English Language Teaching Meaning

The term TESOL is one that is often used in a general sense, although it does have a specific meaning. Generally the meaning of TESOL is some form of ‘the Teaching of English to people whose first language is not English’ and is often used interchangeably with terms such as TEFL, TEAL, TESL and many others. It is also generally used as the name of a qualification, such as a TESOL certificate, which relates to the result of a TESOL training course. Here we will look at the meaning of TESOL in these broad terms and also give its specific meaning, along with many other common acronyms used throughout the industry. The general acronym for the field of teaching English is ELT: English language teaching. This term applies across the board to teaching English, be it to American high school...  [Read more]

Common Linguistic problems Contronyms, Heteronyms, Idioms, Oh my! English is an extremely complex language. Before a student can be considered truly proficient, he/she must not only master a variety of tenses and irregular verbs, sentence structure and parts of speech, but he/she must also work to understand and master lexical and structural ambiguities. Lexical ambiguities are very common and have a variety of names and definitions depending on the level of ambiguity. Homonyms are words that have the same spelling, but two or more meanings. An example of this is: mean. Is it describing an unkind person? Is it an average? Is someone talking about the definition of a word? Another type of lexical ambiguity is the heteronym. These are words that are spelled the same, but have different...  [Read more]

Teaching Styles We all learn in different ways, and similarly, as teachers we tend to have different ways of teaching which come more naturally for us. As teachers, we need to be aware of what our particular style is, but we should then try to adapt the way we teach to fit the needs of our students as well. There are many different categorizations of teaching styles, but rather than discuss the ways styles are categorized, I will simply summarize the ones most commonly referred to. Probably the most traditional one is the direct instruction style. Direct instruction is very teacher-centered, and provides for little if any student-teacher interaction or group interaction. The teacher is the focus of attention and provides all the information necessary for the student to excel in...  [Read more]

Slang and Teaching Idioms In TESOL education, idioms appear particularly daunting for students and teachers alike and for this reason they are often neglected in English courses. A brief overview of everyday slang reveals an intimidating array of idioms that could easily go unnoticed by the native speaker but prove confusing for the student of English. On Kenneth Lawrence’s website devoted solely to idioms, he has attempted, like many other books on idioms and websites that focus on them, to organize idioms into coherent categories. The categories are diverse; there are bird idioms, money idioms, and even arm, head and finger idioms. It is clear from the amount of idioms in existence and the limited activities used for teaching them that idioms are a subject for more advanced English...  [Read more]

  This video covers the difference between 'aisle' and 'isle'. As these two words have a similar pronunciation and spelling, their usage is often confused. The word 'aisle' is a noun and describes a passage between rows of seats in a church, in a theater, an airplane or between shelves in a supermarket. A suitable example sentece for the word 'aisle' would be: The aisle was crowded with people looking for seats. The word 'isle' is also a noun but has a very different meaning. It usually refers to a small island, such as here: The pirates were in search of the lost isle for buried treasure. As you can see, once you know the meanings of the two words, you will not confuse them as their meanings are very different. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one...  [Read more]

  http://www.teflcourse.net This video explains the usage of the future perfect continuous tense. This tense is used to talk about how long an action/event will have been going on by a certain time in the future. Although the future perfect continuous is rarely used in everyday English, if you are looking to teach English as a second language, you will need to be knowledgeable on even rare grammar points such as this. So if you are considering entering the world of English teaching the best way to equip yourself with the necessary skills is to take a comprehensive TEFL course and ITTT's online TEFL courses give you a good foundation in the areas of English grammar that you are most likely to encounter when you first set out to teach English as a second language. More information...  [Read more]

  http://www.teflcourse.net The 'going to' future tense is used to make predictions based on evidence and to talk about plans and intentions. This Online TEFL Course video discusses two teaching ideas that can be used with the 'going to' future tense. The first idea encourages students to make predictions based on evidence with a weather forecasting activity. The students are given information about the weather in a particular country and give weather forecasts for the following week or month: On Monday it's going to rain in the morning but then it's going to be sunny for the rest of the day. In the second teaching idea students discuss plans for an upcoming birthday party/holiday: We're going to eat at a fancy restaurant. I'm going to have a massive birthday cake. I'm going...  [Read more]

  The zero conditional is the most basic form of the conditionals in the English language. This is a teaching idea for the zero conditional that can also be adjusted for any other types of conditionals. 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. You have to know who is the publisher, of the book you using while teaching. Students is fast learners when you let them feel and see the real picture of the meaning of the word. It is like a movie, you...  [Read more]

  There is often much confusion surrounding these acronyms but essentially they mean the same thing. TEFL = Teaching English as a Foreign Language TESOL = Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages The above are generally used interchangeably, however, TEFL is most commonly used within the UK and TESOL is usually preferred in Australia and the USA. Although some countries may favor one acronym over the other, it is important to remember that a TEFL certification and a TESOL certification are exactly the same thing as the training involved is identical. Although TEFL and TESOL training courses are identical and the acronyms are generally used interchangeably, there is a technical difference between the two. The general perception is that speakers of English as a foreign...  [Read more]

