Katie Gaffney

Katie and Jake from Untold Wanderlust TEFL Information Teaching English abroad is a thrilling and self-fulfilling job, not to mention the benefits it has upon your students. However, leaving the comforts of your hometown can be quite a difficult thing to do but luckily teaching as a couple helps iron-out those small worries before leaving. Here I have put together an article of my experience of teaching abroad as part of a couple. It was never my aspiration to become an ESL teacher. Back in England, I was well on my way to becoming a police officer. My better half, Katie, who has experience working with children and troubled youth, longed for an adventure far from the mundane lifestyle she was used to back in the UK. Before being bitten by the...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information The following eight couples have traveled the world together and either started out as ESL teachers or supported their travels teaching English in different parts of the world. Some of them are still teaching, others have started their own businesses. Either way, these 8 traveling power couples are an absolute inspiration for ESL teachers and you should follow them right now! Katie and Jake are two budget world wanderers and ESL teachers. They both share a passion for exploring new and exciting destinations across the world. Follow their blog "Untold Wanderlust" to see their very long, round the world adventure whilst teaching. Rosie and Dave are two ‘high-school sweethearts’ who have been teaching and...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Check out these 7 activities for teaching reported speech in the ESL classroom that will help your students learn this tricky English topic in no time! Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information Are you traveling and don't know how to find the time to get TEFL certified? Worry no more! Here are 4 tips for getting your TEFL certificate on the road and for staying motivated to study! Linda Dunsmore Destinations Teaching Ideas Are you interested in teaching English in Japan? Our TEFL alumni Kaavya shares three differences in Japanese schools that every teacher needs to be aware of before heading...  [Read more]

  So, now we're going to fill the actual procedure of the lesson plan out itself. We mentioned at the start, the first thing we do, is to get some general information about the class that we'll be teaching and then, in order for someone to be able to cover our lesson, we need to present enough information in our lesson plan that they can actually carry it out. What I'm going to do is for each stage of the lesson, I'll indicate what I'm going to do in the lesson and then, we'll cut away from that to have a look to see how that will actually be achieved. So, our lesson is going to be based on a 45-minute lesson and the first phase is going to be the engage phase and it's going to be a straight arrow ESA lesson. I'm going to take approximately five minutes on my engage phase and in...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information Teaching Ideas Are you ready to teach English abroad? Before you step into the classroom, don't forget to read up on these 5 common types of EFL students and how to deal with them. Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information Teaching Ideas These top 10 mistakes to avoid in the classroom while teaching English abroad will help you become a better EFL teacher and make sure your students learn English in the most effective way possible. Katie and Jake from Untold Wanderlust TEFL Information Teaching English abroad is an exciting adventure and one that is often shared with a...  [Read more]

Christine Thompson Visa and Legal Destinations The Czech Republic is an exciting country with prospering career opportunities in English language teaching for many around the world. Here's our step-by-step guide to legally teaching English in the Czech Republic. Katie and Jake from Untold Wanderlust Destinations Are you interested in teaching English in Vietnam? Here are 5 important things to prepare you for teaching English in Hanoi! Laura Payne Destinations TEFL Information Are you interested in teaching English in Japan? The JET Program is a popular option for many English teachers coming...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Use these 7 activities for teaching the present perfect for the ESL classroom to teach the present perfect tense to your students and help them understand the correct structure and usage of the tense. Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information Teaching Ideas These top 10 mistakes to avoid in the classroom while teaching English abroad will help you become a better EFL teacher and make sure your students learn English in the most effective way possible. Mark Crocker Teaching Ideas No matter how well you plan your lessons, it is inevitable that you will sometimes finish before the class is...  [Read more]

