Course to help English teachers deliver online lessons wins top award

An online course that is helping thousands of English language teachers to transfer their skills to the online environment has won a top innovation award from the British Council, at a ceremony in London. 

Teaching English Online is an online course developed by Cambridge Assessment English and run in partnership with FutureLearn. The course scooped the top prize at the British Council’s ELTons awards which was hosted by the poet, novelist and playwright Benjamin Zephaniah, in the category of ‘Innovation in teacher resources’.

The ELTons is an annual event organised by the British Council to recognise and celebrate the best innovations for English language teaching and learning worldwide. The winning course from Cambridge Assessment English covers the skills, knowledge and digital tools needed to deliver effective online English lessons. You can join and participate in the course for free or upgrade, and over 50,000 people have joined the course so far over three runs.

Speaking at the ceremony in London, Tariq Harris from Cambridge Assessment English said:

"There are so many online English lessons out there but it’s essential that education providers give teachers the support they need to deliver effective lessons online. We developed this course to help teachers to transfer their teaching skills to an online context and start teaching English online. It’s been really successful and I think this has been down to collaboration, shared expertise and listening to what teachers want. Teacher feedback has been excellent and we’ve been able to use that feedback to improve each run of the course."

The course includes how to plan and deliver lessons that focus on language and on the development of receptive and productive skills. It also covers how to continue developing as an online teacher.

Cambridge Assessment English has been helping people to learn English and prove their skills to the world for more than 100 years, but in the last five years they have developed a growing digital portfolio of learning and assessment products.

The event was held in London attended by hundreds of professionals from the English language teaching sector. Cambridge Assessment English was one of 26 finalists who were selected by the ELTons Innovations Awards’ expert judging panel.

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