usual (although possible) for you to be left to your own devices in this respect but even if the course syllabus is laid down by others, it is still your job to see how the content fits together and addresses the intended outcomes of the programme.

Rationale

Teacher training is a serious business, although it needn't be gloomy, dull and over-earnest, and, like all serious undertakings, it needs a rationale for its existence.
You should, therefore, be able to tell someone else in accurate and concise terms what your course is for and why it is needed.
The rationale will include at least:

• Course type
  Here, we need to say what the essential nature of the course really is.  For example:
  • This is a pre-service course to prepare people to teach children at a summer school
  • This is an in-service training course to prepare people for the following externally awarded qualification ...
  • This is an in-service course for inexperienced teachers to help them broaden their skills base and operate in more specialised teaching settings
  • This is an in-house development programme for experienced teachers to share best practice across the institution
• Target participants
  Here, we need to have a clear idea of who the course is for.  We need, for example, to be clear about:
  • The ages and backgrounds of the participants.
    Are they school leavers, the newly graduated, experienced teachers, overseas teachers, state school teachers, teachers in private institutions or what?
  • The qualifications for entry.
    Do participants need to have a minimum amount of experience?
    Do they need a minimum level of educational attainment?
• Course context
  Here, we need to consider whether the course is purely for a select group, perhaps a single institution's staff, or whether it fits with an already established qualification.
  We also need to consider whether there are elements of public policy with which the course will be aligned.
• Course aims
  If you are operating within a syllabus laid down by an external body, this has been done for you.  Such bodies are usually quite explicit concerning the aims of the course and the overall objectives it has to meet.  For example, the Cambridge Assessment English Handbook for its CELTA scheme sets out the course objectives (which it terms aims, in fact) as:

  The course enables candidates to:
      acquire essential subject knowledge and familiarity with the principles of effective teaching
      acquire a range of practical skills for teaching English to adult learners
      demonstrate their ability to apply their learning in a real teaching context.
  

  Other public awarding bodies will have similar statements for all qualifications.
  On the other hand, if you are planning the content of a course which is not externally accredited, you have more freedom to choose the content to suit the needs and characteristics of the participants and their institutional setting(s).
  See below for more ideas of the types of knowledge and skills you could aim to improve or establish.
• Principles
  Something needs to be said in the rationale about the principles on which the course is based.  For example:
  • Does the course explicitly target reflection and introspection skills?
  • Does the course set out to provide participants with the skills they need to develop autonomously after the course is finished?
  • Is the course intended to provide participants with wholly portable skills or is it culturally based?

That's the foundation laid.  Now we can start to build the content.

Four types of knowledge

Teacher training programmes are complex animals and we need a way to categorise what they intend to achieve.
Some courses will be severely practical, intent only on providing novice teachers with a set of techniques and procedures to get them through a teaching day.
Some, for example, in-house programmes, may be focused on sharing ideas with other teachers and setting personal development goals.
Others may be more sophisticated and endeavour to link procedures and techniques to principles and theoretical models of language and learning.
Still others will be focused less on the classroom and attempt to provide practising teachers with theoretical knowledge to back up and justify what they already do in the classroom.
Whichever type you are involved in, there are four areas you need to consider.  The mix will vary and some types of knowledge may be prioritised over others but they will all, most probably, be present.

Subject knowledge

There is some doubt on some courses that subject knowledge is treated as thoroughly as other kinds of knowledge but it is still the case that learners expect and sometimes demand that their teachers are masters of the content of the syllabus as well as the practical aspects of teaching.
Some subject knowledge will accordingly be contained in the content of any serious training course unless it may safely be assumed that the participants have already mastered it (as may, for example, be the case with some in-house programmes for well qualified and experienced teachers).
On initial and pre-service training courses it is perilous to assume that ability to speak, write and understand the language is an adequate background for teaching it.  Even on in-service courses, where one might expect a higher level of initial knowledge, there will usually be a need to for some serious language and skills analysis.
This will involve these areas (although they will not all be given equal prominence, of course):

1. Grammar, phonology, lexis and structure
   Trainees at all levels need to absorb at least some data on:
   1. verbs forms
   2. tense and aspect
   3. syntax
   4. discourse and deixis
   5. morphology
   6. functions and notions
   7. lexical relationships
   8. mood and modality
   9. phonemic knowledge including transcription skills
   10. elements of connected speech including prosodic features
2. Skills knowledge
   Trainees at all levels need some knowledge of the strategies and subskills concerned with:
   1. Reading
   2. Writing
   3. Speaking
   4. Listening
   5. Combined / integrated skills
3. General language awareness
   Although not all courses will focus on this area, some will have to, and the area includes:
   1. English as an international lingua franca
   2. The roots of English
   3. Varieties of English
   4. Cultural issues
   5. Differences between English and other languages (typology)
   6. The social context of language use

It's not possible here to determine the relative importance of these areas for any programme on which you may be working but all the areas have to be considered if only to be discarded because they don't match the syllabus, time does not permit or the topic is too advanced or irrelevant.

