TEFL High Point

  This video is part of our ESA Methodology series. The ESA methodology consists of three stages. In this series, we look at the individual purposes of each stage and typical activities for each stage. This second video introduces the study phase of ESA. The purpose of this phase is to cover the actual teaching of the lesson and to check the understanding of that material.The second stage or phase of the lesson is known as the study phase and really the purpose of this phase is to cover the actual teaching of the lesson and to check understanding of that material. Typically in an ESA lesson, the study phase will have two parts. The first phase of the study is to cover the actual teaching component in what's known as the board work and what we try to do in the board work phase is to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas It is a tough task to master management skills for any age, especially the younger ones. Most activities for young learners are games and songs that require an exciting, fun atmosphere for students and an energetic teacher. Therefore, in order to produce a good lesson with lots of fun but still to keep students in the discipline, the teacher must work harder and be very careful and clever in any situation. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Trang Nguyen D. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The teacher takes part as a leader, guide, and monitor to manage all activities as well as how much fun/excitement or quietness should be in...  [Read more]

  Our next particular methodology is accredited to James Asher around 1965 and is called total physical response. Asher looked at the way in which we learn our native language and he saw that most children, before they even went to school, have picked up a very large percentage of both the grammar and the vocabulary that they would use in their native language before any type of formal schooling. So Asher started to have a look at ideas of how to use the whole of our brain in language learning in the way that we do when we're very young. It's accepted that within our brain there are two hemispheres, one is the left hemisphere the other is the right hemisphere, and one of the functions of the left hemisphere is language learning. One of the major functions of the right hemisphere is...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas While studying the content of the Teaching Business English specialized course, I was introduced to the unique place of role-playing and simulation. In a similar vein, in a previous summative task, I focused on the use of games within a general TEFL/TESOL context. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Stephen W. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Role-playing and simulating business interactions, using gamification techniques, would be an effective educational tool in teaching business English. It would be effective because it encourages the development of fluency, the ability to focus upon the use of degrees to which a point is...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences For this task, I have selected Korea as a choice for some students having difficulty learning. Korea is one of the countries investing a lot in the field of English education. Also, results achieved by Korean students on the TOEFL test improved by 10 points over the past six years. However, there still seems to be less proficient skills in writing and speaking in English. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Heejeong K. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. When I taught teenage students in Korea, I watched them being reluctant or struggling to speak and write in English even though they had more than average scores in reading and...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas For the last two years, I have worked as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) at a Japanese high school. Along with my teaching job, I have volunteered at a weekly English conversation class, where I teach English to both children and adults. Next year, I plan to transition out of my ALT job and into private ESL teaching. It is most likely that I will do most of my teaching online, where I will be one-on-one with a student. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Bailey J. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. In this case, when looking at my experience with teaching...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Well, before starting this summative task and as I was going through the list of topics, I noticed this one…TEFL for non-native English speaking teachers (N°30) and thought: that’s the one I want to talk about. Yes, I am a non-native English speaker and months ago, I have given to my life a completely different orientation, leaving behind nearly a 30 years career spent in the financial and business fields. As being one important step included in this global professional and personal project, I decided to apply for a TEFL course and graduate in June 2019. However, before committing to the ITTI TEFL course and even until now, I am still reflecting upon what TEFL means for a non-native English speaking teacher....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Over the years, most parents who are regarded as ‘working parents’ because they work long hour jobs and those who do not have full-time jobs but other engagements, have seemingly left their children’s education in the hands of teachers. However, this should not be the case as parents need to work hand in hand with teachers to ensure the overall good performance of their children. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kaboyaone K. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. During my high school years, I got to experience first-hand, the positive impact of parents being involved in their child’s schoolwork the school work...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Teaching can be a very fulfilling and enjoyable occupation. It is, however, also filled with a lot of challenges. The workload can be high, the hours long, the course material may be difficult, and the students themselves can make a lot of difficulty for the teacher. As most teachers will attest there will be students who are difficult to deal with. They can be unmotivated, distracted, tired, or even purposefully disruptive. Many teachers have quit the profession because of unruly classes. Many more teachers have lost their temper and ruined a class because of this. There are, however, many ways to manage unruly students. Sometimes, they even become the very best students. This post was written by our TEFL...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Japanese is certainly one of the most interesting languages in the world thanks to its three types of writing (hiragana, katakana and kanji). This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Desiree I. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. After the outbreak of intercontinental travel (therefore with the appearance of commercialization and missionaries around the world) many terms of different languages, including English ones, also became part of the language of Japan. The main problem is that many sounds present in the English language are non-existent in the Japanese language; this means that the pronunciation of many terms has been adapted...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences The term, “Motivation” may be defined in several ways. Let’s offer as an example; in a scenario where you have a seller of a property as well as a buyer, a “motivated seller” is one that has extraneous and urgent causes, outside of the expected reasons for selling that property. The seller has, perhaps a timeline for selling that is extremely tight, or short. With the revelation of a “motivated seller” to the buyer, it may imply that the buyer may be able to offer less money or attain more personally favorable terms than he or she could have from someone not listed as “motivated.” The seller has undisclosed (or perhaps disclosed) reasons for wanting to sell their property as quickly as...  [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]