  There is often much confusion surrounding these acronyms but essentially they mean the same thing. TEFL = Teaching English as a Foreign Language TESOL = Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages The above are generally used interchangeably, however, TEFL is most commonly used within the UK and TESOL is usually preferred in Australia and the USA. Although some countries may favor one acronym over the other, it is important to remember that a TEFL certification and a TESOL certification are exactly the same thing as the training involved is identical. Although TEFL and TESOL training courses are identical and the acronyms are generally used interchangeably, there is a technical difference between the two. The general perception is that speakers of English as a foreign...  [Read more]

  The final stage of the lesson will be the activate and the activate phase is going to form the main speaking activity within the lesson. So, it's very very important that here, we do a good demonstration of what it is that we're expecting them to do, that we elicit the type of target language we're expecting them to produce from the activity. So, one way we could go around it is to, firstly, form pairs. Each pair is going to be given a card and onto that card they're going to write the country and a month. What the teacher can then do, just to add a little bit of spice to it, is to collect all of the cards and shuffle them around and then redistribute them to the pairs so that they get a card that doesn't have their country or their month on it. What they're then going to do is...  [Read more]

  This video is part of our video series on "Evaluation and Testing of Students". In this video, we cover the different types of evaluations and testings that teachers, not only those working in the EFL field, will come across over the course of their career. 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 is about different parts of speak. I've learned that even though I speak the English language I didn't know most of the different parts of speech....  [Read more]

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Bilingual Education versus English Only Models Over the years, many debates have arisen in regards to second language instruction (L2), giving prominence to two main models: English Only versus Bilingual Education. English Only uses solely English as the medium for instruction, whereas Bilingual Education, as its name implies, uses both English and the student’s native language. While there are several aspects to the debate, this paper will briefly cover a certain few: cultural sensitivity, accuracy, and segregation. Proponents of the English Only model claim that the use of a student’s native language creates a “cycle of native language dependency,” meaning that the student, to some extent, gets “tethered” to his native tongue. Using solely English in the classroom, advocates...  [Read more]

TESOL is a term commonly used in the UK, New Zealand and Ireland to describe the act of teaching English to non native speakers in countries where English is the official language. It is also used to refer to the same teaching situation in areas where English is commonly spoken but not necessarily the official language. This type of teaching situation is often centred on migrants and refugees who need to learn the English language as a means of integrating into their new environment. To service this section of the English language industry there are numerous government and charity based programs available in many English speaking countries. Examples of this type of teaching include Eastern European migrant workers studying English in the UK and refugees from Iraq or Afghanistan studying...  [Read more]

  Some and Any are two words that often cause confusion, which is why we have decided to take a closer look at the difference of the two words in this video. Firsly, some is a determiner used for positive statements while any is a determiner used in questions and negative statements. Consider the following situation: I asked the teacher if he could give me some paper. I said ‘Excuse me, have you got any paper?’ Unfortunately, he didn’t have any. The first statement is positive and therefore requires us to use some. The second sentence is a question and therefore, we need to use any. The third and final sentence is a negative statement which also requries us to use any. It's worth noting that we do sometimes use some in questions and we also use any in positive statements. For...  [Read more]

  In her third video, Chantelle talks about unit 3 of the 120-hour online TEFL course from ITTT. This unit deals with teaching theories, methodologies and techniques. The unit introduces several different methodologies before focusing on the ESA method that is used throughout the course. The unit also covers a range of different activities that can be used in a lesson. It also looks at ways to deal with correcting student mistakes and errors in spoken and written English. 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...  [Read more]

  ITTT's 220-hour TEFL/TESOL Master Package consists of three fully accredited TEFL/TESOL certifications.The 120-hour TEFL/TESOL course, as well as our two 50-hour certification courses in teaching English to young learners (CTEYL) and teaching Business English (CTBE) are included in this smart course package. 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. Well, The Course Development is a vital part of this unit. So, we have clearly concept in this...  [Read more]

  So, let's take a common game that's been played over the years, which is called Noughts and Crosses or Tic-Tac-Toe. What we're going to do is to adapt this game for classroom use. So, we've taken the normal Tic-Tac-Toe or Noughts and Crosses grid and we've just numbered out each of the particular squares. What we can then do is to form teams and those teams can then be asked a series of questions and they get to choose which question they want from 1 to 9. So, let's say, for example, they choose question 1. That could be on anything that they have studied ,the grammar or vocabulary. If they get that question correct and say they are the Noughts or the zeros then they get to put their mark here. What the next group will probably do is to try to block them in some way by choosing...  [Read more]

  In this episode, Linda takes on the pronunciation of the word "futile". Enjoy the episode! Linda is a German/American ITTT alumna, teaching English in South Korea. Be sure to like and share this video if you find it helpful. Are you ready to live and teach abroad? Click here and get started today: https://www.teflcourse.net/?cu=YTDESCRIPTION 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 was a good thing that took the time to restudy all the information...  [Read more]