Teaching with Unlock Levels 4 & 5: Free Course

About this course

Support learners as academic language tasks become more demanding. This free Cambridge teacher-training course presents an introduction and eight numbered teaching-tip clips for Unlock Third Edition Levels 4 and 5. It provides a compact opportunity to examine activity choices, learner support and the relationship between language practice and academic thinking. The associated books and digital packs are separate products.

Course at a glance

What you’ll learn

• Relate a teaching activity to the demands of an academic task, including the language, the response expected and the reasoning learners need to show.
• Plan support that helps learners attempt a demanding task without completing the thinking or the language work for them.
• Use prompts and examples to make the purpose of a reading, speaking or writing activity clearer.
• Review learner responses and identify a practical adjustment to your next lesson or follow-up task.

Skills you’ll gain

• Academic task planning
• Critical thinking support
• Higher-level language teaching
• Activity adaptation
• Learner response analysis
• Teacher reflection

Course Overview

The Unlock teaching-tip collection is intended to help teachers practise specific skills related to the student materials. Its academic English context connects reading, writing and speaking with language development and critical thinking. For the higher coursebook levels, consider how learners demonstrate understanding, organise a response and make their reasoning clear. The playlist’s numbered teaching clips provide a focused training sequence rather than a complete higher-level English syllabus. The classroom restores the introduction and Videos 1–8 to their teaching order, preserving every original title and the original source positions for reference.

How the course develops

• Begin with the shared introduction, then work through the eight numbered clips. Keep a brief note of the teaching decision illustrated in each video.
• Compare the approach with a task your learners currently find difficult. Separate difficulty caused by the language from difficulty caused by unclear instructions or unfamiliar task demands.
• Use a short review of learner work to decide what to keep, simplify or extend. A higher-level task still benefits from a clear aim and purposeful support.

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 designed for teachers working with Unlock Levels 4 and 5 and educators supporting learners with academic English tasks. It can also inform conversations between teachers about task design and the amount of support an activity needs. The coursebook levels describe the learning materials; watching the videos does not establish a teacher’s proficiency or award a qualification.

Before you start

Experience teaching English and familiarity with academic language tasks will help. Have one reading, discussion or writing activity available for reflection. You can watch the training without buying the coursebook, although access to the relevant materials is useful when applying book-specific examples.

Put the lessons into practice

Choose a task that requires learners to explain, compare or support an idea. Write the intended outcome and identify what a useful response would contain. Create one model that shows the organisation of a response without supplying every answer. Plan two prompts: one to help learners begin, and one to encourage them to make their reasoning more precise. After the activity, examine a sample response and identify where the learner needed language support or a clearer task. Use a teaching idea from the playlist to revise one part of the activity, then record why the change should help your particular group.

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.