TEFL Four Points

  "Your" and "you're" often get confused, not only by English learners around the world but also by many native English speakers. Let's break it down. "Your" is a possessive adjective that indicates ownership, while "you're" is simply the contraction of "you are". Let's take a look at this example sentence: Your grades are great this semester. In this case, we use 'your' as we use it to indicate ownership. You're the best student in the entire school! This example require us to use 'you're' because it is the short form for 'you are'. Should you not be sure which one to use, think about if you want to express ownership or of you want to say "you are". Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Discipline is an essential part of any classroom. It is the key component to effective classroom management. But how do teachers establish and implement a discipline plan for the class? The answer is simple. We’ve got to teach it! This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jeande J. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Yes, discipline in the classroom, like all the lessons from the textbook, should be taught to the students from day one no matter what the level is. I remembered doing a “new student” recruitment demonstration class a few years back. There were five new students aged around three to four years old. Most of them haven’t...  [Read more]

  This video is part of our video series on "Evaluation and Testing of Students". In this video, we look at placement tests. This type of test is also referred to as a level test. Its goal is to find out the current level of the student tested. A placement test generally tests all four skills (reading, listening, writing and speaking) and progresses from easy to hard questions. 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. This unit four looks at the forms...  [Read more]

  In this TEFL review video Claire from Taiwan talks about her experiences completing ITTT's 120 hour TEFL/TESOL online course. She successfully completed the course with the tutor support option. 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. This unit was about past tenses. It was kind of confusing because some of the questions seemed to be complicated to know which group it should go into; past simple, past perfect, past continuous, or past perfect...  [Read more]

  This video is part of our series on the past tenses in English. In this video, we take a look at the past perfect tense and suitable teaching ideas for this tense. We'll ask our students to describe what a person in a picture had just done before the photo was taken. 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. This unit was good in learning about the different materials teacher may use in the classroom to effectively teach their lesson. Materials can be...  [Read more]

  This video is part of our video series on "Evaluation and Testing of Students". In this video, we look at some of the most common general English exams students of English take around the world. EFL teachers often hold classes to prepare the students for these international proficiency exams. 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. This unit taught me about the different ways to teach vocabulary, as well as the strategies used in planning the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences The best thing I’ve learned from this course begins with the EFL teacher as an instrument of facilitation. The creative spark that ignites a flame in every student that is trying to master a new language. A teacher doesn’t need to be perfect but must be fully present and prepared with a positive, supportive vibe. The successful teacher is a role model, a subject matter expert, and a skilled conductor of English language learning and immersion. Course books aside, from the very first lesson, a teacher identifies the level of learners and builds rapport with students through engaging activities that aim to reveal the students’ needs and interests. These interests can then be incorporated into future lesson...  [Read more]

Jon ITTT TEFL Information Teaching Ideas TEFL teachers both new and experienced will benefit from having a range of course books to draw on for their lessons. General English course books for young learners differ from those for adults in a number of ways. Obviously the types of topics will be geared towards the interests of younger people but there are also differences in the way the language is presented. Course books for adults will generally have sections with explicit presentations of a grammar point,whereas books for young learners do not usually cover grammar in detail. There are several publishers involved in producing general English course books for young learners. The main publishers are Oxford University Press,...  [Read more]

Simon ITTT Teaching Ideas The number of combinations of modals and usages is enormous, so TEFL certified teachers often spend a lot of time trying to find an activity that suits their particular teaching point. Here, we give you some adaptable ideas which should save you time thinking or searching, assuming you already have good grammatical knowledge of the subject and a little bit of creativity. It’s often better to spend a bit of time creating your own material rather than looking fruitlessly on the internet. You will also be able to personalize the content for your students, improve your own skills, and build up a great resource bank. If you need to improve your knowledge of modal auxiliary verbs, look at your ITTT course materials. A...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Games are a useful tool for teachers of EFL students because they help with motivation, engagement, and graceful failure (Plass 260-261). I will present a successful example of a teacher using games in an adult grammar class from Indonesia. Second, since I plan to teach online EFL students, I will present free digital games online teachers can use in their virtual classrooms. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Christopher C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Many professional articles have been written showing the importance of game-based learning theory for EFL students. Games have an element of ‘play’ in them, and so differ...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences What problems can be anticipated? Our TEFL graduate shares their experience of working with ESL students from Japan. Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences This blog post is devoted to the problem of non-native English teachers in ESL. Our TEFL graduate shares their thoughts on the point. Rhea Latchu Alumni Experiences For as long as I can remember, I have always had the dream to travel and wander around this globe. Then approximately four years ago, I discovered a passion within me that I didn’t even know existed: teaching! And that is how my journey working as an EFL Teacher began! ...  [Read more]

