Teacher Training: General English & Technology

The Programme

This Teacher Training programme is for non-native teachers who teach subjects through English or plan to teach in English.  This course has been designed to up-skill participants in using many different aspects of technology in the classroom including Interactive Screens, website resources and apps. This will enable them to make a greater contribution in their home school both inside and outside the classroom as the programme focuses on giving participants knowledge and skills that they can share in their staff room, so increasing the teacher skill profile of the staff general.

Who is this course for?

Using technology in the classroom has become an integral part of education both at primary and secondary level and is also an increasingly popular method of delivering English language training. This programme has been designed to enable participants to create and deliver more innovative and interactive lessons in their particular school.

As the participant will be delivering content through English, both their General English classes and specific technology based lessons will also include a focus on improving their use of lexis, grammatical structures and functional language. Attention will also be paid to helping participants with pronunciation.

This course has been designed to up-skill participants in order to make a greater contribution in their home school both inside and outside the classroom. The programme focuses on giving participants knowledge and skills that they can share with their colleagues and improve the English Teacher skills in the staffroom.

GCI’s PIC Number: 929605806

Course Objectives

• Improve participants’ English language skills and work on their personal language goals
• Equip students with the confidence and skills needed to incorporate technology into the English language classroom
• Focus on materials development, assessment and micro teaching
• Gain an understanding of how to best use website resources/Apps within a practical lesson framework
• Explore a wide variety of practical tasks and activities which can be put to immediate use in the classroom

Pedagogical Outcomes 

At the end of the programme, participants will be able to:

• Utilise technological resources to deliver high quality, dynamic and varied lessons
• Assess the suitability and adaptability of online resources
• Further develop their teaching skills and language awareness
• Provide interesting tips to motivate students
• Provide CPD sessions for other staff members
• Bring home a range of usable activities and games
• Source online material to suit their particular students  
• Adapt existing materials by incorporating technology e.g. using Quizlet to create flashcards
• Use internet resources as a teaching tool e.g. Kahoot, One Stop English etc.
• Understand and use grammar & vocabulary found in the English material used in class

Methodology

Based on participants' needs, the course consists of a combination of lectures and workshops incorporating language awareness and analysis, pronunciation & intonation, instructional language and lesson planning, teaching skills, testing and evaluation, error correction, materials development and current issues all based around incorporating and exploiting technology in the classroom.

Participants will have the opportunity to put their teaching into practice during the microteaching sessions. Participants will be observed by our trainers in their classes, detailed feedback will be given.

The culture of the class is participative and the objective is that participants leave with a range of new ideas and class plans that they can instantly use with their classes on their return. While everything is done through the medium of English, the focus is on how to best develop and use new materials and employ new and existing technological aids to engage learners.

The course participants are encouraged to share their own experiences which stimulate discussion, giving participants the time and space to develop both professionally and personally. While the portion of the course focussing on using technology in the classroom is flexible and open to negotiation the following topics and areas are normally included