CASAS STEPS Preparation for Teachers: Free Course

About this course

Connect adult English lessons with the reading and listening demands learners may encounter in CASAS STEPS. This free two-part Cambridge training course examines preparation for beginner and lower-level students, followed by preparation for upper-level students, using Ventures materials. The video training is free to view; the Ventures books and any related digital access are separate.

Course at a glance

What you’ll learn

• Identify how a learner’s current language level should affect the support and preparation offered before an assessment-style task.
• Connect a reading or listening activity with its communicative purpose and the information a learner needs to understand.
• Compare the needs of beginner and upper-level adult ESL groups rather than applying the same preparation activity unchanged.
• Prepare a lesson adaptation that balances useful everyday English with familiarity with the demands of an assessment task.

Skills you’ll gain

• Adult ESL teaching
• Assessment preparation
• Reading task planning
• Listening task planning
• Differentiation
• Curriculum alignment

Course Overview

CASAS STEPS is an assessment context used in Adult Education ESL. Cambridge’s Ventures resources connect language learning with common life, workplace and study situations, and the selected training videos examine how teachers can support learners at different stages. The course keeps both presentations so that you can compare the needs of lower-level and upper-level groups. Its focus is preparation through teaching, not administering an official assessment or guaranteeing a test result. The source playlist has an identical companion playlist; one complete copy of the curriculum is published here, with both videos retained.

How the course develops

• The first presentation focuses on beginner and lower-level Adult Education students. Note where learners may need more help understanding language, instructions or task purpose.
• The second presentation considers upper-level students. Compare the expected response and the amount of support that remains useful.
• Use the two perspectives to examine a teaching decision in your own class. Test preparation should connect with language learning instead of becoming only a rehearsal of question formats.

Use the searchable lesson list to revisit an explanation while planning or practising. Keep a short note of the idea you want to apply and return to it after trying it in your own context.

Who is this for?

The course is for Adult Education ESL teachers, instructors using Ventures and coordinators supporting reading and listening preparation. It is most relevant to educators working in a CASAS STEPS context. Teachers in other settings can still use the reflection activity to consider level-appropriate support, while recognising that the assessment context may differ.

Before you start

Familiarity with teaching adult English learners will help. Access to Ventures is useful for applying the book-specific examples, but you can watch both videos without buying a book. Bring a reading or listening task and a brief description of the learners you teach.

Put the lessons into practice

Choose one short reading or listening task with a real-life purpose, such as finding an appointment time or understanding a workplace instruction. Write what a learner needs to understand to complete it. Create a supported version for a lower-level group and a more demanding version for an upper-level group, keeping the communicative purpose clear. Identify what evidence would show that the learner understood the message rather than guessed an answer. After watching the two presentations, revise one instruction or support feature in each version. Explain how the change reflects the needs of the group and how you would review its usefulness in class.

This optional activity is provided by WikiFree for independent study. It is not a graded assignment from the instructor. Keep your working notes and separate evidence from assumptions so that you can review your reasoning as you progress.

Certificate / Assessment

The public video training is free to watch. Completing this WikiFree course does not include a Cambridge English exam, a qualification, academic credit or instructor assessment.

Use your notes and the optional practice to reflect on how you would apply the ideas. Completion tracking records study progress; it is not a marked assessment.

Frequently asked questions

Provider: Cambridge English. Videos play from the English with Cambridge channel on YouTube.