Intermediate Story

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In this blog post, our TEFL alumna shares their lesson plan example for teaching a pre-intermediate classroom. Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences In this article, our TEFL graduate considers the most typical problems of ESL Learners in China. Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In this blog post, our TEFL graduate shares their thoughts on teaching kindergarten level students. Catia Pereira dos Santos Alumni Experiences Why learn English grammar? What are the benefits of learning it? Grammar is right where accuracy lies! It's the key to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences When it comes to learning ESL, most learners associate it with memorizing spelling rules, doing countless grammar exercises, making abstract speaking topics, and translating sentences from L1 into English. In these, there is little or no listening and speaking practice involved, making English just one of the numerous boring school subjects. However, there is so much more to learning and activating the language if the fun element is involved. This doesn't only include traditional classroom games but also learning both at school and home with the usage of modern technology. Most children born in the 2000s have grown up using iPads and mobile phones, which makes them much more tech-literate even compared to the...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Alumni Experiences Do you want to make your English lessons more exciting? We have the perfect teaching ideas for you! Here are 7 amazing activities to spice up your ESL classes. This is a great one to practice different tenses, especially the passive voice. Have your students come up with headlines for their class; such as “The teacher’s purse was stolen,” “the students were taught passive voice.” This also works for vocabulary lessons and other grammar structures. This one works well with intermediate and advanced students. Introduce a controversial issue, such as capital punishment, for example. Then, the students choose their “side” and group into teams. They do some research about the topic and take notes that...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Teaching Ideas What are ice breakers and when and where do we use them? In this blog post, we will cover these issues and give actual examples of activities you can use with your classes. Icebreakers are games or activities that are designed to ‘break the ice’. Typically you would use these kinds of games or activities at the beginning of a new school year, when you have a new set of students, or a new class that you don't know and they don't know you. You also can use icebreakers to get your students going at the start of the lesson speaking in English and that's really important as you don't want to come into the classroom and say, “Open your books to page five” and then start studying....  [Read more]

Jon ITTT Alumni Experiences In my personal opinion, vocabulary learning is the basic and most substantial part in any language learning. It’s like the bricks for building a house. Moreover, the process of vocabulary learning is the most difficult and time-consuming. It requires not only memorizing skills but also a good understanding of the word, and constant practice. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Dan W. For most English learners in China, they often encounter the same problem when learning vocabulary, which is that they keep forgetting the meaning they've learned. One of the major reasons for this problem is that they only memorize the Chinese meaning for each word. They pay no attention to the word class and skip...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Throughout this course and my professional career as an online English teacher, I have learned that there are many differences between teaching one to one, but to teaching to groups of students as well. I work with an online company, and I teach one to four students that live in China for about thirty minutes daily. Each lesson is different with different students every time, so I get to experience a wide variety of students at different levels every day. However, the content of the lesson can differ greatly depending on if I have one or four students in that class. My teaching can change drastically by the number of students I have assigned to certain classes. This post was written by our TEFL certification...  [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]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Vocabulary, as one of the three main elements (The other two are pronunciation and grammar) of a language, is essential in language acquisition. Teaching vocabulary is always being a great concern for any English language course. Quite a lot of teachers are really focused on how to make a vocabulary lesson more interesting and memorable for students. New vocabulary has to be introduced in such a way as to capture the students’ attention and place the words in a practical way. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Haiqiong L. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Vocabulary learning can be often seen as a laborious process of memorizing...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Reading is one of the key elements for all English learners. By reading authentic stories and books, not only do we learn reading and understanding the text we are working with, but we also expand our vocabulary by discovering new authentic words you wouldn't be able to find in your course books, and more importantly, you can see it in context which makes it easier to remember and use those words and structures in the future. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Julia P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. It's important to know which stories to choose based on your student's age and English level. Younger learners would find...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas There is currently a need for more people willing to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) across America. Several small communities have accepted immigrants from other countries. Although children of school age will learn English in school, the parents and grandparents struggle to learn English as they continue their daily lives and earn a living. This is a challenge as most Americans do not know any other languages as they do in Europe, so the immigrant needs to communicate in English to accomplish anything. This leaves the older generation feeling isolated and causes problems in everyday life, such as going to the bank. In most large...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The use of reading in the course of language acquisition is valuable and often underrated. Before undertaking a detailed explanation, I will first offer a general example to demonstrate the problem of teaching without it. Imagine you are teaching the word “ball” to an older student. You could ask them to say “ball, ball, ball” in a drilling manner. This can be inefficient and above all, boring for the student. But suppose that you do teach it enjoyably. How many words might they learn? This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Peter C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. For most teachers, they will give one or sometimes two...  [Read more]

Estefany Garduño TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas When you hear about English lessons, the first thing that comes into your mind is probably lessons taken from a book, answer lesson sheets, and talking in pairs applying a small group of vocabulary, and that’s all. Let’s change the game by giving a higher immersion of English to your ESL students without going to an English-speaking country to obtain more vocabulary, pronunciation, and speaking practice. Being immersed in English is the way of “forcing” oneself to use the language, hearing how others use it, thinking in English to give answers in English, stopping trying to translate all the time from English to the native language,...  [Read more]

