If I Was The Student Would You Be The Teacher

Dorothy Brown Smith Destinations Alumni Experiences I have always wanted to travel and go abroad. I talked about it with family and friends on many occasions. When the opportunity came for me to teach in China, I immediately said, “NO!” I was thinking of traveling to places like South America, France, Italy, Greece, etc. because I had romanticized these places in my mind from what I had seen on television and read about in magazines. China was not even a thought in my mind! The opportunity kept coming to teach in China. I would see advertisements, run into people who had just came back from China. I even met someone studying Chinese to be an interpreter! I kept running into people who had some kind of connection with...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Anyone can be a teacher but not every teacher is likable or caring. I found in my experience as a student, especially as a child, I would find myself dreading the classes with the teachers that had bad attitudes and would look forward to the ones who not only kept the class interesting but showed true interest in the student's lives. The truly talented teachers would take examples of scenarios people had discussed from their personal lives and use it as a tool in their teaching strategies. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Priscilla L. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The only thing that separated these two types of teachers...  [Read more]

  This video covers the difference between 'If I were' and 'If I was' as their usage is often confused. 'If I was' is used for things that could have happened in the past or now, for example: If I was rude, I apologize. 'If I were', however, is used when we speak about imaginary situations or things that are contrary to fact, such as here: If I were a dog, I would sleep all day. 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. Conditonals and reported speech in...  [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 Alumni Experiences Over the years I have pondered whether or not to try and teach English as a career. Watching countless online videos and reading travel blogs of 'wandering teachers' and articles on sites such as ' Dave's ESL Café, I sort of got mixed emotions about ESL teachers. That is of course until I took the chance and became one myself. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Leon G. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. In the two years of being a teacher I have certainly learned a lot, I've experienced extreme highs and extreme lows in a country where basic English is a rare find. With no prior experience or knowledge of how to educate, my...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kourtney P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Some years back I, along with a very good friend of mine, had the honor of working with a ministry in northern India. During our time there one of my assignments was helping teach English as a second language. The ministry we were working with employed teachers, in both a public and a private school, and we had the opportunity to assist teaching in both of these. While I had had some prior experience in both teaching and tutoring and had worked in the past with international students, this would be my first time helping to formally teach English as a...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” - Mark Antony. I have a tall tale to tell you. A story filled with unspeakable horrors that make men dishonor all they have stood for; that pushes the statement “it is better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both”- Machiavelli. To tales of living in a land down under and learning the language of the locals and communing with them in a peaceful manner. Before ending with a tale as old of time, which is empires rise and fall, similar to teaching materials that are created and become outdated. If we are to succeed we must evolve or we will just get caught up in the churn with the changing tides. Let us begin with what truly motivates the world of men....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences I taught my first class when I was 22 and just entering graduate school in upstate New York. I had graduated from college in 1991, took a year off and decided to go back for my Master's degree in Theatre in 1993. Looking back, it was one of the best choices I ever made. Not only did I get a full teaching assistantship but I was given the opportunity to teach--something I had never done before but something I definitely wanted to try. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Alyssa T. When I taught my first class (which was an acting class for non-theatre majors), I was not much older than some of my students. In fact, one or two of my students may have been older than me! I got around this...  [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]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In the early lessons of the course, I was able to better understand the components of the sentence, and the knowledge about word types was expanded. It includes a definite article, adjective, noun, verb, preposition, adverb, conjunction, gerund, personal pronoun. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Phuong P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. In unit 4, we have started talking about tenses in English. I looked at the four present tenses; the present simple, present continuous (sometimes called the present progressive), present perfect and present perfect continuous. Summary, the tense system is probably the area of the English...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas What do you normally hear when you walk into a convenience store? Do you hear a man tell you, “Hello, how are you doing today?” or “Good morning?”. The answer is likely no. More often than not you hear someone say “Sup, dude!” or “What’s happening?” or some other kind of non-conventional English that would normally not find its home in the ESL classroom. Therefore, it is vital to teaching the students slang and idioms so that when they get into a real conversation outside of the classroom, they aren’t thrown off or left in the dust by a few turns of phrase. