Teaching your subjects through English

This online course is aimed at teachers and future teachers who want to implement their courses in an interactive way through English and who want to provide their students with the support necessary to study their course content in another language.

This course is part of our ‘Teaching in English’ certificate programme. If you also complete the course 'Basics in Didactics - Teaching and Learning in Higher Education' (one of the dates), you will receive a certificate in teaching skills upon completion of both courses.

The main objective of the course is to familiarise participants with a variety of teaching strategies suitable for teaching through English in university classrooms, to provide opportunities for them to practise these strategies in online settings and to receive personalised feedback on their teaching and course materials. Participants will have the opportunity to read about, observe, discuss, and implement classroom strategies which will support them teaching their subjects through English.

Some of the main topics of the course include:

•                     What are the benefits and challenges of teaching through English?

•                     Introducing your course and your syllabus in English

•                     Writing an effective course syllabus in English  

•                     What is scaffolding? How to scaffold texts and lectures for your classes

•                     Making your classes more interactive – strategies and activities

•                     Working with students from different cultural backgrounds

•                     Overcoming common problems and challenges in the EMI classroom

•                     Preparing to teach an interactive session with your subject materials

Course structure

In this format, the course will be offered entirely online to adapt to participants’ schedules and will pay particular attention to providing personal feedback to participants on their course materials in English and their language for teaching through English.

1. The group sessions will take place online on the following dates/times:

2. Course tutorials

Participants will have one individual and one small-group tutorial with the trainer in the 2 weeks following the course. In these sessions’ participants will receive personalised feedback on their own materials and teaching practices.  The exact times of these meetings will be agreed with the tutor during the week of the online course.

Participants are asked to do the following before the course:

• Prepare some teaching materials related to your subject in English which you use (or would like to use) in your classes. These may be short texts or other types of documents which you ask your students to read and work on in your classes or a PowerPoint from a lecture in English.
• Bring the course syllabus and explanation of assessment for one of the subjects you teach through English.
• All participants will have an opportunity to teach a short microteaching lesson (10 minutes approx.) on their chosen subject area to the rest of the class in English during one of the sessions. They will receive feedback from their tutor on their session.

Course Tutor

Robert O'Dowd is full professor for English Studies at the Universidad de León, Spain. He comes from Ireland and has taught at universities in Ireland, Germany and Spain. He has published extensively on the application of Virtual Exchange in Higher Education and has been invited to be plenary speaker at international conferences in the US, Asia and across Europe. He has coordinated 3 Erasmus+ projects, the most recent one being the Erasmus+ European Policy Experiment ‘Virtual Innovation and Support Networks for Teachers’ (VALIANT). He collaborates with organizations on the promotion and integration of Virtual Exchange in higher education and his most recent book is Internationalising Higher Education and the Role of Virtual Exchange (2023, Routledge). He has been listed in Stanford University’s ‘Ranking of the World Scientists: World´s Top 2% Scientists’ from 2022-2024.

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