TA Teacher Education

Here you can get acquainted with a full TA teacher education programme. It is primarily meant for various teacher training institutions wishing to introduce the TA as a part of their curriculum. However, it can also be used as a reference material by all those interested in the TA. The programme has a module structure. The foundation module will normally be the first one. The rest of the modules, their sequence and combination can be chosen according to the needs of the audience. Ideally, students will have completed all the modules by the end of the course.

Main Part: Foundations of the Thinking Approach

One of the tendencies of the modern education is a closer attention to the development of thinking skills of students. Language teaching is not an exception. Numerous materials can be mentioned in connection with thinking. For practical teachers however, it is often not clear how thinking skills of their own learners can be developed. Moreover, the definition of thinking skills often remains blurred. The module will present teachers with the Thinking Approach (TA) to language teaching and learning - a possible framework for a systematic development of students' thinking skills. Each module of the approach is presented with many classroom examples. Participants will receive over 100 pages of handouts, most of which they can freely use in their own classrooms.

Module 1. Creative Grammar Technology

Creative grammar has recently become quite a popular notion. Everyone agrees that creativity must be present in the language classroom. At the same time, the transmitted image of creative grammar on the market appears to be rather restricted. Creativity is usually defined as doing something artistic, and ‘creative’ grammar materials hardly ever bring serious changes to the syllabus. The given module will offer an alternative approach to creativity in grammar. Course participants will be presented with the framework that gives learners a possibility to develop their own models of grammar, test them when working with real language and start using for communicative purposes. Participants will be offered a large pack of practical materials and will be expected to try them out in their classrooms.

Module 2. Text and Film Technologies

We tend to believe that language teaching always develops students' thinking skills. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be the case. A full scaled development of thinking skills demands for a specially prepared programme. The given module will present a part of such a programme, namely the one dealing with the use of texts in the language classroom. Participants will be offered a large pack of practical materials and will be expected to try them out in their classrooms.

Module 3. Self-Study Technology

Learner autonomy is a buzz word of the modern world of education. However, it often remains unclear what could be done on a practical level. This module will present a set of specific tools designed within the Thinking Approach to develop learner autonomy and integrate this process in the language teaching syllabus. Participants will be offered a large pack of practical materials and will be expected to try them out in their classrooms.

Module 4. Research Technology

Although more and more people agree that research skills are necessary for modern students, actual development of such skills is often limited by teachers’ requests to collect information and present a report. The given module will present a framework for development a wide scale of students’ research skills and demonstrate how this work can be integrated in language curriculum.

Module 5. Yes-No Technology

The given module is based on the Yes-No Technology for teaching OTSM-TRIZ developed by Nikolai Khomenko. It demonstrates how one can focus on OTSM-TRIZ tools in the language classroom and also presents examples of the so-called linguistic yes-no games.

Module 6. TA Materials Development

Curriculum changes always bring about the need to introduce new learning materials. This module aims to develop the skills for materials development in the framework of the TA. Participants will be introduced to the TA Task Editor – special software developed for designing TA tasks.

Module 7. TA Curriculum Development

This module will present the participants with the principles underlying the development of the TA based syllabus. Samples of TA syllabi will be presented and analysed. As a practical part of the course, the participants will work out own TA based syllabi.