Epiphany Party Ideas

  This video presents a teaching idea for reported speech. The activity includes having the students walk around the classroom asking other students for various bits of information. At the end of the activity, the students will report back the answers in reported speech. 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. A course book can be used in the class though it has disadvantages and advantages.Before the class,theachers have the responsibility to analyze...  [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]

  This video is part of our series on the past tenses in English. In this video, we take a look at the past continuous tense and suitable teaching ideas for this tense. The past continuous is very conducive to using pictures and talking about actions. We give our group of students cards with images and ask them to create sentences for what the people in the picture were doing at a certain time in the past. 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 have...  [Read more]

  This video is part of our series on the past tenses in English. In this video, we take a look at the past perfect tense and suitable teaching ideas for this tense. We'll ask our students to describe what a person in a picture had just done before the photo was taken. 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 learned how to carefully choose course book lessons based on the English level of students. I also learned that if a certain subject in the...  [Read more]

  This video is part of our series on the past tenses in English. We start off the series with the past simple tense. In this video, we focus on useful teaching ideas for this tense. A great idea to practice this tense is a picture story. Here, the teacher provides the students with various photos or images and the students are asked to piece them together to make a story in the past. 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. The first chapter introduces...  [Read more]

  Now here are some teaching ideas for the future continuous tense. Here, we have an activity where we'll be asking students to spontaneously make some excuses based upon some invitations. We can do this in pairs or small groups. The teacher will have cut these cards up and the students will place them into a pile, randomly picking up a card. So one student might pick this card up and say 'Would you like to play tennis with me tomorrow?' The other student will be challenged to come up with an excuse as quickly as possible, which might be 'No, I'm sorry I'll be working.' Then, we have the next student pick up the next card and we challenge an additional student to make an excuse. Here we have another teaching idea for the future continuous tense and this involves two students trying...  [Read more]

  Now we'll have a look at the teaching ideas for the future simple tense. As we said earlier, the future simple tense can be used for threats or promises or, in this case, for predictions. Here, we'll have a pair of students working together. One has a prompt to say something and the other will begin it with a certain comment and then make a sentence using the future simple tense. Here, 'I'm taking my driving test tomorrow' 'Good luck. You'll pass for sure'. 'I lost at tennis again.' 'Cheer up. You'll do better next time,' so on and so forth. Of course, having a bit of feedback at the end. Some additional ideas for the future simple tense include things like horoscopes. Here you'll divide your class up into groups, provide them with zodiac sign, they'll create a horoscope for that...  [Read more]

  When teaching business English classes you are expected to act and teach in a business-like manner. This does not mean that your lessons should automatically be staid and uninteresting but that your activities should be appropriate for and relevant to the needs of your students. Asking the vice-president of the company to stand up and sing ‘I’m a little teapot’ in front of his or her staff is not the best way to approach teaching English to business professionals or to ensure your contract is renewed. 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...  [Read more]

  Now, let's move on to our adverbs. Rather than describing nouns, our adverbs describe our verbs. There are four types of adverbs when describing verbs. They are manner. These describe how things are done. Two examples are: quickly, cleverly. We have adverbs of place, describing where the action happened. Two examples are: here or there. We also have adverbs of time, describing when the action happened, two examples being now or recently. Finally, we have our adverbs of frequency telling us how often the action happens, two examples being often or never. There's also another type of adverb but here, we're going to describe adjectives or other adverbs instead of verbs themselves. These are called adverbs of degree. If we were to take the adjective "intelligent", we could easily say...  [Read more]

  Moving down our list of parts of speech, we have our verbs. The first big difference between verbs that we need to look at is whether it's an action verb or a state verb. Our action verbs, as the name suggests, mean that we typically can see these things in action. We can see people working and we certainly see people going to various places. Now, we have our state verbs. These are basically indicating a state of being. Two examples would be "seem" and "have" or "own". We have a sentence such as "He seems angry." and "I own my house." You can't actually see the action happening, even though those words are used as verbs. A very big differentiation between the two here as well is, state verbs typically don't take the progressive or continuous form. That form is the verb "+ing". As...  [Read more]

  Let's begin our examination of parts of speech with nouns. Nouns are our naming words. They name a person or people, such as Jack, Jill, brother, Prime Minister. We have a place or places such as kitchen, Tokyo. Things or the things around us: pen, light, camera. We have our concepts and ideas: beauty, democracy. These people, things, places and concepts fall into two basic subcategories. Those subcategories are countable and uncountable. As their name suggests, the differentiation here is whether or not we can count our nouns or if we cannot count them. We have our countable nouns: dogs, pens, are two examples. The very nature of the words means that we can count these nouns one dog or 5, 10. Then, we have our uncountable nouns. The nouns that cannot be separated: music, bread....  [Read more]

