How To Teach Paraphrasing

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Abstraction is in essence, the formation of broader, and more difficult and subjective systems from inputs. It is a concept that can be applied to the four language skills: reading, listening, speaking, and writing. As an idea becomes more abstract and subjective, it requires more information and becomes more difficult to answer. Some of the easiest and least abstract pieces of language are simple Yes/No statements and questions. “Do you like ice-cream?” “Yes, I do.” “No, I don’t.” A more difficult question might be, “Who likes ice-cream?” More difficult still would be, “Why do you like ice-cream?” A simple, but by no means an exhaustive list of abstraction moving from simple to difficult...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas How can a parent help an ESL teacher to facilitate the quality of English learning of their children, which was always debatable, has now become more controversial? Some people assert that parents should give their children enough space or even leave them alone to have them develop without restriction, as they believe children need their room to grow up and experience something new. However, from my perspective, parents’ involvements are considerably crucial for ESL children’s development. To better articulate my reasoning, the relevant arguments will be elaborated as follow. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Mingzhao C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas It was my first experience teaching in Taiwan and I was in charge of teaching ESL to 7th-11th graders. I had never taught out of the United States and never considered the possibility that my students wouldn’t understand, what I thought, was simple English. I asked my junior high students to “put on their thinking caps,” to “line up single file,” “to quit fooling around” and that English was as “easy as ABC.” I told my senior high students to “give me a show of hands” and told them if they “studied hard” and “hit the books,” they would “pass with flying colors.” I told my college students I would give them an “A for effort” if they “quit goofing off” and “skipping...  [Read more]