Bics Skills

  We are going to move on to the second of the productive skills, which is writing and, again, we'll have look at the background, too, and create a typical lesson for a writing skills session. One of the things to be aware of in a writing skills lesson is that writing tends to be more formal than spoken English. So, there will be some differences between the two, such as writing very often uses less contracted forms and so on, but having said that there are many similarities between the two particular skills. So, many of the considerations that we had for a speaking skills lesson will also apply here to a writing skills lesson. Within writing skills itself there are some sub-skills that we may want to teach and those sub-skills could include, but are not limited to, hand writing...  [Read more]

  Before we go into looking at the actual receptive skills lesson, if we were thinking about what potential problems there could be in these lessons. So, what things could go wrong in a reading lesson? Well, firstly the students when they are reading in a language that is not their native language, they tend to read every word as a separate piece and by reading word to word it?s very difficult to get an overall impression of what that particular text is saying. Secondly, the sentence length in a lot of articles that we will get will be very long and many of our students will not be used to that structure of language. So, here it's important to have a think about the way in which the text has actually been written and will it be fairly easy to read. The final thing is the actual...  [Read more]

  This presentation is going to have a look at the idea of receptive skills and how we can go about teaching receptive skills lessons. There are two receptive skills and they are reading and listening. If we think about first of all, why do we read or listen, then there are probably two main answers to that. Firstly, it could either be for entertainment or it could be for a specific purpose. Within the reading and listening areas there are a number of sub-skills that we can teach our students. Firstly, what we can do is to show different examples of reading. So, let's say, for example, that we have just bought ourselves a new video camera and along with that video camera came a whole book of instructions. In order to find out how to get that camera working, then we would need to...  [Read more]

  So, some of the ways in which we can avoid these problems occurring in the first place is to reteach the vocabulary that's going to be required in the particular activity and the grammar. Now, having said this, it doesn't mean that if we think about a particular article that they're going to read or a listening activity that they're going to listen to. They don't have to know every single word in there but they do need to know a certain number of words in order to actually make sense out of it. Secondly, most of the materials that we'll be using for both reading and possibly for listening will be what's called an authentic material. In other words, it's a real piece of material from a newspaper or magazine that hasn't been created for a particular class and so we need a very...  [Read more]

  So, let's have a look at a typical receptive skills lesson. The main focus of this lesson is going to be reading, although there will be some listening involved as well and it?s going to be a patchwork ESA lesson. As a patchwork lesson, it will start off with an engage and this engage what we're going to do is to play an extract about Elvis Presley and it's going to be an Elvis Presley song and we can ask the students if they know who it is and if they know anything about him can help generate the interest in this. We can also ask them what they'd like to know about it. What we can then do is just to introduce them to the text but they're going to read the detail later on but just at this stage we'll do a quick skimming or scanning exercise to find some information from that...  [Read more]

  So, for the study phase what we're going to do is to show them the idea of the cartoon strip. In the cartoon strip what there's going to be are some people with speech bubbles and this is going to represent where dialogue will appear and in the bottom, there are these rectangular boxes, where there will be descriptive things happening. So, it will explain the actual situation that these people are in. So, we get across the idea, first of all, that these are speech and these are for description and we can then show them a blank one of these cartoon strips and try to elicit from our students what could possibly the people be saying and in what actual situation are they in, in order for them to say that. Once we've gone through that, we can move on to our first study activity and in...  [Read more]

  So let's have a look now what might take place in a typical writing lesson and, again, we're going to use the format of a straight arrow ESA lesson. Our first stage is to the go to the engage stage and, if we think back to what we said before, what we need to do is try to generate interest. So, an example here could be we show a picture first of all taken from a newspaper or magazine and then we can ask the students some questions. From looking at the picture we can ask them if they can tell us what is actually happening now as shown by the picture. Then, we can generate a bit more interest by asking them to give us ideas about what they thought was happening before this picture took place and what happened after. So, here we're just trying to build up the idea of a sequence of...  [Read more]

  This presentation is going to cover the teaching of productive skills. To start with, if we think about the way in which you learnt your first language, most of us go through a particular process. Firstly, we listen to those around us, after that first silent period of listening to other people, then we start to make utterances. Having learned to speak to a certain extent at least, we then go on to learn how to read and to write and this process that we go through is actually covering the four skills that we're trying to teach our English students. So, we have listening, speaking, reading, and writing. If we group those skills into their different types, then the two skills of reading and listening are known as receptive skills, whereas the skills of speaking and writing are...  [Read more]