  And now let's look at the pronouns. Simply put, pronouns take the place of a noun. We have various types of pronouns. They are personal pronouns, which can either be subject or object. We have reflexive pronouns, relative pronouns and possessive pronouns. With our personal pronouns, we have to decide whether it's the subject or the object. The subject is the doer of an action, whereas the object is the one that receives the action. Subject pronouns are: I, you, he, she, it etc. Object pronouns are: me, you, him, her, etc. In the sentence "Greg hit Pete," the subject of the sentence is "Greg", therefore I would say "He hit Pete," or I could put a pronoun in for the object of the sentence, where "Greg hit Pete", now, I go into "Greg hit him." With our reflexive pronouns, these are...  [Read more]

  Here's a teaching idea that focuses on two very specific aspects of the present simple tense, one of which will be making statements about a habit and a routine. The other will be conjugating the verb into the 'he', 'she' or 'it' form. Here we'll present students with a picture. They will see various objects in the picture. Based upon the presence of these objects in someone's room, the students will have to make an observation such as 'She drinks coffee,' 'She plays the guitar,' 'She watches television,' 'She doesn't smoke.' Again, it's very specific used for the 'he', 'she' or 'it' form and habits and routines. At the end of the activity, the teacher will have the pairs or the small groups report back their various findings. Another idea for the present simple tense will be the...  [Read more]

  And now we'll take a look at a few teaching ideas for the present continuous tense. The present continuous tense is quite a visual tense. We use it to describe actions that are happening at the present moment. So, we could give our students a picture, such as the one seen here. It is important that in the picture there are many activities going on. The teacher can give a time limit to pairs or small groups. In that time limit, the pairs or small groups will make various sentences based upon what they see in the picture. These sentences may include 'He is taking a picture,' 'He is throwing a boomerang,' 'They are playing with the ball,' 'He is digging a hole.' At the end of the time limit, the teacher will ask for some feedback and get feedback from the pairs and the groupings to...  [Read more]

  This video looks at various teaching ideas for the 'going to' future tense. Pictures are a great tool for lower-level students to look at evidence based on the pictures and making predictions using the 'going to' future. Other ideas might include weather predictions, as well as planning a party or holiday. 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 provides with a thorough overview of past tenses. It is helpful in sorting out the rules,...  [Read more]

  When it comes to manner of articulation, we have six different ways in which our breath is produced in order to make our sounds. We have our plosives, our affricates, fricatives, the nasal sounds, our lateral sound and the approximants. Let's take a look at each individually and see how they differ from one another. First we have our plosive sounds. As the word might indicate we have basically a little explosion of sound with our breath. The plosive sounds are made through a three-step process. First there's a closure somewhere in the vocal tract. Second there's a buildup of air and finally there's a sudden release of that air like a little explosion. If we look at some of the sounds that are made this way we might better understand why they are called plosives. Examples are the...  [Read more]

  The next item that we're going to consider is the use of resource books. There are many different types of resource books available and within those books there tends to be a general pattern and typically the resource book pack will come in a three book series and typically that three book series will be in the form of the student book, a workbook and a teacher's resource book. So for example here are those three books for this particular series called ?Total English? and in the student book the type of information that we can gain from here is the actual background to the teaching points themselves plus some additional information in terms of short worksheets and so on and so forth and tape transcripts at the end for listening activities, which these days often come on a CD...  [Read more]

  Let's just consider next, when using these resource books, the student book, the workbook and the teachers resource book, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using those types of materials? Well, firstly, the main advantage perhaps of using these types of material is that it's quicker than actually creating your own. Secondly, the course books that you will get will be graded for a particular level. So there'll be a set of books for the starter level, a set of books for the elementary level and so on and so forth. So you know that the activities and materials in there will have been graded for level. The use of the book can also offer continuity so that the syllabuses have been covered in a particular way by the book itself and are presented in a logical order....  [Read more]

  And now we'll have a look at both the infinitive and the gerund. Infinitive is the word "to", followed by the base form of the verb. We"ll typically use it after a verb, specifically verbs like "want" or "hope". We can make statements like "I want to go to the beach." We also have our gerund. Our gerund is a verb followed by "-ing", but specifically used as a noun within the sentence. We have a verb plus a gerund: "I enjoy playing poker." The main verb is "enjoy" and, although "playing" looks as if it's a verb, it's actually used as the noun within the sentence. We also can use it with a preposition followed by a gerund: "How about going to the beach?" We could also put it in the front of a sentence: "Smoking is bad for you." Again, the verb plus "-ing" can act as two things...  [Read more]

  http://www.teflonline.net In this TEFL training video we look at one of three teaching ideas for the present continuous tense. English grammar lessons like this are taught on a regular basis and ITTT's TEFL training courses can show you how to use these activities to your advantage in the classroom. /// 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....  [Read more]