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Training to Train: the index

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This is a free course in converting yourself from a master English Language Teacher into a professionally competent and engaging Teacher Trainer.
Unlike most courses of this nature, it is completely free and you are invited to do the sections in any order that you choose.  The units are mostly self-standing and independent but where familiarity with another unit would be helpful, you will be alerted to the fact.
What you do then is up to you.
Linkage between units is quite frequent and the links will not open in new tabs so be prepared to use the back button.
There is a short guide to some frequently asked questions about this course which you can access here.


6

The six-unit course

The units are numbered for ease of reference but that does not imply that they should be studied in any particular order.  The following links you to the units and explains briefly what the content is for each one.
At the foot of every page, and on the left, this menu is repeated so you can choose where to go at the end of each unit.
The last link to the lagniappe takes you a set of extra resources and links.

Unit 1 Be(com)ing a teacher trainer Differences between language teaching and language teacher training
Skills you have and skills need
Teacher training or teacher education?
The role of a teacher trainer / educator
Knowledge you need
Beliefs, attitudes and prejudices
Trickle-down training
Paddling your own canoe
Unit 2 Training course content Rationales
Subject knowledge
Methodological knowledge
Psychological knowledge
Procedural knowledge
Mythology avoidance
Other skills
Making decisions about content
Unit 3 Types of training Initial, in-service and in-house training
Patterns of training
Course design for initial training
Course design for in-service training
Design of in-house development programmes
Unit 4 Running group teacher training sessions Crossovers from language teaching
Alternatives to consider
Lecturing skills
Group work: pros and cons
Classifying tasks by cognitive challenge
Planning constructing, visualising and amending a training session
Evaluation of training sessions
Unit 5 Tutorials, seminars and one-to-one sessions Open-door policies
The functions of tutorials / seminars
Pre-meeting agendas
Conduct of meetings
Post-meetings tasks
Evaluation of meetings
Unit 6 Observing and assessing teaching and teaching knowledge Purposes and audiences
Criteria for observation and assessment
Assessing planning (or not)
Observation tasks: charts and forms
Best practice for whom?
Giving principled, accurate, sensitive and useful feedback
Spoken and written feedback
Feedback on reading, research and written tasks
Plus The lagniappe Teacher development programmes
In-house observation programmes
Ideas and worksheets for teacher training
Other training courses
Resources for trainers
Support


Copyright

You may not use this material for commercial purposes.  Small excerpts from materials, conventionally attributed, may be used on such courses but wholesale lifting of materials is explicitly forbidden.  There is, of course, no objection at all to providing fee-paying course participants with annotated links to materials anywhere on this site.  Indeed, that is welcomed.


We hope you enjoy the course and benefit from it.
If you have any suggestions, comments or feedback, please get in touch via the contact page.