Direct Questions Examples

  In this video TEFL review Cesar from Spain talks about his experiences completing ITTT's TEFL/TESOL online course. He outlines the challenges experienced and the rewards gained from the course. Cesar completed his course taking the tutor support option. 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 covers various technology or mediums for a teacher to convey information in a classroom. There are a large array of possibilities presented and...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas When teaching reported speech the potential for mistakes, errors, and the general difficulty is enormous due to the number of changes that are made with verb tenses, patterns, pronouns, questions, time expressions etc.. It’s important to cover the subject slowly with lots of verbal practice at every opportunity. There are plenty of standard ‘change the direct speech to reported speech’ activities, but your students will soon tire of these if you overuse them. Here are some ideas which have worked well in the EFL classroom and will give your students a good amount of talk time in a variety of ways. This is a fun dispute roleplay that is ideal when students are split up into groups of 3, although 4 can work too....  [Read more]

  This video covers the difference between 'discreet' and 'discrete'. Their similar spelling and pronunciation makes them a word pair that is often confused. The word 'discreet' describes something that is unnoticeable and/or modest, whereas 'discrete' refers to something that is separate and distinct. Watch the video for detailed examples on the two words. 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 has cleared out some mistakes that I do...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word bowdlerize. This word is used to refer to the act of removing improper or offensive material in order to make it weaker or less effective. Some synonyms for bowdlerize include censor, expurgate or edit. 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 gave me a brief idea of how a Business English class atmosphere should be like. And in gaining the skill to teach English having certain amount...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Type in "teaching grammar effectively" into Google and the reader will be confronted with pages and pages of advice/frameworks/theories on how to effectively teach grammar. Most of the content does acknowledge that there is no "golden rule" for effective grammar teaching before imparting their particular key rules or areas that should be incorporated into teaching grammar. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Joe S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Also Read: Top 7 Spanish Speaking Countries for Teaching English Abroad There's a lot of theory around, much of it contradictory. It can be valuable, but I sometimes feel, to quote Mark...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas There are many benefits to using games in the classroom, including the creation of an engaging learning experience for students, a positive learning environment, and the potential for students to practice real-life situations with instant feedback. Also, gamification of learning can use students’ natural inclination for socialization, achievement, and award. Thus, games can be a great tool for teaching English as a foreign language. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Tassyn M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Games should be used with a direct purpose and should be monitored carefully to see if the intended results are...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas As I've had to study several foreign languages, I've realized many things about what's necessary and helpful in studying foreign languages. And I think many of these things could come under the heading of sensitivity to the culture that the language one is studying comes from, as well as an awareness of one's own culture. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Peter B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. One thing I've noticed about much of the course material available for some of the foreign languages I've studied, as well as educational texts on other subjects written in English, is that one can see the culture and cultural...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Over the last few years, Teaching English in a foreign country has become very popular for the younger generation in the United States of America and other countries where English is their primary language. The reason is that nowadays, many people want to travel the world to explore cultural differences, especially among the younger generation. However, not everyone could afford to travel the world due to daily expensiveness when traveling overseas. Many young people have chosen to teach English while they are traveling because it is a good and easy way to make a decent amount of money while they are traveling to different countries. Even though most of the teachers had completed the English Teaching...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Traditionally, education in the classroom has largely employed a teacher-centred approach. Focus is on the teacher who talks, rather than on the students, who exclusively listen and are discouraged from collaboration. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Christie T. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. In recent years, however, more emphasis has been given to student-centred education: instructors share classroom talk time with learners, allowing them to communicate with their teacher and each other. By minimizing teacher domination and increasing student speaking time, students have a chance to direct their learning and build their...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas For this assignment, I decided to research problems experienced by Colombian students learning English. I will be teaching English in Colombia and thought this subject would benefit me. My findings more generally reflect the difficulties of Spanish-speaking learners. The paper outlines the top ten difficulties for Spanish-speakers learning English (vocabulary, spelling/pronunciation, subject-verb-agreement, verb tense, dialects, subject omission, pronunciation, stress, slang, and literal translations) based on CCJK (2019). Where possible I relate this information to my experiences/examples and units in the TEFL course. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate David B. Please note that this blog...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences How can a teacher motivate an EFL classroom? Motivation is a major part of learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). There is more to motivation in the classroom than knowing English is a useful language to learn. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Aaron F. