TEFL Celebration

Linda Dunsmore Destinations Lunar New Year is one of the most important holidays in a variety of Asian countries. This holiday marks the beginning of a calendar year whose months are cycles of the moon. Typically, the Lunar New Year is celebrated in January or February depending on the lunar calendar. Teaching English in Asia is a great way to experience Lunar New Year celebrations and different customs in the various Asian nations. Chinese New Year is the most important Chinese festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional Chinese moon calendar. Chinese New Year is a 15-day-long festival period with the Lantern Festival concluding the celebrations on the 15th day of the year. The first day of Chinese New Year begins on...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences As a teacher of grade 2 at an international school in Shenzhen, China, my classroom management has many components. Educators require both teaching skills and classroom management skills because strong classroom management creates a safe environment for students to learn with joy. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate YunXiang C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. First, a classroom agreement is a component of my classroom management plan. At the beginning of the semester, students collaborated and agreed upon the rules. Such rules included: listen when someone is speaking; respect others; be caring; no running in the hallway or...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Throughout the modern and ancient world, across all cultures and empires, generations have been inspired, entertained and educated through the process of storytelling. Before such modern practices of documentation, word of mouth was used to keep the spirit of generations alive, these served as a purpose of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and to instill a sense of morality into their young. Since the written word, our desire for storytelling has evolved and allowed us to reach and inspire further audiences on paper. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate florence c. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. To separate and...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Budget and Salary Destinations TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Last year, Anastasia finished her Master's program in applied linguistics at the university of Barcelona, specializing in mobile-assisted language learning. Looking for a job, one of the career opportunities she encountered was a position of tutor performance manager at Preply. In order to know the insides of using the platform, she decided to sign up and analyze everything from the perspective of a teacher. The experience was quite enjoyable, so she decided to keep it up. The following is an interview with Anastasia about her experience working as a teacher on Preply. In...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The United Arab Emirates though being a discrete country is a league of 7 states comprising people whose first language is Arabic. UAE being a prominent Arab country in Middle East homes to a myriad of Arabs from neighboring countries. Hence, the challenges that a learner's faces are also varying depending on the nativity of the person. I firmly believe there are four basic challenges that learners face in the UAE. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate MANJU A. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Culture plays an important factor in learning a language effectively. Language defines the environment and vice versa. Hence, the traditions...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Brown (2001, p. 72) claims that “One of the more complicated problems of second language learning and teaching has been to define and apply the construct of motivation in the classroom”. Motivation is a significant determinant of success in learning a second or foreign language. “It can be defined as a driving force that pushes someone to do something” (Astuti, 2013, p. 14). Without motivation, it seems to be impossible to achieve success in foreign language learning. “Motivation could be considered as the emotion that a person could have towards learning a foreign language, and it is determined by his/her predisposition and personality characteristics.” (Karahan, 2007, p. 2). This post was written by...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Stories are an important part of any culture, English speaking or not. They can be oral or written and can showcase how culture works and their history. Whether old traditional stories or new popular current stories, the tales we share with young children can shape their developing ideas and values. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Rochelle L. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. When working with young children in Early Childhood settings, stories help children to make sense of their world, safely express their emotions, and explore new ideas and values. For example, a story that focuses on friendships might help a child who...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The overall “course experience” or a critique of daily experiences are too often considered only during course evaluations or in response to vocalized dissatisfaction. As an English teacher (or any teacher) it is your responsibility to craft, adjust, and/or carry-out a course experience that will be the most effective and enjoyable one possible. To do so requires that you give broad thought to your audience, schedule, and how you show up in the course. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Sara S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. When curating a course experience the first thing to consider is the audience. Each audience will...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences There are many reasons why a person might be interested in becoming TEFL certified. Initially, I only really had one reason, is that it’d be an interesting way to start my career as a teacher and would determine if this was something I wanted to do with a big portion of my life. One of my major life goals is revamping the American education system and making it more efficient, especially on the public-school level. I’ve learned a decent amount about how education is handled in several countries outside of America and while no system is perfect, there are things we could be doing better. By finding a TEFL job in another country I’d be able to gain experience as a teacher as well as study teaching methods...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas A multilingual class is a class where the learners speak a variety of first languages. A monolingual class is a class where all the learners speak the same first language. I have been working in international school setting for over 13 years. The classes are multilingual classes where students come from different cultures and English is the common language for them to communicate with their teachers and classmates. By contrast, English classes in local schools and universities in China are considered to be monolingual classes since the students use their first language, Chinese, to communicate. The teacher has to remind them to not use their mother tongue constantly during class...  [Read more]

Dan Sloat Destinations Alumni Experiences Volunteer teaching in Nepal is thoroughly rewarding! The need for engaging and enthusiastic teachers is so great and the positive impact you can make, even in a short period, is significant. Personally, I had a modest classroom of 16 students comprising a broad range of ages and competency. Those kiddos were quite a handful, but being their teacher was an incredible privilege. Their maturity was striking and yet, at the end of the day, they are still growing boys. They would get rowdy at times and often pulled pranks on each other. I loved their curiosity, their excitement for learning, and their playful spirits. Between lessons they would often draw pictures for me. I suppose I’m the...  [Read more]

Christian Davey Destinations TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Once you’ve decided to move abroad for work, I’m sure you’d like to know the pros and cons of the place? Sure, a quick browse online can give you some idea, but it probably won’t go into anything specific or any real depth. Well, look no further as I’m going to give you five positives and five negatives about teaching English in Taiwan. Let’s start with the positives, in no particular order. If you're wondering if Taiwan is safe to loiter or take a stroll on the streets at night, you don't need to worry. Taiwan is one of the safest places in the world, you can go to a restaurant or a coffee shop and leave your belongings, such as...  [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]