This article reports on a teacher-talk training course for Japanese primary school teachers, who are preparing to teach "communicative English" for the first time. The article argues that teacher-talk training is important for communicative classes with young students because most of the input and interaction is by default teacher centred. In our course, through a task-based approach including the use of digital recorders for self-transcribing, teachers were able to practise providing rich comprehensible input as well as scaffolding in English through role-playing classroom tasks. The before and after performances of two teachers doing a listen-and-draw task is analysed to demonstrate the importance of training in teacher talk. In concluding the article, we review the participants' survey feedback for the course. Our hope is that the article provides a convincing argument for teacher-talk training as well as offering a model for similar courses.