TEFL Reliance

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas There are six factors to consider when analyzing the differences between teaching English to high-school students and university students. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Anh N. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Firstly, one of the most noticeable distinctions between college and high school is the role of self-study. Self-study means self-awareness in learning and is regarded by some researchers as an initiative in thinking and assimilating knowledge. Self-study allows training not only in the classroom but also outside the school. Traditionally,...  [Read more]

  Let's just consider next, when using these resource books, the student book, the workbook and the teachers resource book, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using those types of materials? Well, firstly, the main advantage perhaps of using these types of material is that it's quicker than actually creating your own. Secondly, the course books that you will get will be graded for a particular level. So there'll be a set of books for the starter level, a set of books for the elementary level and so on and so forth. So you know that the activities and materials in there will have been graded for level. The use of the book can also offer continuity so that the syllabuses have been covered in a particular way by the book itself and are presented in a logical order....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Lesson planning is at the heart of being an effective teacher. It is a creative process that allows us to make our understanding of second language acquisition and language teaching pedagogy with our knowledge of our learners, the curriculum, and the teaching context. It is a time when we foresee the learning we want to occur and analyze how all the pieces of the learning experience should fit together to make that learning a classroom reality. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Eddy P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. There are several benefits to writing a lesson plan. First, lesson planning produces more unified lessons It...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences L1 language refers to students’ first language or native language while L2 language refers to the language they are learning in particular. Hence, L1 has a ‘natural’ environment for the students to learn while for L2, the environment has to be ‘built’ and requires certain ways of catching up. Specifically, they are different from the following perspectives. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Yixun C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. students are born in the L1 environment where people around are talking and learning in L1; but there may be little or no L2 sign in the environment where they grew up. Students may...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences In China, there is the option to teach in either private or public institutions. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Public institutions such as universities tend to be well resourced with time set aside for lesson planning but are less well paid than their private counterparts. Although this appears to be balanced, as those who work at the universities receive more benefits and a more generous holiday allowance that allows the university teachers to make the most of being in China with ample opportunity to explore. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Emma R. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. To teach at a university...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences In a writing classroom, instruction in proper pronoun use is typically limited to a short lesson on pronoun agreement. The pronoun must agree with the antecedent in both gender and quantity. Apart from this, pronouns are not seen as worth much class time; they are assumed to be uncomplicated aspects of the writing process. Many teachers will overlook pronoun disagreement in student writing with the assumption that there are writing errors that are more urgent than instruction in the finer details of pronoun agreement (e.g. the “correct” pairing of the singular “everyone” with the singular “he/she” rather than the colloquial-singular “they”). Pronouns are assumed to be easy to ascribe to others and...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences This essay seeks to explain how the Japanese ‘Katakana’ and ‘Romaji’ alphabets cause barriers to the introduction of English education in Japanese elementary schools. It will look at how these alphabets affect the pronunciation, writing, and reading abilities of Japanese students. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Ethan M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The main two, ‘Hiragana’ (the base Japanese writing system) and ‘Kanji’ (Chinese characters), are not relevant to English. The remaining two, ‘Katakana’ (used for ‘borrowed’ words from other languages) and ‘Romaji’ (Roman letters) are often used...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences In Japan, elementary schools typically employ an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) to provide support to homeroom teachers during English classes. I have been working in such a capacity for the past two and a half years, first through an international program and currently as a direct-hire via my local city hall. Until recently, mandatory English classes at the elementary school level have been limited to the fifth and sixth grades, but new national requirements are being rolled out that will require mandatory English classes as early as third grade while doubling English classroom hours for the fifth and sixth grades. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Rodica C. Please note that this blog...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas One of the most important traits a teacher can bring into the classroom is confidence. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Confidence is “a feeling or consciousness of one’s powers or reliance on one’s circumstances” and “ faith or belief that one will act in a right, the proper, or efficient way”. When a teacher is confident in the classroom it will help create a more relaxed and trusting environment. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Sarah Z. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. I have found that when I am confident in what I am teaching I am more flexible in the classroom to be able to truly meet my student's...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Student motivation is a student's desire to participate in the learning process. It is the meaningfulness, value, and benefits that an academic mission has to the learner. It is also defined as a student's drive from within which guides, activates, and continues a behavior over time. It is simply a student's willingness, need, desire, and compulsion to participate in and be successful in the learning process. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Yvonne C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. There are two types of motivation. They are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Due to repeated failures, many learning disabled...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Student motivation is a student's desire to participate in the learning process. It is the meaningfulness, value, and benefits that an academic mission has to the learner. It is also defined as a student's drive from within which guides, activates, and continues a behavior over time. It is simply a student's willingness, need, desire, and compulsion to participate in and be successful in the learning process. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Phiona T. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. There are two types of motivation. They are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Due to repeated failures, many learning disabled (LD)...  [Read more]

  Our next consideration is going to be how we actually group our students. There are perhaps three types of grouping arrangements that we can consider and within those we'll have a look at the potential positive and negatives of those particular arrangements. So firstly, what arrangements can we use? We could arrange our group as a whole class so all of their activities will be done as a whole class. They could be working as individuals and the final grouping arrangement we'll consider is that of small groups or indeed the use of pair work. So for each of these types of arrangements what are the potential positive and negatives with that type of arrangement? For the whole class certainly one of the main positive features is that it gives that class a sense of belonging. Secondly...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Student motivation is a student's desire to participate in the learning process. It is the meaningfulness, value, and benefits that an academic mission has to the learner. It is also defined as a student's drive from within which guides, activates, and continues a behavior over time. It is simply a student's willingness, need, desire, and compulsion to participate in and be successful in the learning process. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate SHAKIRA N. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. There are two types of motivation. They are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Due to repeated failures, many learning disabled (LD)...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas What comes to mind when one thinks of an English classroom? Is it organized rows of desks filled with students writing vocabulary and grammar into their notebooks while the teacher talks in the front? This is the classic image of a classroom. A student goes to school to learn what they don’t already know. When teaching English, it can be easy to fall into the trap of rote memorization and reliance on grammar and vocabulary. However, is this method effective? Does this way of learning motivate students to become lifelong learners of a foreign language? It is less useful to teach students many things than to teach them the skills needed to...  [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]

Leo Salazar TEFL Information Alumni Experiences With the advent of social distancing as a precautionary measure against the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the associated increase in people working from home rather than face-to-face, effective communication has never been more important. We share advice here on how you can improve your communication skills online. This information is especially useful for those offering online services, such as online English tutors. In response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, many companies are shutting their doors and sending their employees home in order to keep them healthy. For those who work in blue-collar positions such as manufacturing, maintenance or service-industry jobs,...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas There are many goals for English as a second language teacher (ESL). The teacher must inform and evaluate student abilities to competently produce written and verbal communication in the English language. Ultimately, one of the most important goals for the teacher to achieve is a reduction in their own talk time and an increase in student talk time (STT), using the target language. Creating a positive classroom environment is essential in generating students that have high levels of productivity. This environment is established well by building rapport and engaging the students. Having varied course materials incorporated in each lesson will help to maintain engagement for the learner and with enough diversity and...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Recently there was a debate on whether technology should be used in the classroom. It intern created these questions; is it profitable in the long run? Is it worth the money for parents? Are we as educators feeding into the technology movement? Breslin, McKeown, & Groves (2012), states “technology refers to methods, systems, and devices which are the result of scientific knowledge being used for practical purposes.” It is important to note that some students are already interested in and engaged in using technology. Mareco (2017), pointed out “Technology is entwined in almost every part of our culture. It affects how we live, work and plays and most importantly learn.” As a result, it creates...  [Read more]