Components of the Course

 Input

 The input sessions will vary in form and will include demonstration and analysis of teaching techniques, analysis and evaluation of teaching materials, language awareness tasks, workshops, video viewing and peer teaching. The approach is interactive and is designed to reflect pedagogical principles that can be applied to language teaching itself. To be successful on the course, it is important that trainees take an active part in input sessions and are alert to the explicit and implicit links between these sessions and the teaching practice component of the course.

 Teaching Practice

 Teaching practice is the heart of the course. It is the opportunity for the trainees to demonstrate their understanding of the principles introduced in input in the planning of their lessons, to gain competence in classroom management and the use of techniques through direct hands-on experience and to gain further insights through reflection on their lessons and from feedback provided by peers and tutors.

 Trainees are initially given considerable guidance in the planning of the content and structure of their lessons but the amount of guidance is gradually reduced. By the end of the course, candidates are planning and executing complete lessons of their own design. For teaching practice candidates are placed in small groups of up to five and each teaching practice session of two hours is divided among the group. For example, in the early part of the course three trainees teach on each day. While the first trainee is teaching his or her part of the lesson, the other trainees and the tutor sit at the back of the room observing the lesson. After forty minutes the first trainee hands over the class to the next trainee, who teaches the next part of the lesson and so on. At the beginning of the following day, the trainees and tutor meet for the feedback session. This stage is crucial to the learning process and it is important that the trainees see it as an opportunity to learn and not simply as an evaluation of their performance. Trainees will be asked to reflect and comment on their own and their peers' teaching and the tutor will provide both oral and written feedback on each lesson.

 During the course trainees will teach students at two different levels and are required to give lessons of various types and with various objectives (for example, lessons focussing on particular grammatical structures and also lessons focussing on the development of language skills such as listening or reading).

 Observation of experienced Teachers

 During the course all candidates will observe teachers at the Akademie, including their own trainers teaching the practice classes, for a total of six hours and will observe other experienced teachers on video.

 Written assignments

 The four written assignments are practically oriented pieces of work intended to provide an opportunity for trainees to make further links between theory and practice and to reflect on the teaching and learning process. They are not academic papers or theoretical essays.

 Tutorials

 During the course all candidates will have two individual tutorial meetings with their tutors. This provides an opportunity for confidential discussion of candidates' progress.