Module Two: Developing Professional Practice
Module Two is the portfolio-based practice module. It tests your ability to plan, teach and reflect on a series of lessons with a real group, and to justify decisions with reference to learner needs and published theory. The portfolio includes a background essay, four observed lessons with plans and post-lesson reflections, and an experimental practice assignment.
What the portfolio rewards
- Background essay: justify the lesson series for a named group. Analyse needs, syllabus, approach, materials and assessment, and connect each choice to a source.
- Lesson plans: write a main aim and stage aims that are learner-centred and observable. Anticipate problems and give solutions that are practical, not generic.
- Reflections: evaluate what happened against the aims, using evidence from the lesson. Explain why it happened and what you would change.
- Experimental practice: choose a practice genuinely unfamiliar to you, research it, try it in class, and evaluate it with evidence.
Worked example
A weak stage aim is “teach polite requests”. A strong stage aim is: “By the end of the stage, learners will be able to use three exponents to make polite requests in a hotel role-play, with appropriate rising intonation.” The reasoning: it is learner-centred (learners will be able to), observable, specific about the language and context, and includes a phonological target. It also links directly to the main aim and can be checked in the reflection.
Core rules
- Every reflection claim needs an example: what a learner said, what you did, what changed.
- The background essay must describe the actual group, not an imagined class.
- Experimental practice is not “trying a new activity”; it is a researched, unfamiliar practice with a rationale and evaluation.
- Reference tutors’ feedback in later reflections to show development.
Traps
Descriptive reflections that narrate the lesson; vague aims; a background essay that is a literature review with no group; choosing an experimental practice you already use; not linking reflection evidence to aims; ignoring word limits.