Mudar para enIH Certificate in teaching Young Learners

International House Porto
Phone(+351) 22 6177641
International House Leça
Phone(+351) 22 9959087

Please contact teachertraining@ihporto.org for more information on course times, dates and prices.

Aims of the Course

The main aim of the course is to prepare teachers to teach Young Learners English as a foreign language. It is assumed that these teachers have already received some form of teaching qualification. Apart from input sessions the course has a very practical component where the trainees participate in teaching practice, observations and written course work.

On successful completion of the course, participants will receive a certificate issued by International House World Organisation. A report and certificate of attendance will also be issued by International House Porto.

This course is recognised by the Ministério da Educação as a qualification to teach English in the 1º Ciclo.

Course Contents
The course consists of:

Input sessions: 20 sessions of approximately one hour 30 minutes each, amounting to 30 hours of input time.

Teaching Practice: Each participant will be observed teaching Young Learners classes by an approved tutor a minimum of 4 times. Each lesson lasting a minimum of 30 minutes.

Observations: Each participant will observe experienced teachers of Young Learners teaching for a minimum of 2 hours as well as other course participants during their teaching practice. For each of the hours of observation, participants must complete an assigned observation task.

Tutorials: Each participant will be given a minimum of two tutorials of approximately 30 mins each- these will involve the discussion of observation tasks and trainees’ general progression up to that point of the course.

Written Work: Each participant will need to complete two written assignments. These will be set and submitted during the course. In addition, there will be homework tasks set after some input sessions.

Input Session Titles

  1. Teaching Young Learners
  2. Making instructions work
  3. Classroom management
  4. Child Development 1
  5. Child Development 2: Second Language Acquisition
  6. Dealing with mixed ability
  7. Different Approaches
  8. Teaching Very Young Learners
  9. Planning for YLs
  10. Materials & Analysing activities
  11. Speaking and Listening
  12. Reading & Writing
  13. Clarification of New Language
  14. Practising New Language
  15. Dealing with Lexis
  16. Error Correction
  17. Dealing with Pronunciation
  18. Use of L1
  19. Testing and Assessment
  20. Using games in the YL classroom

Lesson –related input

Planning the lessons and teaching:

  • This might consist of one or a combination of the following:
  • Trainees are given teaching practice points written by the tutor who thus helps them evaluate materials realistically and guides them with planning their lessons;
  • Trainees and tutor plan the teaching practice lessons together-individual trainees teach the lesson;
  • Trainees and tutor plan the teaching practice lessons together- both trainees and tutor teach together (peer-teaching);
  • Trainees as a group plan the lessons on their own and observe each other;
  • Trainees design their own lessons but there is a meeting between tutor and trainee before the lesson to discuss what has been planned (this particular format will be most frequent when trainees are using their own classes).

Post lesson discussion:

  • This might consist of one or a combination of the following;
  • After having watched their colleagues, trainees give each other feedback;
  • Tutor and trainees orally assess the strengths and weaknesses of the process and establish areas for development in the following lesson(s);
  • Trainees write up their self-evaluation and then this is compared and discussed in the light of what the tutor felt.