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Students should be motivated to attend and pay attention in the classroom. Each student should be constantly reminded of their own, personal reason to learn English. Finally, the best motivation comes from instilling a drive into students to have a goal which requires them to learn and understand English well. By keeping students...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Teachers are experts, tutors, mentors, superiors, masters, organizers, models, etc. that “rule”, lead or guide students in their learning. They bear the important responsibility of leading the learning of their students towards success (meeting goals). They have a position that requires constant attention and responsibility, usually towards a group and they always need to adapt themselves to the classes and cultural differences. In the many roles and responsibilities that teachers may face, how can they not be nervous about the multiple approaches they could take and the multitude of problems that could appear in their future classes? Especially new teachers, how can they increase their confidence in the...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Teaching Ideas Hey guys, it's Liza here and I'm super happy to welcome you to our weekly ITTT live session. Today we are going to talk about some usual teaching stuff and if you are interested in anything related to TEFL teaching or career building, this is for you. Feel free to comment and I'll try to help you out with my thoughts and ideas, and maybe you'll find my suggestions useful. I have to fix my camera just slightly, I feel like it's moving down somehow. I hope that you can hear me clearly and see me clearly, please let me know where you guys are from. Also, let me know what stage of your career development you are at. As for me, I'm a TEFL teacher. I used to teach in China several years...  [Read more]

  Hello. This presentation is going to cover this section on lesson planning and what we're going to do is to have a look as to why we go about planning a lesson, what do we actually put in it? We'll create an empty lesson plan pro-forma and then having done that what we'll do is to fill in that lesson plan for a particular teaching point. So, our starting position is going to be: "Why do we plan lessons at all?" There are a number of reasons why we need to plan a lesson. The first and foremost perhaps is that it's going to create a logical sequence for our lessons. If we didn't have a lesson plan, it is quite possible that we could go all over the place and it would become confusing for the students. By having this plan, what we've created is a structure that we can work from. So,...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Hello everybody, Liza here and I'm super glad to welcome you to today's session. I'm excited that it didn't take long after the previous one and by the way if you didn't see the previous live stream I strongly recommend you do because last week we discussed teaching in China. I know that many people are interested in going abroad to teach and to discover new cultures. So if you want to know a little bit more about it feel free to check it out. Today we are going to talk about a slightly different approach to teaching which is online teaching. Today's session will take approximately 45 minutes. First we'll cover some of the teaching modes in online teaching because there are actually a couple of them. Then we will...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Budget and Salary TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Hello everybody, my name is Liza and I am super glad to welcome you to my weekly live session. Please let me know that you can see me clearly and hear me clearly. Today's live session is going to be devoted to a really popular question in my direct messages. I've received several requests to talk about teaching career advice and I hope everybody will find something interesting in this live stream. We've got the chat box here and you basically can comment with whatever you want. As I have already mentioned my name is Liza and I am a TEFL expert and a former ESL teacher. I’ve been teaching online since 2020 because of the quarantine and...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Hello everybody, welcome to the ITTT weekly live stream. My name is Liza, and today we are going to discuss an extremely important topic which is related to English teaching as a non-native teacher. Because the field is pretty competitive, many people want to find out if it is possible to stand out or not. Let's just quickly change the slide. So the reason I decided to choose this topic is that one of my regular viewers asked me about how to actually stand out as a non-native teacher, especially online. I find it is really important, so let's discuss it today and before we move on, please let me know that you can hear me and see me clearly. If...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Welcome guys, Linda here from ITTT for another live session. I'm so happy to be here today, the weather is great today, the lighting is good. If you were watching last week it was pretty much like the end of the world weather here, but today it's great, I feel good. If you can see me and hear me please drop a hi into the comments. We are live on Facebook and also on YouTube and if you're listening to this as a podcast episode thanks for the download. We always turn our live sessions into podcast episodes and you can find them on all major podcast platforms like iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts etc. It's called the TEFL and TESOL Podcast by ITTT....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Have you ever considered living and experiencing a different culture? If the answer is yes, teaching is a good way to achieve your goal. Teaching can be hard and challenging but also very rewarding to watch your students improve. This is why taking a TEFL course is important for several reasons including the following: methods for teaching younger students, methods for teaching students who require different approaches to learning, and methods for keeping students under control in the classroom during an English lesson. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Taylor E. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. First, I learned that...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Intelligence has been defined in many ways, including the capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context (Wikipedia, 2019). This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Stephen A. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. At a cosmetic level, language fluency and accuracy, that segregate socio-cultural groups is inconsistent with contemporary thought of...