What does it mean to be a language teaching professional? What is the role of professional learning (professional development) in a language teaching professional’s career? How can language teachers engage effectively in professional learning, especially if they have limited contact with colleagues who teach the same language, and few or no available teaching materials?

This section encourages you to consider the role of ongoing growth in your professional career. It also provides guidance on tools and practices that can support you as you build your teaching skills and deepen your understanding of which methods work, how, and why.

  • Reflecting on Teaching Practice
  • Planning Lessons
  • Achieving Success with Learning Strategies
  • Developing a Teaching Portfolio

We hope that the material presented in this section will help you grow as a language teacher, whether you are new to teaching or have years of experience. We believe you will find that consistent attention to self-assessment, combined with active pursuit of opportunities to widen and deepen your knowledge and skills, will make teaching progressively more rewarding as time goes by.

Sources

Some material in this section is drawn from the following articles in Modules for the Professional Preparation of Teaching Assistants in Foreign Languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, Ed.; Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998):

  • “Beyond TA training: Developing a reflective approach to a career in language education” by Celeste Kinginger
  • “Teaching learning strategies to language students” by Anna Uhl Chamot
  • “Research and language learning: A tour of the horizon” by Ken Sheppard
  • “Spoken language: What it is and how to teach it” by Grace Stovall Burkart