Laura Payne Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Authentic materials are media that native speakers of a language encounter in their everyday lives, which are not specifically created for language students. TV programs, newspaper articles, books, songs, YouTube videos, and more all fall under this term. Incorporating authentic materials into ESL classrooms has numerous merits, but the high language level required to understand these materials often causes teachers to rarely or never include them in classes below an intermediate language level. However, the difficulty of language in authentic materials does not necessarily mean that they have no place in lower-level classes. With some research, planning, and creativity, any teacher...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Teaching Ideas Flashcard is an indispensable tool that every teacher needs during the studying process. Regardless of the age of the students, it can be used effective equal with young learners or adults. Usually, in the ESL classes, the teacher uses flashcards when they need to teach new or review the previous vocabulary. It’s also one of the easiest ways to add some games into your lesson, cause mostly it doesn’t need special preparations. Young learners especially like flashcard games because usually it’s active games and allow them to have fun during the lesson. There are different types of flashcards, for instance, on one side could be a word or picture on another side – it's the English translation. Those types of...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Reflective teaching is not a contemporary science however, to find evidence of when this science began it would be an impossible task, like accessing the Vatican library. One could presume the first person which taught another something resourceful dedicated some time to reflect on its delivery and considered observing research, and planning. 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. Generally, reflective teaching is the process of self-observation and self-evaluation i.e. looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it, and thinking about if it works. The aim is to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Students from many different backgrounds with various skillsets, native languages, cultures, and experiences daily enter my Level 3 Low-Intermediatlow-intermediate Some students come having been exposed to English from a young age watching American television or listening to popular songs. Some of these students feel comfortable speaking in simple, broken sentences but communicating, nonetheless. Others step into the ESL classroom timid and insecure. They’ve just recently learned the Roman alphabet and have difficulty understanding simple directions or piecing words together. Regardless of where students come from and their prior experience with the English language, there are some useful tools teachers can...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Learning new vocabulary is considered as an integral part of learning a new language. Even children who learn their mother tongues learn isolated phrases and words before making complex sentences. Similarly, in second language learning, teaching new words and phrases plays an important role in helping learners’ communication. Based on David Wilkins “without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. If learners spend their time on learning grammar, their English will not improve greatly. However, if they learn more words, phrases, and expressions, they can express almost anything (Thornberry, 2002; Watkin, 2005). This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The benefits of using flashcards in the ESL classroom are well-documented. When teachers use flashcards, they typically provide their students with three learning pathways: visual, kinesthetic, and audio (assuming that the exercise requires the students to say something related to the flashcard). This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Joseph O. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. In addition to appealing to a wide range of learning styles, flashcards are very multifunctional. They can be used to teach simple things such as basic vocabulary words, advanced grammar structures like complex sentences, and many things in between. Flashcards...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Being an American living in France has given me firsthand experience as to what it is like to struggle with learning a new language. I studied Spanish for six years, in Junior High and High school. Language acquisition was easier then. I can attest to the fact that younger learners learn more quickly. For me, the two major problems with learning French are the tenses and not being able to understand what people are saying. I get stuck in the present tense, often forgetting to change tenses in conversation. I also need to hone up on my listening skills. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Patricia J. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences I have had the opportunity to study several foreign languages, some in a formal setting, some self-taught. Through my personal experiences learning other languages, I have developed some insights into language learning. I would like to describe some of my experienc| ITTT | TEFL Bloges, and some of my thoughts on what I have learned from them, and from this course. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kim T. My first experience in language learning began at age fourteen with French; by the time I graduated high school I had studied French, German and Spanish as part of my curriculum. The method in use then was ALM, so as a result, I learned language patterns very quickly. However, the only...  [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 For the summative task for this course, I decided to research the use of songs in the classroom. The use of songs interests me because it seems that this is a good medium to provide some variety in the classroom and develop interest. Songs and music can also be used with all age groups, although of course whereas singalongs may be more appropriate with very young learners, other activities such as lyric breakdown are still very useful for older learners. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate David B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. For example, Lynch (2019) states that “Many teachers think that using songs in the classroom is...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Vocabulary has always been one language area about which students usually complain and claim that it impedes language learning. The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether using the context for guessing the meaning of new vocabulary can solve this problem. The learning of vocabulary is an important part of foreign language learning. The meaning of new words is very frequently emphasized, whether in books or verbal communication. And also, English teachers have an important role in teaching new vocabularies. In this research, we will study different kinds of teaching vocabulary by using a dictionary or guessing on the context. Further, the study also attempted to reveal what kind of factors hinder or...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Hello and welcome to the weekly ITTT live session, my name is Liza and I'm glad that some people have joined already. I hope everything works smoothly here and you can hear me clearly and see me well, if not please let me know in the comment section so that I can fix it quickly. Today we are going to talk about the vital topic of lesson materials. I know that many people struggle looking for resources and content for their lessons so this is something I want to look at today. While we are waiting for some more people to join us, please let me know where you guys are tuning in from. I'm located in the Euro region of Russia in Yekaterinburg city,...  [Read more]