Microteaching

professional-development

Microteaching is a scaled-down teaching encounter — typically 5–15 minutes — in which a trainee teacher practises a specific skill or technique with a small group of peers, followed by immediate feedback. Developed by Dwight Allen and colleagues at Stanford University in the 1960s, it remains a core component of pre-service teacher training programmes worldwide, including CELTA, CertTESOL, and university TEFL/TESOL courses.

The power of microteaching lies in its constraints: by reducing the time, the audience, and the scope, it isolates specific teaching behaviours for focused practice and feedback. A trainee is not trying to teach a whole lesson — they are practising one thing: giving instructions, eliciting vocabulary, setting up a role-play, managing error correction.

How It Works

Focus selection — The trainee (or trainer) identifies a specific teaching skill to practise
Planning — The trainee prepares a short segment targeting that skill
Teaching — The trainee delivers the segment to peers (who may role-play as learners at a specified level)
Feedback — Immediate oral feedback from peers and the trainer, focused on the target skill
Reteach (optional) — The trainee revises and reteaches the segment, incorporating feedback

The reteach cycle (teach → feedback → reteach) is what distinguishes microteaching from simply "doing a short demo." It operationalises the principle that teaching skills are developed through deliberate practice with feedback, not through observation or reading alone.

Common Focus Areas

Skill	Example micro-task
Giving instructions	Explain a jigsaw reading task in under 60 seconds
Concept checking	Teach the meaning of "used to" and check understanding without asking "Do you understand?"
Error correction	Respond to spoken errors during a fluency activity
Board work	Present and organise vocabulary on the board
Eliciting	Get students to produce target language rather than simply presenting it
Setting up pair/group work	Organise a group discussion with clear roles
Staging	Transition smoothly between lesson phases

Microteaching on CELTA

On the CELTA course, teaching practice (TP) is longer than classic microteaching (typically 40–60 minutes) and involves real learners rather than peers. However, the CELTA retains microteaching principles: focused skills, structured observation, immediate written and oral feedback, and iterative improvement across the course's six assessed TP sessions.

Many CELTA centres also use shorter peer-teaching activities in input sessions, which are closer to the original Stanford model.

Strengths

Low risk — Mistakes happen in a safe environment, not in front of a real class
Focused feedback — Targeting one skill produces specific, actionable feedback
Iterative — The reteach cycle allows immediate improvement
Efficient — Many trainees can practise in a single session
Develops reflective practice — Trainees learn to analyse their own teaching through structured self-evaluation

Limitations

Artificiality — Peers pretending to be A2 learners is not the same as teaching actual A2 learners; real classroom dynamics are absent
Decontextualised — Isolating skills is useful for practice but does not prepare trainees for the complexity of managing a full lesson
Feedback quality — Peer feedback can be vague, overly kind, or focused on surface features unless guided by clear criteria
Narrow focus — Repeated microteaching on discrete skills may not develop the holistic professional judgment needed in real classrooms

Key References

Allen, D. W. & Ryan, K. (1969). Microteaching. Addison-Wesley.
Wallace, M. J. (1991). Training Foreign Language Teachers: A Reflective Approach. Cambridge University Press.
Richards, J. C. & Farrell, T. S. C. (2005). Professional Development for Language Teachers. Cambridge University Press.