Key Features  A collection of personal theories specific to language teaching mentoring developed to improve the quality of education offered to student teachers  Written by a higher education tutor, who has personal and professional interest in understanding and improving school-based mentoring for student teachersDescriptionThis book investigates a number of case studies of language mentoring in action with a view to prompting readers to reflect upon their own practice as teacher educators. Recent research on mentoring, teacher effectiveness, language teaching and language teacher education is combined to provide a background to the case studies, helping to illuminate general principles and issues.CONTENTS: IntroductionPart I: The Context1. A Local and National Context with International Implications; 2. What Makes a Good Language Teacher?3. Learning to be a Language Teacher; 4. The Intuitive Theoretical MentorPart II: Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Mentoring5. Keeping Pace with Development Through the Weekly Meetings; 6. Providing Feedback; 7. Towards Departmental Consistency of Good Practice in Observing Student Teachers; 8. Focusing on the Learner; 9. Good Teachers Can Wear Turquoise Socks or When Good Mentoring is Simply not EnoughPart III: Mentors in Action10. Reassuring the Student Teacher that Everyone Experiences Difficulties; 11. Being There; 12. Reflective Practice and Collaboration; 13. Probing Theories in Practice; 14. A Tutor in ActionPart IV: Towards a Better Future?Author informationCarol Gray joined the University of Birmingham in 1993 after 12 years of teaching languages in comprehensive, independent and special schools. Her development from classroom practitioner to lecturer in education thus parallels the growth of partnership and of mentoring. Alongside her PGCE work she teaches on Masters level modules in MFL Curriculum Development and in Mentoring.