  Throughout section on the teaching of productive skills and the teaching of receptive skills our activate activities will usually involve some form of game and our final consideration here will be the use of games in the classroom. We can start with a definition of what we actually mean by a game and it basically has three components. A game is an activity that has rules it should have for its purpose in the classroom a teaching point and by nature to the fact that it's a game it should also include an element of fun. So that will be our working definition for a game that we're going to use in the classroom. There are many different types of games and they range between the competitive and those will require cooperation and there are all sorts of games that involve both of these...  [Read more]

  For the lesson that even takes place, there are a number of things that you need to have considered. Obviously, you need a very clear idea of what it is you're expecting the students to have to do and they need to know why. It's very important before you ask them to do an activity that they have an understanding of the purpose of that activity. You should, secondly, have had a thought about what they already know. Linked to that is, will it be necessary to do any form of pre-teaching before I can expect them to do this activity and finally, we need to make sure that we have prepared all our materials and our instructions for this particular activity. So, we'll consider a straight arrow ESA lesson, the focus of which is to be speaking skills. So, we'll start with our engage and in...  [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]

  Once we're satisfied that all the students have been engaged and that they've been given the opportunity to say something, we can move on to our study phase. Here, it may be necessary or useful to actually pre-teach some gaps in knowledge that have been shown from the engage phase and those gaps in knowledge may include actual grammar structures or indeed useful vocabulary and it's very important that, before we move on to doing any forms of activity, we check their understanding of this material. So, we need to do some study exercises. It's also very useful if you leave this information up on the board through all that study period. Those study activities can just be the normal types of gap fills or matching activities and, as always, we need to demonstrate those activities,...  [Read more]

  Before we move on to the planning of a lesson for speaking skills, something that we need to look at first is the idea of the accuracy versus the fluency of speaking. Accuracy relates to the correct usage of grammar and vocabulary, whereas fluency relates to our ability to continue speaking without any interruption. Now, ultimately within a whole ESA lesson or within language learning itself fluency and accuracy are equally important. Within an ESA lesson, however, depending upon which stage we're at in that lesson, then we're either focusing on accuracy or we're focusing on fluency. Remember in the ESA lesson, in the study phase, this is where we're looking at the target language where we're doing our language learning, so it's very important in this stage that we focus on the...  [Read more]

  So, we'll focus first of all on a speaking skills lesson and perhaps a starting point for this would be to ask a question which is: Why do we speak to each other? The reason that it's important to ask ourselves this question is that whatever answers there are to this should be present in our lessons. So, why do we speak to each other? Well, there are a multitude of answers to that but when you boil them all down to their essence, they probably actually come down to one or two things. We communicate to each other by speaking because of either a need. We need something. We want something or a desire to achieve something. 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...  [Read more]

  So speaking activities will come in many different forms but we can generalize them into three basic types. Control activities tend to be used in the study phase and here, the teacher will be helping the students in terms of what they need to say and how they go about saying it. So, there's a high level of structure within a controlled activity. A guided activity has slightly less structure than this and it can be used in either the study or the activate stages themselves. The final type of activity or class of activity is called creative activity and this one would be used in the activation phase. In a creative activity, we're giving a scenario or a very small amount of structure and we're asking the students to actually create their own answers to this particular question....  [Read more]

  The next example of a game that we can adapt very easily for classroom use is the game of Jeopardy and in this particular game, what we can do is to have a set of levels for our questions, I'd say one through five, where one is going to be the easiest example and five is going to be the most difficult and then, in each of these sets of boxes, we can have various grammar points, such as tenses, perhaps modals, vocabulary and maybe even conditionals. So what the students can do is they can pick a particular topic first of all and within that topic, they can pick the level of the question that they want and then we can have a set of cards that have been created to fit into these slots and we can ask them that question at that level. So, a very simple adaptation of the game jeopardy...  [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]