  Moving down our list of parts of speech, we have our verbs. The first big difference between verbs that we need to look at is whether it's an action verb or a state verb. Our action verbs, as the name suggests, mean that we typically can see these things in action. We can see people working and we certainly see people going to various places. Now, we have our state verbs. These are basically indicating a state of being. Two examples would be "seem" and "have" or "own". We have a sentence such as "He seems angry." and "I own my house." You can't actually see the action happening, even though those words are used as verbs. A very big differentiation between the two here as well is, state verbs typically don't take the progressive or continuous form. That form is the verb "+ing". As...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I am a kindergarten English teacher and teach children English every day. I will teach in small groups in the class. Each group will have 5-6 children to attend classes together, so I can better judge the progress and mastery of their English learning. When a child wants to study again, I will instruct separately to protect their enthusiasm for learning. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jìng H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Vocabulary learning is an important component of early childhood English learning, so I will spend a lot of time teaching this part. The visual image of children in the 3-6 age group is dominant. They...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas For students to be able to communicate effectively, they need to be proficient in the four language skills. Productive skills are known SPEAKING and READING, then you have your receptive skills known as READING and LISTENING. All four language skills are of importance and should be combined during lessons as they are all of importance to teach students to communicate with others. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Natalie B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. If a student or a student comes to a language teacher, it means he/she has a clear goal to be excellent in productive skills. he/she undoubtedly wants to be perfect in either...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Legendary musician Paul McCartney once said, or rather sang, “When you’ve got a job to do you’ve got to do it well. You’ve got to give the other fellow hell.” I don’t believe anybody wants to be the middle of the road teacher, who just gets through each day, though I have seen many teachers who are. Before I started, I asked myself what makes the best kind of teacher and who were the best teachers in my life? There are many styles of teacher, but the answer I came to is the inspiring style of teacher – the teachers who made me WANT to learn and to go out and read and study on my own. The way they did that was by using their skills to make learning interesting and irresistible. As a teacher you need...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences In a society where it is much easier for us to become increasingly distracted by some of the banalest things (such as videos of cats playing the keyboard on YouTube), my generation, in particular, needs to establish a strong sense of organization and focus to ensure that these distractions do not leak into our work lives, causing a decline in our professionality and work ethic. Therefore I believe lesson planning is an effective tool in helping to create a stronger sense of organization within the teacher, both in and out of the classroom. In addition to providing a general layout of the teacher’s lesson (including grammar points and step-by-step instructions for particular activities that are more complex...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences In this blog post, I plan to examine why English may be such a challenging language for Chinese speakers to master, namely in comparison to their European peers. For the purpose of this examination, I will focus on four main aspects, from quite glaring differences to other aspects that some may not initially consider: written language, grammar, vocabulary, and language exposure. These points are drawn from my own experience of living and teaching English in China, from learning Chinese myself and from conversations with my students. I will be focusing on those who have not had experience in learning other languages before English, as I feel this constitutes the largest proportion of Chinese learners. This by no...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas When I first started as an EFL teacher two years ago, my senior colleagues would often advise me to create a lesson plan well in advance of an upcoming lesson. Having had no formal teaching experience back then, it surprised me because I assumed that simply creating lesson materials for students was sufficient. I did not think that lesson plans were necessary because when I was a student, I had never seen any of my teachers referring to them on the job. It seemed to me that teachers were natural improvisers and could deliver lessons without any referenced document. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Qi Lin L. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas This paper will answer the question, "What are five flashcard activities for teaching English to young learners?" Young learners are defined as students attending elementary school, aged between six and twelve. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Tristan K. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. This activity is a great warmer and an effective way to introduce or review vocabulary. This activity works well with both small and large groups. Students sit in a circle with the teacher. The target language is elicited and chorally drilled. The teacher then shows one...  [Read more]

  "In terms of the things that are negative about it, we've already said that it doesn't develop speaking but perhaps the biggest negative point about this particular methodology is that it's very unnatural. Ok, so despite the criticisms of this particular method, and particularly the fact that is unnatural, this particular methodology was in use all the way through the 17th, 18th and 19th century and indeed it's still in use today. However, Gouin in the 1880s and Berlitz in the early 1900s decided that this particular methodology was so unnatural that they wanted to come up with something new. The method that they came up with, they called the direct method. You will also sometimes see it as the natural method. What these two people were saying is that if we wish to learn a...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information “Teaching English abroad is impossible for non-native English speakers!” - This is a statement we often hear as teacher trainers around the world but it’s a huge misconception. Actually, the ratio of non-native to native English teachers around the world has sharply increased to 4 to 1 in recent years. This goes to show that the global EFL teaching market has undergone a large shift in hiring preference. With this in mind, we would like to highlight four striking advantages for non-native English teachers in the TEFL classroom. English is often taught as a mandatory foreign language around the world - and it starts at a young age in many countries. While native speakers learn the language naturally growing...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Hey guys, nice to see you again. It's Liza here, I'm glad to welcome you to the weekly live session. If you can hear me and see me please let me know that everything is working smoothly, because just three minutes before the live session my home wi-fi connection cut off and I had to switch on the mobile internet. I'm scared that something might not work that well, so please let me know that it works. I really hope that this internet connection problem won't cause any troubles. Hello Rosie, thank you so much for letting me know. Hello guys, I can see that there are some people from Pakistan. I can also see some regulars, thanks for coming. Let's move on to the first part of the...  [Read more]

Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas One important factor to consider when teaching English abroad is how you arrange the seating in the classroom. Space in a classroom can be limited at times so it's important to maximize what you have available. There are multiple ways to arrange a classroom and knowing which ones will provide the most benefit is important. To ensure the best environment for the students and teacher it is essential to have an understanding of the options, as well as when and how to use them. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Alex C. As a rule a classroom will generally consist of at least four walls, an entrance, a surface to write on and desks for the students. Even with only...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas When I think of materials in terms of English Second Language (ESL) teaching, I think of a broad range of items, from worksheets to pictures, flashcards to figurines, exercises, tests, and so on. To put 'materials' more in perspective, these are materials needed to deliver an ESL course. I have created course material and training material since 1995, firstly for training artisans in development projects in South Africa, and later from 2001 to 2006 in Wales, training Voluntary Sector groups. For one employer, I created a 'Behavioural Based Safety' course for North Sea Safety Standby Vessels (Offshore operations), which included four...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Being a teacher is my everyday dream since I was a child. As I believe that the future is mainly based on education and students, how they can make a progress and improve their skills. So I decided to take apart in this great cycle hoping that one day I can leave a mark in student's life. The teacher's responsibility is not only about teaching students and correcting their pronunciation or grammatical mistakes; his/her responsibility includes a lot of roles. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Dina I. Before talking about the roles of a successful teacher, I learned from my TEFL certificate that there are nine basic traits of a good teacher. These traits are divided to four points related to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Assuming it has already been understood generally, I do not intend to elaborate on the reasons between Myanmar and Burma, even though it still remains unknown to many. In this essay, I will be using ‘Burmese’ or ‘Burmese language’ to refer to the language and ‘Myanmar’ for the country. Language acquisition can understandably present several challenges ranging from alphabets, accent, construction styles, pronunciation, etc. Depending on several factors, different language speakers will have different challenges. While one part is no less difficult than another, I reckon, in Myanmar, there is one component that most learners seem to have similar difficulty in taking up the English language –...  [Read more]

  Also in the 1970s la señal came up with a new methodology called "Suggestopedia". As psychological theory was developing, one of the ideas that came up was something called ?the effective filter?. Basically, the effective filter is a barrier to learning. It's the reasons why we inhibit our learning of a particular language. There are two main elements to the effective filter, two sets of factors, if you like, those are known as internal and external factors. The external factors to learning, the reasons why we have barriers to learning, may be just simple things such as external noise. So, people talking to us while we're trying to learn and so on and so forth. Perhaps more important are these internal factors and the internal factors one of the main things here is our previous...  [Read more]

Our TEFL training centre in Ireland is located in the city of Limerick. The centre is conveniently located and has recently been extensively refurbished to provide our course participants with a comfortable and modern learning environment. Our facilities include a bright and airy reception room, an information point containing extensive information related to Ireland and the wider world of teaching, a spacious meeting room and a comfortable seating area for relaxing in between activities. The centre also features a brand new cafeteria that is ideal for discussing lesson planning, teaching strategies and other course subjects over lunch or a light snack. Other facilities include satellite television and complimentary hot and cold drinks. The centre has four classrooms, all of which are...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Thom P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Lesson Objectives: Students will practice recognizing homophones and practice the correct, indefinite, and zero articles. Summary of tasks/actions Warm-Up: Vocabulary Review (10 minutes) Tell students that they will play a game to review some of the words that they talked about last week. Divide the class into two teams. One person from each team stands at the back of the room, and one person from each stands by the board. Divide the board into four parts. Label each piece the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences A learning model is a complex of activities based on the main chosen approach which covers the demand of the group. There are four directions in languages studying: writing, listening, speaking and reading. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Joseph Victoryia D. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Each of them is equally relevant and has its difficulties and tricky moments. To provide students with the sustainable development of their skills, a teacher has to take into consideration several important points: the average age of the group, level of English of the group and classroom arrangement. Being aware of a classroom...  [Read more]