Boost Your Language Teaching Skills – home
Information about the CercleS training programme
The European Confederation of Language Centres in Higher Education invites you to the training programme
Boost your Language Teaching Skills
Enrolment is OPEN until 30 September 2026
The Boost Your Language Teaching Skills programme is a CercleS initiative and is presented by CercleS members.
There is no private company involved.
If you are a language teacher in higher education and are looking for meaningful professional development that respects your workload and leads to real change in your teaching, enrol now in the new edition of the CercleS Boost your Language Teaching Skills programme.
After a very successful start in 2025 with 11 graduates from universities across Europe, Boost returns as a refined new edition: even more practice-focused, and built on participant and trainer feedback.
This programme is for you if you teach languages and/or academic communication in higher education and want to refresh your practice, re-energise your teaching, meet colleagues from all over Europe and leave with concrete materials you can implement straight away.
The programme is taught by experienced teachers and trainers from the CercleS community. All trainers are active practitioners in higher education language teaching and assessment, bringing extensive experience from European university language centres.
Their approach combines academic expertise with deep knowledge of everyday teaching realities.
In this course, you are going to
- step into the learner’s role again – and gain fresh insight into your own students’ experience
- strengthen constructive alignment between learning outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment
- redesign (or fine-tune) your own courses using task-based and action-oriented principles
- develop coaching skills that empower and support students more effectively
- work with reflective tools (portfolio and learning journal) for sustainable professional growth
- exchange ideas with colleagues from different universities, countries, and teaching contexts
- leave with a personal portfolio and concrete course/assessment materials you can use immediately
Format, dates, workload, certification (2026–2027)
- Training duration: 8 months (October 2026 – June 2027)
- Certification: June 2027
- Format: Online (live sessions + guided self-study)
- Live sessions: approximately 2-3 times per month on Thursdays, 16:00-18:00 CET
- Total workload: approx. 80 hours (well spread over the period)
Course fees
Thanks to substantial support from CercleS, this programme is highly subsidised: Course fee for CercleS members: EUR 300
What participants say
“It was exactly what I needed at this particular stage of my teaching career. Putting myself in the learner’s shoes helped me understand my own students better. This experience has already changed my teaching.”
“The interaction with colleagues was the most valuable part of the programme. I learned so much from group discussions and never felt alone during the process.”
— Eleni Kakrida, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece
Testimonial in Greek, with English subtitles
“This programme helped me rethink my teaching in a very concrete way. The exchange with colleagues and the structured reflection made a real difference to my everyday practice.”
— Eric Ahlberg, Oldenburg University, Germany
Testimonial in English
The team of the following trainers is looking forward to working with you:
Your trainers – skilled, diverse and highly committed with experience at Language Centres:
Marta Demchyshyn, Deputy Director and Senior Teacher of English, Centre for Modern Foreign Languages, Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv, Ukraine
Johann Fischer, Director of the Centre for Languages and Transferable Skills at the University of Göttingen, Germany, Chair of UNIcert, Co-founder of NULTE (the Network of University Language Testers in Europe)
Tetiana Kibalnikova, Assistant Professor at the Medical Department of the Language Centre, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
Barbara Sawicka, Assistant Professor at the Centre of Languages and Communication, Poznan University of Technology, Poland
Sabina Schaffner, Teacher and Leadership Trainer and coach; until October 2024, Director of the Language Centre of UZH and ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Martina Šindelářová Skupeňová, Senior lecturer and Deputy Director at the Language Centre of Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic
We invite those interested to enrol here.
Boost flyer:
