English Class Largely Unconcerned

  Using games in your lessons is a great way to liven up the class and get students excited and interested in using English in the classroom. Not only do they provide a welcome break from the usual activities, they also help to create a relaxed environment where even the most reluctant student can be persuaded to take part. There are many games that can be used in the TEFL classroom, from simple games that only require a pen and a whiteboard to more elaborate board games. There are some games that have been specifically designed to be used in English language classes, while other, everyday games that we usually play for fun can also be adapted to be used with your students. You can even create your own games! Are you ready to live and teach abroad? Click here and get started...  [Read more]

  ITTT’s world class onsite TEFL certification course is an excellent way to earn a quality certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. The course is classroom based and takes place over a period of four weeks during this period trainees receive instruction in English language concepts and teaching methodology. The course also contains a considerable amount of practical teaching practice, giving trainees valuable classroom time along with feedback from our experienced, dedicated trainers. Upon successful completion of the course participants receive an internationally recognized TEFL qualification. The course is available at over 30 fascinating locations around the world including China, Thailand, Italy and the United States. The course consists of more than 120...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "Advantages of teaching a monolingual class ","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-are-the-differences-between-teaching-monolingual-and-multilingual-classes/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "Disadvantages of teaching a monolingual class","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-are-the-differences-between-teaching-monolingual-and-multilingual-classes/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "Advantages of teaching a multilingual...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "What if I don't like my students?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-are-the-most-common-concerns-for-first-time-esl-teachers/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "What if my students don't like each other?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-are-the-most-common-concerns-for-first-time-esl-teachers/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "What if my students don't do their homework?","url":...  [Read more]

  The two words "lay" and "lie" are often confused for each other, which is why we decided to break down the differences in this video. "Lay" is what is called a transitive verb. That means, it needs to be followed by one or more objects. A good example sentence would be "I lay the book on the table". As you can see, lay is followed by ""on the table"". We couldn't only say "I lay the book." as it would be incomplete. This means it is transitive. "Lie" on the other hand is an intransitive verb. That means it doesn't take an object, for example "I lie down". Most errors have to do with the past tenses of the two verbs, as the past tense of "lie" is "lay" while the past tense of "lay" is "laid". Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "Do I need a university degree to teach English in Spain?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol-jobs/can-i-teach-english-in-spain-without-a-degree/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "What are the requirements for teaching English in Spain?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol-jobs/can-i-teach-english-in-spain-without-a-degree/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "Can I get a visa to teach English in Spain?","url":...  [Read more]

  The simple answer is no, you do not need to have any knowledge or experience of languages other than English to take a TEFL course or to become an EFL teacher. The ability to speak other languages is not required as the vast majority of TEFL classrooms around the world rely on the communicative approach to English teaching that specifies that English is the only language used in the classroom. In multilingual classrooms where the students could have a dozen or more different first languages, being able to communicate in one or two of them would obviously be of no particular advantage. In monolingual classrooms you may also find that students are more inclined to revert to their mother tongue during the lesson if they are aware that the teacher can understand what is being said....  [Read more]

Discipline in the Classroom Eight out of ten TESOL teachers who do not return after their first year of teaching drop out because they are unable to control their problem in the classroom. According to the researches, that have done recently, discipline ranked as the number one problem in the schools. What is discipline? According to the Webster’s dictionary discipline is the “training that corrects, molds, or perfect the mental faculties or moral character.” How can a teacher maintain discipline in a classroom? There will be many ideas to maintain discipline in the classroom. For sure those suggestions will be helpful, but first of all, teacher should know the main reasons for students’ misbehavior. The students have not learned the behaviors that are expected of them Good...  [Read more]

  As mentioned earlier, our example sentence has used a regular verb 'to play'. With the regular verbs we simply add '-ed'. This spelling pattern changes for words that end with a consonant and a Y: 'cry' goes to 'cried', 'try' to 'tried'. Another spelling pattern we have to be aware of is our consonant plus vowel plus consonant. In these instances, we double the consonant used: 'shop' needs the double P; 'ship' needs the double P. With these spelling patterns, and most spelling patterns in general for the English language, there are always exceptions to the rules. So we have to be aware of those exceptions. We also have to impart those exceptions on to our students. We can do so through various exercises and various activities to end our class. To form the negative sentence here,...  [Read more]

Classes of Mixed Ability You walk into your first class in a new school. You begin with introductions and to your dismay you find a great disparity in the students’ English skills. There are students who have spent time abroad and others who are struggling with Basic English sentence structure. The focus of this article will be to weigh the advantages of 2 teaching strategies for classes of mixed ability introduced in the International TESOL Teacher Training (ITTT) course: grouping similar ability levels and pairing strong with weak students. The first strategy is to separate students within the class so that they have similar levels as the students they do activities with. The main advantages of this strategy are the ability to separate material and to focus on needs separately. When...  [Read more]

  Before looking at specific teaching ideas for the present simple tense, let's first look at some considerations for teaching ideas in general. We have to remember that these activities will be used in the activate stage of your lesson. Here, the focus will be on building fluency and using the language in a bit more of a free-flowing way yet still focusing on that class' language point. We also have to consider the appropriacy for a number of factors: timings. Whether the activity will be too short or too long. We want to look at ages making sure that the activity is appropriate for young learners or adult learners. We also have to take into consideration our language levels. Will the activity be appropriate for our starters or our pre-intermediates or our intermediates? Will the...  [Read more]

Classroom Management The meaning of classroom management is the skill of organizing and managing a class whilst maintaining a friendly relaxed manner and maintaining discipline. I am going to begin by sharing my experiences of being on the receiving end of classroom management and stating what I found effective and what I didn't find effective. I think as a teacher you have to adapt to the level and age of the students you are teaching. When I was in first school I was treated very differently to when I was in high school. During middle school and high school especially, we could analyze and estimate what our limits would be with certain teachers. I found that the teachers who maintained discipline from the beginning had a lot more control over a class as opposed to a teacher who didn't....  [Read more]

  Another way to approach teaching modal auxiliary verbs is in context, for example, "How to give advice". This is especially useful for students of higher levels that have some knowledge of the various modal auxiliary verbs. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. I don't fully understand this. But I do want to note that I do love trying to study and be outside of my comfort zone. And this fully puts me right into this. Even though I was born in New...  [Read more]

Teaching beginner students The purpose of this article is to provide information about teaching English to beginner students. For the most part, the topic has been narrowed to young beginners. A person who is just beginning to study English has some disadvantages. They cannot read and study on their own. They will not understand English instructions. They will struggle to twist their tongues around the English sounds. But they have lots of advantages, too. Beginner students bring a very fresh, open mind to English class. They have no base or preconceived ideas about the language and their minds are ready to soak it up! They generally have no fear of mispronunciation. Nor does the teacher have to undo formerly learned bad habits or mispronunciations. They do not ‘face the mental shock of...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "What do EFL and ESL actually stand for?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-is-the-difference-between-efl-and-esl/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "What are the main differences between EFL and ESL?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-is-the-difference-between-efl-and-esl/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "Teaching strategies for English as a second language","url":...  [Read more]

  So, now we're going to fill the actual procedure of the lesson plan out itself. We mentioned at the start, the first thing we do, is to get some general information about the class that we'll be teaching and then, in order for someone to be able to cover our lesson, we need to present enough information in our lesson plan that they can actually carry it out. What I'm going to do is for each stage of the lesson, I'll indicate what I'm going to do in the lesson and then, we'll cut away from that to have a look to see how that will actually be achieved. So, our lesson is going to be based on a 45-minute lesson and the first phase is going to be the engage phase and it's going to be a straight arrow ESA lesson. I'm going to take approximately five minutes on my engage phase and in...  [Read more]

Learning Teaching Skills Teaching is a challenging job not only because of the bulk of responsibility of training the students to be academically able but also because of the fact that somehow, we are expected to take part in preparing them to be socially and emotionally stable. In class, how can we let the students recognize that it is not just the quantity of instruction that is essential but they, themselves are? What skills should we learn as teachers so that we can meet this challenge that is put onto our hands? The following ideas have been tried, proven, and practical teaching techniques that may answer the above concern. Utilizing the above teaching skills demonstrates the goal of authentic teachers: that they “… teach from the heart not from the book.” (author unknown)...  [Read more]

Children's Books in the English Classroom What native speaker didn’t have the chance to learn to read with bright colorful pictures and fonts larger than your chubby fingers? You felt like the smartest child in the world when you finished that big 50-page book. You were a super sleuth detective because if you didn’t know what a word meant you could figure it out through the illustrations. You were the fastest reader in the world because you turned the pages so quickly you didn’t even notice there wasn’t that much written on each page. I think our English students should also have this great opportunity to have the same self-esteem building experience. Children’s literature is great pedagogically because it uses a vocabulary appropriate for beginning English learners. Sentence...  [Read more]

  This video provides a comprehensive overview of all the future tenses in the English language: future simple, future continuous, future perfect and the future perfect continuous. This is especially helpful for ESL teachers around the globe teaching speakers of other languages. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. I liked this unit much more than some others. I've always believed that by adding games and fun to the learning process, students absorb...  [Read more]

  Lenin from the United States found our 120-hour TEFL course very helpful. He especially enjoyed looking into the grammar units and found the view from an English learner's point of view very interesting. He also found the units on lesson planning and classroom management very useful for his own future classroom. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. This unit was rather vague, which I understand since it is all dependent on the class being taught...  [Read more]