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Hello! Liza is here and if you are guys getting on this stream, let me know if you hear and see me. We are about to start. Today's live session is devoted to teaching English as a non-native speaker. Okay, let me check if anyone is here. Hello! my name is Liza, and today we will talk about teaching English as a non-native speaker. Let me show the name of the session. Hello guys, if you are watching right now, write down a couple of words. I can see your comments, and let me know where you are from? I'm curious. And let me introduce myself quickly. I'm now staying in my hometown in Russia. It is called Yekaterinburg. It's pretty cold today, but...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Being a tutor in a foreign land and who doesn't have a TESOL certificate is kind of cumbersome. There are things that I did as a self-declared teacher however failed to understand that I was erring. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Husein B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The course educated me quite a lot of things that I truly give thanks to the team for informing. I learned a theoretical and sensible foundation that necessitated me in having acceptable teaching methodologies at my disposal. However, there seems to have been some excessive focus on the various theories of instruction which may leave some prospective TESOL...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas “Teachers must learn how to teach… they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching”, (B. F. Skinner 1972). Understanding how these theories of learning suggested by philosophers can bring or has brought about a change in teaching helps teachers to be very effective in the classroom as they aid in shaping the lives of young men and women for the future. Two great theories of learning that have impacted teaching are Behaviorism and Cognitive development theory. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Samantha D. Using behavioral theory in the classroom can be rewarding for both students and teachers. Behavioral change occurs for a reason,...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas For the past four years, I have worked in Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) of English. Before this, I had limited experience operating in a conventional classroom, teaching young learners. I trained adults who were self-motivated and designed curricula for vocation institutions. Now, outside of my expertise, here I am teaching at a junior high school – my base school and an elementary school. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Aeika P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The city in which I live is very rural, farming and fishing are traditional...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences If you’re thinking about starting your EFL teaching career, the first thing you should do is taking a TEFL course. It helps you decide where to teach, as it contains information about differences between students from different countries and regions, i.g. Asia and Latin America, as well as information on how to work with students’ cultural backgrounds. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Vladimir P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. If you have prior experience in teaching, though it’s useful to refresh your knowledge because it’s important basics you should know. Moreover, you can find some new information, i.g. how to...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Destinations TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Hello everybody, Liza here and I'm super happy to welcome you to this ITTT live session. It's a bit of an unusual time to meet because my sessions are usually on Tuesdays and today is Saturday. Anyway, I'm super happy that you could make it. Today's session is going to be slightly different because we are going to talk with my good friend about teaching in China. I know that many people are interested in this topic, so stay tuned because in a moment he will join me to talk about working in China and stuff like that. If you guys have any questions, feel free to ask them via the comment section. As for the timing for today, we are going to talk for...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Hello, it's Liza here. While I'm waiting for more people to join us let me introduce myself for those who will watch it as a recording. So my name is Liza and I am a TEFL expert at ITTT. I am also a self-employed online ESL teacher. I am a non-native English speaker and I am based in Yekaterinburg, Russia. I hope that today's session will be useful for as many people as possible, because it basically covers one of the most controversial topics in TEFL certification. So the main point of today's session is what are some differences between TEFL and TESOL, and other certifications such as CELTA and DELTA. Please let me know if you can hear me clearly and see me well, there is a chat box so you can communicate with me...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Hi and welcome to another live session. My name is Linda from ITTT and I'm back again this week, who would have thought? No, we're actually pretty consistent with our live events. So we are going live twice a week. Me once and then my colleague Liza once. I’m so happy to be here today guys, let me know if you can see me and if you can hear me, and also where you're watching from. Just drop hi I’m watching from so and so into the comment section, that would be really great. I'm super excited to be here again today. Normally I go live on Fridays, well Friday mornings in South Korea. But today I'm going live on Thursday because we are actually going into the Lunar New Year...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Not all Teaching English as a Foreign Language is equal. Different types of groups of learners include beginner vs. intermediate/advanced learners as well as monolingual classes vs multilingual classes. Another set of distinctive groups and perhaps the most contrary groups to be aware of are groups of young vs adult learners. In the following comparison, the many ways to ensure success with both types of groups will be discussed, as well as reasons the groups can be both challenging and rewarding. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Paige B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. There are many ways to ensure the success of a group in...  [Read more]

Shirin Sophy TEFL Information Teaching Ideas How the seats are arranged in a classroom can convey numerous implicit messages about the pedagogical approaches and methods employed in a specific school and the teacher who works there. A well-designed seating arrangement not only facilitates the interaction between the teacher and the learners but it also enables the students to interact together, which is a paramount feature of a student-centered class effectively. There is a wide variety of interaction patterns that each can be appropriately applied considering the aim and objective of a lesson and the ongoing task; however, a well-adjusted seating arrangement may pave the way for the flow of the information during the lesson...  [Read more]