Trainees will be given detailed handbooks for the following areas of the course: These high quality materials are the basis for the input sessions and will provide the trainees with valuable reference resources. Although the center provides course handbooks and materials for the course you will need two A4 folders which should be organised as follows: These logs form a record of the course and will be checked during moderation. Your own notes file During input sessions you will receive numerous handouts and may want to take your own notes as well. We suggest dividing the file under the following headings:  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "Communication","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/what-makes-a-great-tefl-teacher/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "Passion","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/what-makes-a-great-tefl-teacher/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "Patience","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/what-makes-a-great-tefl-teacher/#nameh3"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "Organization","url":...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "Why is a degree required for certain teaching jobs in other countries?","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/can-i-teach-english-abroad-without-a-degree/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "How can I get a teaching job abroad if I don't have a degree?","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/can-i-teach-english-abroad-without-a-degree/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "What countries can I teach English in if I don't have a degree?","url":...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "So how can taking a TEFL certification provide this knowledge?","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/will-tefl-certification-help-you-teach-english/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "The second major component mentioned at the start, that of Classroom skills.","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/will-tefl-certification-help-you-teach-english/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "In conclusion:","url":...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": " What are the requirements for the English Opens Doors Program?","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/What-is-the-English-Opens-Doors-Program-for-teaching-English-in-Chile/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": " What does the English Opens Doors Program involve?","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/What-is-the-English-Opens-Doors-Program-for-teaching-English-in-Chile/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": " What are the benefits of the English Opens Doors Program?","url":...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": " What are the requirements for the EPIK Program?","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/What-is-the-EPIK-program-for-teaching-English-in-South-Korea/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": " What does the EPIK Program involve?","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/What-is-the-EPIK-program-for-teaching-English-in-South-Korea/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": " Where will I be placed on the EPIK Program?","url":...  [Read more]

  In this TESOL review video Ray talks about how the 120-hour online TESOL course he took with ITTT helped him to learn the necessary skills to teach English as a foreign language. Ray recommends the course to anyone considering a career teaching English abroad or online. 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. Grammar, vocabulary and functions go hand in hand in this unit. Therefore as teachers we have to ensure that students are introduced to a new language...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "Can I carry on teaching English in my home country?","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/what-can-i-do-after-teaching-english-abroad/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "Can I join a non-profit or volunteer organization?","url": "https://www.tefl-certificate.net/faq/what-can-i-do-after-teaching-english-abroad/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "Can I work in the travel industry?","url":...  [Read more]

  So how do we actually make best use of the course book? Well, just a couple of factors that you need to keep into consideration when using these types of material, use the course book to help you create a balanced lesson in terms of the range of skills that are being taught and the actual types of material within that the grammar or vocabulary. Secondly, don't use it all the time, particularly with things like activities, we can create our own materials and we can tailor those materials much more specifically to the actual class that we're teaching. As very often the actual creations in the book are very general, we can make our own materials much more specific. The third thing you need to be aware of is that you can't always rely 100% on the information that's presented in those...  [Read more]

Shirin Sophy TEFL Information Alumni Experiences In today's cosmopolitan world, the noticeable necessity of mastery over foreign languages apart from one's native language is motivating manifold people to consider improving this particular ability which results in an increasing demand for language learning courses and services. Among the major purposes of language learning, communication and language production are definitely much more measurable and outstanding, specifically through productive skills, including writing and speaking. In terms of pedagogy, the following is a suggested procedure that can be taken into account while teaching productive skills after the engagement phase is applied and learners are ready to start the study phase. Exposure to the target language in the format...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Being inspired by the once-famous quote at a very young age: "To learn another language is to have one more window from which to look at the world," Chinese Proverb, I soon realized that a second language is essential. As a result, ever since I was a little girl, I always want to be an English teacher to help other people who have a dream to extend their world. After many years of teaching English, I have recognized that Grammar is one of the most struggle things when students learn a foreign language. However, Grammar is the basic base that each learner needs to master if they want to use the language fluently. This essay will mainly discuss how to maximize the effectiveness of teaching English Grammar to children. This post was written by our TEFL...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas The second of the productive skills is writing and here again we'll have a look at the background needed to create a typical lesson for writing skills. One of the things to be aware of in a writing skills lesson is that writing tends to be more formal than spoken English, so there will be some differences between the two. An example is that writing very often uses less contracted forms. On the other hand, there are also many similarities between the two skills. This means many of the considerations that we had for a speaking skills lesson will also apply here to a writing skills lesson. Within writing skills itself there are some sub skills that we may want to teach and those sub skills could include but are not limited...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Business English skills are important for professional development, as they ensure that people are well equipped for the Business English world. According to Unit 2: Teaching and Learning students will gain knowledge of when Business English is used and what type of activities it is used in. This will prepare them for the future. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Emma M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Listening and reading and two productive skills; speaking and writing are used within Business English. According to Unit 2: Teaching Themes two examples of listening skills are; meetings and telephoning. In meetings, information about the company will be provided,...  [Read more]