  "Now let's take a look at the future perfect continuous tense. This tense is used to talk about how long an action had been taking place up until a certain point in the future. Our examples are for the positive sentence we have our subject "you" and three auxiliary verbs "will have been" and then our main verb in the present participle form again that's the verb plus "ing". For our negative form, again, we're simply inserting the word "not" between "will" and "have" and to ask our question, we invert "will" with the subject here we're using "you" and we come up with a question "Will you have been watching?" and the rest of our sentence. As with the other future tenses the word will can be substituted for other modal verbs. These modal verbs would indicate very levels of certainty...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Teaching Ideas The acronym ESA stands for Engage, Study and Activate. The ESA methodology of teaching English as a foreign language is one of the most progressive and productive methods. It draws its strengths from the other teaching methods that were used before it. The ESA method incorporates the good aspects and advantages of the old teaching methods thereby making it a powerful method. Some of the earlier teaching methods from which the ESA teaching methodology drew its strength are the task-based learning, the communicative language teaching, the community language learning, the silent way, the suggestopedia, and the lexical approach. The ESA method has therefore managed to take the positive aspects from the other teaching...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Classroom Management is the skill of organizing and managing the class, having a friendly, relaxed manner and maintaining discipline. Keeping a classroom under control is often my biggest challenge mostly with the pupils. With the help of the ITTT 120-hours TESOL/TEFL course, I've finally found some classroom management strategies that actually worked and eventually turned things around. These strategies apply to all levels of learners and even to new and existing classes. I can now say things have got to the point where my classes are now under control, focused, on task, and learning effectively. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Cheng Y. Please note that this blog post might not...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The first job as an English teacher abroad is a challenging change, especially if the country you are choosing to work is culturally different from your home country. There are so many differences between one country and other but usually, those differences look bigger when the place you move belongs to another political and social organization mode. My experience as an English teacher in China has allowed me to see these huge differences between western culture and the Asian world. In the following essay, I will try to point out the main cultural challenges that a teacher I had to face and how this may become a sensitivity source inside the classroom. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Maria...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kirill K. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. A large number of people would agree that making mistakes stimulates them to do things better. Undoubtedly, the mistakes made by students play a pivotal role in improving language skills and acquiring the target language properly. Thus, an English teacher should know how to correct them appropriately. A teacher should be aware of the fact that not only does correct learners show that they have made something wrong, but also implies that the teacher is eager to help students and demonstrates how to put their mistakes right. Most importantly, the teacher...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences The following blog post is about an ITTT graduate who shares his story on how he found a passion for teaching English abroad after studying abroad in Taiwan. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Joseph S. When I began my undergraduate education, I intended to pursue a Master's degree, likely in Industrial Psychology, and then a career in that field; most likely consulting. However, as a requirement for my Bachelor's degree I needed to study a foreign language. I had studied German for several years in High School, and thoroughly disliked it, so, I was very easily persuaded by the University's Chinese Professor to try out her class - what did I have to lose? She was very friendly and mentioned...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences This is an interesting article written by one of our TEFL alumni who shares her thoughts on the importance of observed teaching practice for ESL teachers. This post was written by our ITTT graduate Roxanne L. When I think of having my teaching observed either by an inspector or by a teacher-in-training, I think of the Christmas song, which impels its listeners, “He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!” The reason is simple, when we know we are being scrutinized, we do a better job! In reality, students observe their teachers every day, and even without expertise in the field of education, students know implicitly a good teacher from a bad teacher. Still, having your teaching (or...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The ESA lesson structure is a useful method for formatting lessons. It has a high level of in-built flexibility and a logical sequence beneficial for both students and teachers alike. It consists of three distinct phases - Engage, Study and Activate - each meant to serve a particular function but working together to ensure effective communication and application of new information. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jason T. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The first stage of an ESA lesson format is the Engage phase. The goal of this part of the lesson is to get the students thinking and speaking in English. At the beginning of a...  [Read more]

Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences It was the last day of Japanese class and my teacher’s last day of teaching at our school. We were all standing up getting ready to bow him one last time. It was dead quiet but I could still hear sniffles around me and felt the sadness of the moment. I never thought I would care so much about a teacher leaving. To this day, the words and wisdom my Japanese teacher taught me still ring in my head. Flash forward to a few years ago, I went to Japan for the first time, after a hiatus of not studying Japanese, but amazingly I still had all the skills my teacher had taught me in high school. How did this person have such an impact on me? The answer I have come to realize is that because he truly cared about me becoming...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences When I was younger, I had a dog that played fetch, walked to the park, and learned new tricks with me. Over time, we created a bond that was irreplaceable and unconditional. One day my dog passed away and three weeks later, my family and I decided to get a new dog. This new dog was friendly at first but hardly wanted to learn anything new. However, I was quite distant from the new dog, to begin with, because I always thought about the good times I had with my previous dog. Afterward, I realized that I needed to move on and create a new bond which I then remembered how my previous dog and I became best friends and how we both learned from each other. It was a high relaxed positive energy, spending a good amount...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Over the last month and a half, I have been completing a TEFL course. I am currently working as an assistant language teacher at a Japanese high school. Overall, I have found the experience to be very useful. The following reasons are why a TEFL course should be completed. Firstly, you gain a better understanding of how English grammar works. Secondly, from my perspective, it has reinforced and improved my current teaching strategies and practices. Thirdly, it gives teachers a structural theoretical framework to create lessons. Finally, completing a TEFL course gives you lesson ideas and activities. For these reasons, it is important to complete a TEFL course. This post was written by our TEFL certification...  [Read more]

  Another point that students find difficult to understand is that modal auxiliary verbs have no tense. Some modals cannot be used to talk about the past or the futures. Watch this video to find out more about this topic. 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. The descriptions and comparisons of the various tests available was interesting and helped me understand how and when each should be used. I didn't know about the many external exams that...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas This topic, in particular, is of great interest to me as someone who managed to acquire two languages (Mandarin Chinese and English) at a high level. For me the journey was completely painless and the word ‘acquired’ is fitting since I personally never felt I had to actively undergo a ‘study’ to learn either language, but this statement is dependant on how we define studying and learning languages, and in turn: teaching languages. People often use the phrase ‘It’s like learning a whole new language’ when trying to express how difficult and confusing it is to learn something, yet learning new languages shouldn’t be harder than learning any other subject or skill. This post was written by our TEFL...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Education is a core part of our life through the socialization process from birth to death. It affects a person’s capacity and thinking about defining what is right and what is wrong and also provides us to criticize the information which is taught by the community, family, school and so on. Moreover, there are many alternative paths to get an education at every age. We will examine the child’s age and the effects of the parent’s role in developing themselves. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate ARCA B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Every child has various learning styles all around the world because they have kinds...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Grammar, the key element to all languages, is, by all means, the first thing which everyone must have a clear understanding of before acquiring such language. From parts of speech to sentence structure, the complexity of grammar doesn’t seem to have a sign of decrease as ESL students’ vocabulary range increases. In all respects, the fundamental problem to all learners who treat English as a second language is that they never take it as a first language but try to understand the meaning behind every word with the aid of their mother tongue, their first language. In this essay, I would like to focus on one of the smallest parts of grammar - syntax as the starting point, to shed some light on how teachers can...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas As an English teacher, it is quite common to encounter high achievers, those who are so inspired and self-motivated in learning English, as well as low achievers, those who find themselves with no interest or goals in class. About the former group, there are always ways to encourage them in English learning, while for the latter, the teacher really has to think over and over before taking appropriate actions. I have always had to think of ways to encourage students in my teaching practice because the majority of students from my class are far from being excellent in English. The top student currently only scores 6 in IELTS. Therefore, it takes me much effort to arouse their interest first, without which the task...  [Read more]

  Lenin from the United States found our 120-hour TEFL course very helpful. He especially enjoyed looking into the grammar units and found the view from an English learner's point of view very interesting. He also found the units on lesson planning and classroom management very useful for his own future classroom. 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. Learning about different methods of teaching in this unit provided me with much more information on...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Alumni Experiences TEFL Reviews & TESOL Reviews For ITTT, our community of students and alumni is the most important to us. That’s why we’d love to share what our course grads have to say! This will not only have others make a better decision in whether TEFL/TESOL is for them, but it will also help the ITTT community grow bigger and stronger! The below answers were given from real ITTT alumni who have agreed to share their thoughts for our blog section. Blanca Rodriguez I am from and currently residing in Honduras. I wanted to teach English, so I searched on the web and found ITTT. The brand looked very professional and had great reviews. It is a practical course. It teaches down to the point and the video...  [Read more]