Katie and Jake from Untold Wanderlust Destinations After galivanting around India, Central Asia, and Europe for the summer, we finally decided to head back to Vietnam for another year of teaching. However, this time we were going to make a huge change! Instead of going back to our jobs, apartment and friends in Ho Chi Minh City, we decided to check out what Hanoi has to offer. Although it’s the same country, it’s like starting all over again! As we have only recently gone through this huge change, we have decided to put together 5 important things to help you make the move to Hanoi and teach English. First, you will need to find work. Before even thinking of applying for job vacancies, It’s important to know what type of work you are...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Lesson planning is, at least to some degree, a vital function of teaching. The degree to which a lesson plan is necessary is often directly proportional to the teaching experience of the teacher. The less experience the teacher has the more necessary and beneficial the lesson plan is and vice versa. Lesson plans give the class structure, hold the teacher accountable, and function as a helpful aide, overall adding to the effectiveness of the class and the student’s opportunity to learn. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Katie A. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Unit 9 from this course points out that lesson plans can range...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I believe storytelling is one of the best methods for keeping students engaged while helping them to understand and remember a topic. Regardless of age, everyone enjoys a good story. There are many ways to integrate storytelling into the classroom. One way is to use a story to introduce a new topic. This could mean a funny or personal anecdote relating to the new subject. It could also mean reading aloud from a book or having students listen to an audio recording. Not only will the story grab the attention of the audience, but it will also be a good opportunity to speak somewhat casually with the students, using a variety of vocabulary you expect them to learn in context. An important aspect of storytelling to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Anyone who has tried to learn a language as a second language is likely to express at some stage or another how difficult it is. We speak of absorbing our first language and having to work hard for our second. We will often look towards those who have learned more than one language at the same time, bilingual for example, as being lucky and that the path was easier for them. So, is the first language easier to learn and why, and can we use those techniques to learn or teach a second language? This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kevin A. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. We start to learn a language from birth with the sounds made...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Anyone could learn a syllabus and regurgitate it to a group of people, however, teaching involves more than just the transference of information. Teachers must learn to be able to engage their students with the content, while also building a rapport with the students and managing the classroom as a whole. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kate M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Rapport building with a new group of students or an individual student is a vital first step as well as an ongoing task for any teacher. Encouraging students to introduce themselves to you as the teacher as well as to the rest of the class is a great way...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences It is generally agreed that education is one of the most important issues in every country these days and China is no exception. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Ekaterina G. It’s a well-known fact that China is the most populated country in the world with a long and mysterious history, rich and varied culture. China recognizes 55 ethnic minority groups within the country in addition to the Han majority. Standard Mandarin is the only official language, though there are more than 200 hundred living languages spoken all over the country. While being China’s capital, political and cultural center, Beijing is also known as a melting pot where you can meet the representative of almost each...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In between the lesson structures of teaching a five-year-old how to ride a horse and a 20-year-old did I first witness the relationship between age and abilities, attention spans, and structural needs of the different students. As German riding schools would follow a structured pyramid system to train a horse and rider from the ground up, so can teachers of a first or secondary language. Questions to discuss in this essay are, “What is early childhood development? What comes next?” and “How can a teacher encourage students through the different stages of development?”. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kate S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the...  [Read more]

  So, having elicited this particular structure, what I'm now able to do is to move on to the actual study activities. Typically, they will be in the form of worksheets to check that the students actually understand this information. So, I might prepare three activities. They may not do them all but, for example, I could prepare these three study activities. So, the first one is going to be a fairly straightforward matching activity, where perhaps they match the subject to its correct verb "to be" in that part of the sentence. The second one is going to be a gap fill. For example, I might use this verb here and ask them to complete a sentence using that verb, so that I can check that any spelling changes that take place are correct and the final one is going to be an unscramble,...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Destinations TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Hi everybody wherever you are right now. I'm in South Korea and it's 10 a.m. Friday, so good morning. I'm back here again today, my name is Linda from ITTT if you've been here before hi and if this is your first time watching thanks so much for tuning in and taking the time, we really appreciate it. If at any time during this live session you have any questions, feel free to drop your comments in the comment section from whichever platform you're watching from. We are streaming live on Facebook and on YouTube at the same time. If you can see me and hear me just leave a hi in the comment box, that would be highly appreciated so that I know that...  [Read more]