TEFL Little Britain

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences From the time of the American revolution and onward, there has been a distinctive trend for American English and British English dialects to move away from each other. Whether taught in American English or British English, most people of either type will have little trouble understanding each other. Unlike the many dialects of China, English is a pretty ubiquitous language across the board, with a spattering of unique regional words. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jeffrey G. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The 2 most prominent English dialects were intertwined throughout their collective histories because the British...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas As with many languages, English has so many different dialects. When one travels to a different region of the United States, for example, one will likely encounter different accents, vocabulary and different meanings of the same words. This is also true for British English and American English. For the purpose of this assignment, we will look a little deeper into these. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Sarah Jane G. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Many people enjoy traveling. In many parts of the world, English is the primary language, because of this, many people think if they pick places like the U.S. or the U.K. that they...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas First of all, let us define the meaning of the phrase “global language”? I suppose a “global language” is the language suitable for communication among a huge amount of people around the world. We also can say it is the language of global meaning. After the Second World War and especially since the beginning of the 90th years of the twentieth century, English became the most common international language. Artificial languages, created specifically for international communication, for example, Esperanto, are also supposed to be multinational. Common characteristics of international languages are: a lot of people are native speakers; among the non-native speakers there are a lot of people who use this...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences British versus American English is a subject that encompasses a number of fields, including linguistics, history, archaeology, geography, and the study of the history of the English language. British English has a deep foundation that stretches back into time to the advent of the Indo-Europeans, and while America can claim this as well, the language was, for the most part, very close to its modern form by the age of exploration. That being said, many archaic forms of words and grammar were still in use during the age of exploration and spelling was not standardized when the great voyages and colonization of the Americas began. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Aaron T. Please note that...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas English is a demanding language because there are so many regional English words and pronunciations which require a great receptive skill to receive and understand for example can’t in the UK is pronounced |kɑːnt|and in the US is pronounced |kænt |. The same English language, it is spoken quite differently; in the UK there is different pronunciation between the English spoken in Glasgow, London or Cardiff. It is also different in countries that have it as a primary language, such as Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, and New Zealand. For EFL students, Listening becomes a bit of a challenge, because of these pronunciation differences. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Christopher Zacharia L....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In January, I stood in front of a class of breakthrough English students at a university in Bogotá, Colombia. I’d never taught students in an ESL classroom before, but I was pretty confident having seven years of experience under my belt and a degree in literature. I was naive. I began the lesson with the class that my co-teacher had lent me for the first time. The objective of the lesson was to practice using past tense through storytelling; five minutes into it, I called on a student with his hand in the air. “ What up, My Nigga!” He said it and I almost lost all of my composure on the first day while I should have been thinking about building rapport. This post was written by our TEFL certification...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas British English versus American English always sparks a lively discussion. I have read some articles so far as to compare these 2 languages and gather the information from the online resources. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Zahra J. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. I am Iranian and have many American and British friends and I have been living abroad for about 6 years. As an English speaker as a second language, it took me a while to learn what is British and what is American English. As I have done some friendly interviews, the English spoken in the USA is different from the English spoken in the UK not only in pronunciation...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences About the question of why has English become or is perceived to be the current global language, it is important first of all to take a step back and look at some context. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduateJustin S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. As a schoolboy up to O level, I learned Latin for fourteen years. Although generally speaking, if one wishes to pursue a career in medicine or botany, for example, a broad knowledge of Latin is important as it is still used to this for the classifications and individual plant and animal names. Some might argue that this is an elitist use of the language, but Linnaeus' reasoning...  [Read more]