Teacher Development - Preparing Your Students for Exams

Objectives

These courses are designed to allow teachers to improve and practise their English while also allowing them to gain a greater understanding of the exams they teach and how best to prepare their students. The courses have a customised element to them and participants will be asked to complete a needs-analysis form before the start of the course.

Language Development

This part of the course is designed to help you improve your fluency and command of English in stimulating ways. We use a continuously updated range of resources, materials and approaches and cover areas such as: advanced language practice, including idiomatic range, appropriacy and accuracy of expression, current usage, collocation, style and register, metaphorical and imaginative use of language, grammatical review, expansion of vocabulary, development of oral fluency and also pronunciation with emphasis on the features of connected speech.

Where possible, we try to exploit the Language Development stage of the course to show-case more creative ways of presenting and practising language. These will be techniques that the teachers may be able to exploit when they return to their countries.

In addition, we will pinpoint how a particular piece of language may be useful for the exams that their students might be preparing for and how to adapt teaching techniques for exam purposes.

Preparing Your Students for Exams

This Exam preparation option is aimed at teachers who teach or intend to teach mainstream international exams. The most common exams would be Cambridge B2 and C1 (First and Advanced) and the IELTS. We focus on: focussing on syllabus, strategies for improving exam technique, developing students’ competence in the four skills within the context of their exam and supporting students in the learning process. There are opportunities for teachers to participate in micro-teaching exam techniques. Feedback is provided.

Where possible, teachers are encouraged to bring a copy of their course books with them so that there can be practical lesson-planning time.

Often the most valuable aspect of these courses is when education practitioners from around the world share ideas with the rest of the group.

Suitability

This courses is aimed at teachers of English who are preparing students for mainstream international exams of English, primarily Cambridge B2 (First); Cambridge C1 (Advanced) and IELTS. They will need to have a minimum level of CEFr B2 and above.

Course dates 2023

• Winter course: 09/01/2023 – 20/01/2023 (2 weeks)
• Summer course: 03/07/2023 – 14/07/2023 (2 weeks)

Course fees 2023

• Registration fee: £80
• Tuition fee: £390 per week
• Homestay accommodation (if required): £150 per week

Full terms and conditions of enrolment available here

Sample timetable