If you are new to IELTS or just looking for new ways to support your learners in their preparation for this exam, then you might find the recent series of British Council seminars in the UK useful. You can find video coverage of them on the TeachingEnglish website, covering areas such as materials development and approaches to teaching vocabulary.

David Heathfield argues that live storytelling is a spontaneous, creative process which fires the imagination, and has a great role to play in the English language classroom. In this article he gives a guide to the five Rs to get listeners actively involved in your storytelling.

There's a new video competition on LearnEnglish Kids! Give your learners or children a summer project to do at home and they could win some fantastic prizes. The best videos will be published on the LearnEnglish Kids website too.

Tom Palmer's story about a boy who loves football was commissioned by the British Council and Reading Agency's 'Chatterbooks' project. Here you can read and listen to the story, and there are classroom resources for teachers too.

Do you encourage your learners to use their mobile phones and handheld devices to help them with their English? Find out about all the free apps the British Council has for learners, from Wordshake and Johnny Grammar's Quizmaster, to MyWordBook.

This is a great website which, as the name suggests, is ideal for a teacher in a rush. There are lots of downloadable worksheets for teachers to use in the classroom, though you will need to register to download them. One nice feature is materials organised by monthly themes.