E V O L V E S C H O O L: British Council TeachingEnglish 05 December 2012

TeachingEnglish Newsletter

05 December 2012

Regular readers will know that the TeachingEnglish website has hosted a number of Guest Writers. Why not have a look at our archive where you can find articles and blogs by ELT luminaries such as Adrian Underhill, Carol Read and Michael Swan.

LearnEnglish Teens

Welcome to our new website with material especially designed for teenage learners.

LearnEnglish Kids
Children can develop their English skills with topic-based games, songs, stories.

LearnEnglish
Develop your English, with language games, downloads, stories and articles.

BritLit
The aim of BritLit is to help teachers from around the world to exploit English literature in the ELT classroom.

Premier Skills

Communicate in two of the world's global languages - English and football

English Agenda
The British Council's UK home for ELT and research

Welcome to the latest edition of the TeachingEnglish newsletter!

This week we focus on continuing professional development with our brand new formal and peer observation guides for you to download and use. We also have a new seminar - a beginner's guide to mobile learning.

For the classroom we have a new lesson plan to develop speaking and writing skills - 'Gossip!' and lots of ideas for your Young Learner Christmas lessons too. We also have an article on how visualisation can be applied in the classroom.

Finally, we have a call for proposals for a new publication on teacher research.

Enjoy!

Deb

TeachingEnglish Team | British Council | BBC

Continuing professional development: Observation guides

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Observing and being observed can be a powerful learning tool for teachers. Observations help teachers to learn from each other, to develop a more reflective approach to their teaching and to identify development goals. The British Council's new observation guides help teachers and managers to get the most out of this experience. There are two guides: one on peer observations and the other on formal observations

A beginner's guide to mobile learning in ELT

In this practical seminar Amy Lightfoot explores the current opportunities for learning English using mobile phones both in and out of the classroom. She debates the pros and cons of this medium and looks at a variety of content that is currently available. She shares her experiences of creating some of this content, and discusses the early outcomes of these projects.

Watch seminar

Gossip!

Lots of our students like reading and talking about celebrity gossip (although not everyone admits it!). In this lesson students take part in a role playing game in which a celebrity couple are interviewed by a journalist. Then they work in groups to write a report for a gossip magazine.

International perspectives on teacher research - call for proposals

International Perspectives On Teacher Research is a new title in the series International Perspectives in English Language Teaching being published by Palgrave Macmillan. The series editors are Keith Richards, University of Warwick and Sue Garton, University of Aston. The deadline for proposals is 21 December 2012.

An Introduction to using visualisation

Visualisation has been widely used in sports psychology over the last 30 years to enhance all aspects of performance. In this article I will be looking at some of the ways that it can be applied to language learning.

Lesson plan: Christmas presents and decorations

Flashcards, online games, listening, crafts, songs, stories and action games - everything you could need for your Christmas lessons for young learners. Check out all the fabulous resources on LearnEnglish Kids.