Methodological knowledge

This is another area where a certain amount of judicious editing and selection is probably wise on almost any programme.  However, it is not possible to select and edit if you don't have a reasonably comprehensive grasp of what the area involves.
It's also important to categorise carefully in this area or everything gets called a method or a methodology and the water is very muddy and undifferentiated.  On this site, distinctions are made between:

• Major theories (such as cognitivism, functional analysis of language, structuralism or behaviourism)
• Hypotheses (such as motivation theories and language acquisition theories)
• Procedures (such as using noticing activities, converting input to intake, scaffolding tasks in the Zone of Proximal Development, Dogme, PPP approaches etc.)
• Techniques (such as various sorts of dictation, information-gap tasks, skills work on texts etc.)
• Classroom solutions (such as concept-checking questions, grouping learners, nomination and class management)

but, providing you have some clarity, you can decide on your own categories for these items.
There's more in the guide to refining methodology.

Consideration needs to be given to at least:

1. The constituents of a methodology
2. Theories of language: what it is and how it fits together
3. Theoretical assumptions and assertions about learning (see the next section)
4. The range of methodologies and methods available currently and in the past
5. Natural approaches
6. Humanism
7. Post-method methodology

Again, the nature of the course, its participants and its aims and objectives will determine what weight, if any, is given to each of the factors in that list.

Psychological knowledge

This is often combined with the last section on many courses or the threads are woven together.  It is, nevertheless, a distinct area for consideration and will include:

1. Learning theory
2. Language acquisition theories
3. Human data processing theories
4. Learning strategies
5. Factors affecting learning
6. Language interference and facilitation
7. How language is learned
8. Cognitivism and other theories of mind
9. The relationship between thought and language

On pre-service and initial courses, you are probably wise not to dwell on this area but for in-service training, it's essential for people to get a grip on the theories which underlie classroom practice.

Procedural knowledge

Pre-service and initial training courses need to place procedural knowledge at the heart of what they do.  Unfortunately, this tends to mean that other areas of knowledge are neglected and participants are left without adequate background understanding to carry their skills forward and build on them in a principled way.
That's not your fault and on some courses, aiming for recognised initial qualifications, there is little you can do to ameliorate the problem but on others you may be able to do something useful to allow people a certain amount of autonomy.

Procedural knowledge will include any or all of the following depending on the level of competence and skill the course is intended to enable in the participants.
The following is in alphabetical order lest you think it's some kind of prioritised list.  It cannot be because all courses are different.

It would be simple to add to this list and a good many of the items could be subdivided.

Other skills to consider

In addition to all of the above, as if that weren't enough, we need also to consider training people in:

1. Teaching for special purposes (English for Business, Academia, Science etc.)
2. Teaching one to one
3. Teaching online only
4. The nature of authenticity
5. Selecting a course book and supplementary materials
6. DIY materials
7. Testing
8. Resources
9. Using technology
10. Project work

and more.

Mythology avoidance

While we are considering the content of training programmes, it is worth taking a little time to consider how myths about the language and the best way to teach it are transmitted and that is usually through some form of training course.
Myths and errors of fact may be profession wide (such as learning styles and left-right-brain differences) or they may be confined to institutions (such as being unable to distinguish style from register).
There is a guide on this site which sets out a range of myths about the language and teaching procedures which considers, for example, the efficacy of drilling, the existence of an affective filter, the evils of teacher talk, the usefulness of group work and much more.
It may be worth a few minutes of your time to see how many unicorns you believe you have seen.
Click here to open the guide in a new tab.

Making the decisions

Faced with such long lists of different elements in each of the three main categories, we need a systematic way to make a principled choice of what to include and what to prioritise.
Unfortunately, ELT Concourse can't do this for you but we can propose a methodology that may help.
It looks like this:

