Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 3; May 03

Drama in EFL

Actor training techniques are central in language teaching for the following reasons:

• getting students up, moving and involved deals effectively with discipline problems

• By "doing", in a full physical sense, students integrate the target language almost without noticing

• when the teacher uses drama techniques, she makes English stand out positively from the other school subjects

• With a small minority of very kinaesthetic learners, the only way to teach them is though action methods.

If you want to find out more about our August course in this area ( 10th –23rd), click on Creative Drama for the Classroom, and read the full course outline over on the Pilgrims site.

Teaching other Subjects through English

Did you know that, in the European Union countries, 5% of schools now teach a variety of subjects through English? In the Lombardy and Piedmont areas of Italy plenty schools teach sciences through English, to encourage girls to get involved in science and to persuade boys to give up shunning language. The Brussels mandarins want see this dual teaching of language and another subject become standard across Europe.

You may have colleagues who teach other subjects in English and who might want to have a look at the course outline Teaching other Subjects in English, which they can get to by clicking HERE. Why don't you use the facility in the left hand column of this page and bounce this page to a colleague who would appreciate it?

Skills of Teacher Training

Do you want to share with others some of the richness your teaching has given you?
Do you want to positively influence students beyond the 100-300 whom you teach directly at any one time?
Do you yearn from more variety in your teaching year?

These and other factors may make you want to think of taking a train-the-trainer course. Our Skills of Teacher Training course ( click on the title to see the full course outline) runs from August 10th –23rd and focuses on these main areas:

• the planning of TT input sessions which value different learning styles
• the acknowledgement and response to feedback given by others.
• the skills involved in listening to people respectfully and in communicating sensitively.
• dealing with "difficult" people
• relating to and managing teachers on an individual and team basis.
• developing " teacher autonomy", which encourages your continuous professional development.
• incorporating core elements from major "feeder fields", such as Multiple Intelligences and NLP.

This course could be a major step into an exciting new field, which is a natural extension of what you already do so well as a teacher.