Description
How to Teach IELTS Listening
–A 25-hour-long, practical self-study course for ELT (ESL) teachers who want to become better at teaching IELTS listening by focusing on sub-skills–
I created this course because after many years of teaching IELTS, I noticed a need for materials designed to help learners, IELTS teachers, and their trainers alike.
First of all, it struck me that while there seems to be a growing global demand for IELTS, there are not enough trained, confident teachers to deliver IELTS courses worldwide. Such teachers are needed, however, to equip candidates with the concrete tools (=’sub-skills’) to succeed in the exam, and they often need quick, hands-on training.
Secondly, many of the IELTS materials available on the market today focus on teaching language, such as academic vocabulary in isolation or advanced grammatical structures, often without paying attention to their use in the exam. Textbooks often only use reading/listening to present language and writing/speaking to practice these. What learners preparing to take the IELTS exam also need is to be familiarized with the sub-skills involved in tackling the different parts of the exam.
However, teachers are often not trained in their initial teacher training courses to effectively teach the skills, instead of just testing them, so they benefit from learning how to raise their learners’ awareness of the L1 sub-skills they often already have to successfully decode or encode messages (in listening/reading or writing/speaking).
Thirdly, teachers who want to further their continuous professional development in such teacher training courses as the Cambridge TKT, CELTA or Delta often find that the books on these are theory heavy, and there is a lack of materials that include practical activities with a sound classroom rationale focusing on real learner needs. And while it is expected that candidates on these courses come up with their own activities, they sometimes need some inspiration to be able to create their own materials.
I hope that you will find the course useful.