Teachers of English have a new resource to help them in meeting the world’s seemingly unquenchable demand for English following our launch of TeachingEnglish – Your Global Home.

TeachingEnglish – Your Global Home brings together everything busy teachers need for the classroom and the staffroom - lesson plans and worksheets, teaching tips, web links, teaching articles and information about training, conferences and qualifications that will assist them in their professional development.

The site hosts, on a single platform, services previously provided across a number of British Council websites.

FOUR AREAS
The site is organised into four main areas:

• TRY, where teachers can find materials free to use in the classroom
• THINK, where teachers can find teaching ideas and articles on methodology
• TALK, where teachers can engage in discussions and join online professional communities
• TRANSFORM, where teachers, partners and policy-makers can learn about the full breadth of ELT products, services and expertise available from the UK.

Users of TeachingEnglish – Your Global Home can customise their homepage to provide personalised content to meet development needs.

The site was immediately popular with 11,000 registered users on the first day after the launch and 12,000 on the second, with a total of 100,000 page views.

IATEFL 2008
We launched TeachingEnglish at this year’s international conference of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language or IATEFL. (The image shows Dr Catherine Walter, Lecturer in the School of Language, Culture and Communication at the Institute of Education and a member of the British Council’s English Language Advisory Group, cutting the electronic red ribbon.)

The conference drew 1,500 participants, but an even larger number of virtual participants - the latest figure is 3,112 registered users from 133 countries/territories - were able to follow the conference via a special Exeter Online website.

Exeter Online made it possible for teachers who were unable to attend the conference to watch videos of presentations and workshops, interviews with presenters and delegates, and text reports from the event. We did live webcasts of four events, and at our panel debate on diversity and equal opportunities in ELT we took questions from audiences around the world.

Exeter Online will be live for a month after the conference so users can continue the discussions.