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Tanner M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Teaching Ideas Student feedback and correction are an integral part of our teaching methodology. In this blog post, we introduce some general concepts. Many teachers either neglect giving appropriate feedback or they are not sure how to do so. In this blog I'm going to share some opinions and some data so that you can think about it and maybe implement some strategies of giving effective feedback. Our students actually need it and the whole learning process is aimed at getting some feedback. When you start thinking about your feedback and thinking about the whole concept of giving feedback you have to consider what effective feedback actually is. In general, is it correcting all students’...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences At the cafeteria during lunchtime, a student of mine approached and asked me, “Why did you become a teacher?” Dumbfounded by this brazen question, I did not know what to say. I could have chosen motherhood statements like “I want to make a difference in the world,” “to have a positive impact on my student’s lives, “or that “I love children.” I ended up saying to him, “Well, I am good at teaching.” However, the truth of the matter is, I needed a job and there was an opportunity so I took it. You can say it was fate that called me to be a teacher. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself being a Grade 3 homeroom teacher! After having experienced a variety of jobs in my life from...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I believe discipline in the classroom has a time and place. Depending on the age group or behavior of the classroom will define if discipline is needed. When discipline is simple, the teacher must ask themselves one question, is it disrupting the student's time to learn? If the answer to that question is a yes then action must be taken at that point. As a future teacher, I think the best way to make it clear to the student that bad behavior will not be tolerated is by implementing a three-strike system: the first strike is a warning, the second strike is detention and a paper assigned to the student asking them to write what mistake they made and how they will improve in the future, the third strike is being sent...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In today’s world teaching online has become commonplace. Teaching online gives people from all over the world access to resources that would otherwise be extremely difficult if not impossible for them to attain, whether it’s due to financial burdens or strict time schedules. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Devina S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Studying online provides the learner with the flexibility of learning when it is convenient for them, which means that they can still work, raise a family or carry out other hobbies while doing the course. Online courses tend to be cheaper than face-to-face classes, and this...  [Read more]

Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences I worked as an Emirates Airlines flight attendant for over 6 years. In order to be accepted you need to pass multiple group exercises, a written exam and a two person interview. There are always over a thousand applicants but they only accept a very small number. Two years ago I left the company and moved to Vietnam where I noticed a great interest in younger people wanting to become flight attendants, but many were fearful of the Open Day, a two day process of interviews and exercises because they were not sure if their level of English was good enough. It didn’t take long for me and two friends, who had also worked for the same airline, to decide to put together an 8 day course for people interested in becoming...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Today I would like to summative the topic " How to control yourself in front of students with challenging behaviors?" I choose this topic because, in my opinion, this can be one of the most critical things which can happen in the classroom and the short- and long term damage can be irreparable and you can easily have lost the respect and joy of the students to participate in your class. It can also cause a career-damaging impact in your life and you may also lose the joy at teaching if you are not prepared for this situation. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Hakan B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. I would like to suggest...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Back in 2014, I worked at a nursery school here in South Africa. I was the English teacher for the three to four-year-olds at this school. There were 32 students in my class. My class was so small that during nap time two students had to sleep on one mattress. There was no space to leave the class once the children had fallen asleep. I had to make sure that all my belongings were out of the class once the students came in for their naptime or I had to leave whatever was forgotten behind once I was one my way to my next job. In unit 3 on page 21, they talk about the whole class grouping pros and cons and that is really explained well where they say "class grouping is suitable for activities where the teacher...  [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]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I would say the hardest part about becoming a Teacher is having the confidence to face your students in the classroom. I speak from experience because this was a challenge for me in the beginning when I taught Spanish as a foreign language. My students were primary and high school students, essentially just kids, but this intimidated me the most about my job. In time you will indeed and should become more confident teaching in the classroom, as the saying goes…” practice makes perfect”, right? However, there are some things a new teacher can do or be aware of to help increase their confidence in the classroom. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Genoveve C. Please note that this blog...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Hello everybody, nice to see you again. Let me know that you can see me clearly and hear me clearly. I'm glad that you are joining us, thanks for coming today. We're just about to start our live session. My name is Liza and I am an ITTT TEFL expert and an online ESL teacher. Nice to see you guys joining me, thanks a lot and just before we start just quickly let me tell you about ITTT. so our company is a TEFL course provider and we are actually presenting on various social networks right now. If you guys want to get updates on different TEFL content make sure you follow our social networks and keep updated regularly. Thanks for joining today's...