1. Start from course aims
   • If the aim is procedural competence for pre-service and initial training course participants, focus on procedural matters and introduce background theory tangentially (using something like because it is believed that ...).
   • If the aim is to train in-service teachers to refine and strengthen their teaching repertoire, start the other way round by considering theories and principles and seeing what sorts of classroom procedures and roles they naturally lead to.
   • If the aim is to raise in-house competence and extend the range of practice, start by sharing ideas which can then be used as a basis for discussing whether they match the theoretical and principled approach taken by the organisation as a whole.
2. Consider time
   • Short courses will only allow a limited range to be covered so prioritise again using the points under 1. and then editing down the lists to the most relevant topics.
   • Longer courses will allow more depth so try to draw threads through the topics that can build up to a mastery of the area from theories of language and learning → major hypotheses about learning → procedures → techniques → classroom solutions.
     For more on this, see the guide to refining methodology (new tab).
3. Consider the participants
   • Participants who already have some knowledge of teaching and the theories which underlie what they do in the classroom will be more able to take on new ideas and deeper analysis.
   • Teachers who have become routinised in what they do in the classroom may be refreshed by considering new insights from learning and psycholinguistic theories which they can apply to their classrooms to increase variety and engagement.
   • Participants who have never taught before or only very little need a grounding in grammar, structure, lexis and phonology before they can begin to plan and teach.  Focus there first.
   • People with more background will already have a good idea of these matters so aim to extend and deepen their knowledge through research and writing tasks.
4. Consider the course context
   1. Courses aiming at externally accredited qualifications need to match the content to the syllabus which is imposed from the examining body.  Match the items above to each of the syllabus elements individually, locate any gaps and fill them.  Ignore everything else.
   2. Courses aiming to prepare people only for particular settings need to be very focused so select with care what's appropriate to cover and cover the areas in depth.
   3. Participants in many in-house development courses are quite able to set their own agendas for research and discovery.  They may need some judicious nudging and direction, however.
   4. If the institution has set up a course to enhance the teachers' abilities in specific areas, track them down from the lists and focus on them without forgetting to consider any theoretical background which makes them accessible and consistent with principle.

Here's all that as a handy cut-out-and-keep diagram to have by your side when you plan.

Self-evaluation

It's time to look in the mirror.

Self-evaluation Task 1: Here is a set of questions for you to answer as honestly as you can concerning the three types of knowledge that you will need to be confident handling in training sessions, when you are marking or assessing written work and in meetings or small-group seminars with participants.

Much will depend on the course syllabus, the nature of the participants and the aims of the programme, of course.
If your response to any of the task items is:
    I have no idea at all
then you need to consider:

• Is this relevant to the sort of training I am going to do?
• What can I do to find out more?

Make your own responses to the tasks and then click on the to reveal some comments.
(All links open in a new tab.)

I would be happy to lead training sessions and design workshop tasks to address any or all of these issues:		Nobody is right now an expert on all of these areas and the depth of knowledge you need will depend greatly on the nature of the course, its aims and the participants. However, if your responses are mostly negative, it's time to do some research. Go to the in-service index of topics or the A-Z index for links to the areas you need to revise / learn about.
verbs forms tense and aspect syntax discourse and deixis morphology	functions and notions lexical relationships mood and modality transcription skills elements of connected speech
I would be happy to lead training sessions and design workshop tasks to address all four skills and explain how and why they can be integrated.		If your answer is negative or partially negative, you might like to consider looking at the in-service skills index.
I have a sound knowledge of the differences between English and other languages and am able to integrate this knowledge into many language analysis sessions.		Depending on the nature of the participants and the aims they have concerning in what kind of setting they want to teach or are teaching, this is an important area. There's more to learn at the guide to types of languages and at the end of the A-Z index, you'll find these links.
I would be happy to design and lead a workshop which considers the nature of more than 3 important standard methodologies and lead participants to discovering the theories of language and learning which underlie them.		Becoming an expert in this area just requires some careful reading and some intelligent workshop design so that it neither under-challenges not overwhelms the participants. Start at: the in-service methodology index.
I would be happy to explain and demonstrate via a loop input session (see Unit 3), any of the following techniques and procedures:		If any of these areas are a bit mysterious or things which you feel unsure about, try: the A-Z index or the in-service teaching index or even the initial plus teaching index.
Back-chaining Dictogloss Feedback routines Genre approaches Inferencing IRF sequences Lexis teaching Noticing	Pronunciation teaching Questioning techniques Text exploitation for reading and listening The zone of proximal development Total Physical Response Using images for grammar teaching Using time lines Using visualisation
I would be happy to design and lead a workshop for inexperienced teachers on using a range of physical and electronic teaching aids.		If your answer is negative, try the three links in the last section.

Self-evaluation Task 2: Try a test to see if you can correctly assign things to categories of knowledge. Click here to start.

If you had trouble with that test, you may like to consider why.
You may also like to follow the guide to refining methodology.

Course units:
Course index Unit 1: Be(com)ing a trainer Unit 2: Training course content Unit 3: Types of training Unit 4: Running training sessions Unit 5: Tutorials Unit 6: Observing and assessing The lagniappe FAQs

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