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences I decided to complete TEFL course nearly a month ago. Before talking about the reasons why I took this course, I would like to tell some facts about myself. My name is Julia, I was born in Kyiv, Ukraine and had been living there for all my life – now I’m 35. I had a very successful career in marketing an worked for a big international company. However, the job took up all my time, required a lot of effort and I felt very exhausted and unhappy. So I decided to quit my job and started to travel: Georgia, Italy, Spain, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore. Now I live in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Yuliia R. Learning English is extremely popular in Asian countries....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I taught high school and college-level Spanish. I taught language for about 20 years. I learned many things throughout my tenure as a teacher. There are many traits and characteristics that I found useful in my career. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Keith B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. As a language teacher especially, I had to find new fun ways to make use of everyday items for the benefit of my students. I would incorporate realia, real everyday objects, into the lessons that I taught. For example, teaching foods I would bring as many real fruits and vegetables into the class. I have learned that the more senses you...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Hello everybody, it's Liza here. We are just about to start today's live session that is devoted to ideas on how to improve English skills. While I'm waiting for more people to join me let me just tell you about these live sessions. So we are doing them weekly and right now there are a lot of videos to check out on our YouTube channel and our Facebook group. If you missed any of these live streams you can go to our social networks and see any of them there. Welcome to the new session and if you haven't heard already my name is Liza and I'm a non-native English teacher from Russia. I can see that there are some people from the Philippines here....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Is it appropriate to punish younger children in an ESL classroom? No, there is no need for that. Punishment is such a strong word to use for children when trying to learn a new language. Learning a new language may be difficult for everyone. It requires patience towards the children you teach and patience towards yourself. Punish us not the word that I would use, discipline is. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kathrina M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. At some point, the children in your class would misbehave during a lesson. Yes, it would disturb the flow of the class. Others can also join the other student and misbehave as...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Among my most cherished childhood memories takes me back to the moment when it was time to choose a new book to get lost in before bedtime. I was lucky enough to have a bookshelf in front of which I would sit and, I thought, let the book choose me. Sometimes the calling was immediate; sometimes it took longer. I picked up random books, read the back, and smelled them; sometimes I read the first page, anything I needed to do until I found the perfect connection. Reading was one of my favorite moments of the day. Most of the time, the book I picked would be so perfect for the moment in my life that it would take all my attention the next morning. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Ana L. Please...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Hi, I am back for another live session this week. My name is Linda from ITTT. I took a break last week, I was traveling a little bit in Korea, not too far but I got to enjoy the cherry blossoms. That's why there was no live session from me last week. But I'm back this week and I'm super excited. Today we're going to have a Q&A session, so you guys can ask me questions about TEFL and TESOL, teaching abroad, teaching online, whatever you want to know about. So something a bit more casual, let's have a chat. I would like to get to know you guys better and you can get to know me, ITTT and TEFL. If you can see me and hear me please drop a hi or something into the comment box so that I know that everything is working...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences As a foreigner in a foreign country, cultural sensitivity is important. As a teacher being culturally sensitive in the classroom is of more importance. As a foreigner, there is the ability to interact with people of various ages, occupations, and other demographics in foreign countries. In foreign countries, there are different ways in which society treats certain age groups, occupations, and other demographics. As a teacher, there could be the goal of interacting with native people and groups appropriately. As an English teacher one may have the opportunity to interact with students that vary in ages. As a teacher, the interactions that one would have would be with students, schools, and school faculty. As a...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Teaching Ideas Hello everybody and welcome to the ITTT weekly live stream. It's Liza here and I'm super excited that this stream happens every week and we can talk about teaching and TEFL and stuff like that. So welcome and thank you for joining me. Today, we are going to talk about online ESL game design. Last week I started showing you the game I was designing, it was Monopoly. Today I'm going to show you the outcome of the game and also tell you a little bit more about online game design. Thanks a lot for letting me know that you are watching and right now please let me know at what stage of your ESL career you are at. As for me, I'm an online ESL teacher currently. I used to teach in a real classroom several years ago, but then...  [Read more]

  In this TEFL review video Kathryn describes her experiences as a TEFL/TESOL student at the training center in Phuket Thailand. Like Kathryn you can select the location that best suits you to complete your TEFL/TESOL course. No matter which international location you select you can be assured that the professional and most up to date level of training and the learning acquired on our course will enhance your employment prospects. 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...  [Read more]