TEFL Turner

  The idiom "white elephant" refers to an expensive item that is costly to maintain, for example: Shortly after Tanya inherited her aunt's castle, it turned out to be a white elephant she could not afford. The phrase originates from a long time ago when white elephants where regarded as precious and even holy in Asia, especially in Thailand. When the king was displeased with someone, he would gift them a white elephant as the upkeeping would likely ruin them. 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...  [Read more]

GOTefl started as a division of SA-Recruitment, a teacher recruitment company established in 2004. SA-Recruitment has successfully placed hundreds of teachers internationally, and has a strong understanding of the opportunities - and challenges - of working overseas.​ The GOTefl division became so popular and we were regularly approached by potential candidates that did not fulfil the requirements for our SA-Recruitment’s mainstream teaching positions and these candidates were turned away. So, we decided it was time for it to become a stand-alone organisation managed by the same knowledgeable and experienced team of recruiters, offering the same high level of personalised service and ongoing support - now just in the TEFL space. GOTefl works with schools all over China and Thailand...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas To answer the question of what is effective classroom management it is firstly important to define what is meant by “classroom management”. ITT defines classroom management as: “the skill of organizing and managing the class, having a friendly, relaxed manner and maintaining disciple” (page 2, unit 5, ITT course content – which is also referenced throughout the below essay) To best answer this question, we shall now break this definition down into 3 parts before providing an overall conclusion at the end of the essay. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Joe S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Classroom organization and...  [Read more]

Russ Tuff TEFL Information Alumni Experiences If you are already TEFL certified, there are a lot of great extra courses that can push your portfolio to the next level. Here are the 6 reasons that it’s a great idea to do additional TEFL Courses. Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Grammar is daunting for many students. It happens especially due to different ways of acquiring it. Our TEFL graduate overviews the most common styles of learning grammar. Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas This blog post is devoted to the overview of new and old games used in the classroom. Elizaveta Pachina ...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Even though native speakers claim that it’s always possible to understand people speaking English regardless of their accent, sometimes it might be extremely difficult. My native language is Russian and I can tell for a fact that Russian and English are very different in multiple things – but right now I’d like to focus on pronunciation. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Viktoriia Z. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Russian learners of English tend to make the same mistakes due to peculiarities of their native language, which results in the infamous “Russian accent” we sometimes see on the movie screens. One of the...  [Read more]

Margaret Paton TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Are you interested in teaching English online? Like you, I’m a new starter to this career of teaching English to non-native speakers, so I wanted to share five tips on what not to do in your early days. Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences In this blog post, our TEFL alumna shares their course review and makes an outline of the content. Leo Salazar TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Working from home brings both opportunities and challenges. It’s time to get more in touch with family and to appreciate each other, especially during these...  [Read more]

Margaret Paton TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Are you interested in teaching English online? Like you, I’m a new starter to this career of teaching English to non-native speakers, so I wanted to share five tips on what not to do in your early days. Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences In this blog post, our TEFL alumna shares their course review and makes an outline of the content. Leo Salazar TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Working from home brings both opportunities and challenges. It’s time to get more in touch with family and to appreciate each other, especially during these...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Urban education can be described as a complicated topic for school reformists in America. With critical issues, such as inadequate funding, lack of resources, and uncertified teachers, the myriad of problems with public education has reached a new high. Many big-city public education systems have turned into melting pots by bringing together members of different racial, social, economic, and ethnic groups. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Crystal H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Per the Bureau of International Information Programs (2011), the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences I work in two schools. I am an assistant language teacher at one commercial (low-level English) high school, and an integrated (high-level English) academic junior high and high school. I have had experiences with different kinds of students, Japanese-English teachers, and classroom atmospheres. In Japan, students take an entrance exam to get into high school. If they scored low on the entrance exam, then they are placed in the lowest ranking class. Each school has a certain number of classrooms for each grade. Both of my high schools have six classes total for each grade. There are usually around forty to forty-two students in each class as well. Teaching forty plus students in a crowded classroom is...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas When a class is managed well, there is a minimum of disruptions that distract from learning. This is more of an issue in a class for children, as opposed to adults. Nevertheless, in all classes, maintaining the comportment of the group to facilitate learning is the objective of sound classroom management techniques. Furthermore, it is also important to develop cordial and friendly relations with learners on an individual basis, and with the class as a whole. Having a rapport with students, and creating a classroom community that is based on shared rules and norms that are understood and reasonable for everybody, is an essential part of classroom management. When accomplished, this creates a classroom culture that...  [Read more]

Nadiia Dovbnia Destinations Alumni Experiences I have been working in China as an English teacher almost for half a year. When the outbreak began, I decided to stay in China. At first, I thought it would be like a seasonal flu quarantine back in my country, Ukraine, when schools are closed for just a week or two. However, the situation got worse and I realized that it might be safer to stay inside my city than to go through the train stations and airports. Shops gave no signs of opening after the New Year, busses were just passing by the stops on their way to the bus park, communities were closed for the non-residents, in one day you got more temperature checks that in a few months. Every movement has been noted down from the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences It is a well-known fact that the English language has big importance nowadays. According to Ethnologue, publication about the languages in the world by SIL intl., the English have placed between the three most spoken languages with more than one thousand million speakers of whose, four hundred million are native speakers and more than six hundred million have English as second language, therefore represents a very important communication channel worldwide. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Gustavo L. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Evolving with the years, became one of the most necessary tools to comprehend the daily world...  [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]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas There are many reasons why classroom management skill sets are really important for the basics of teaching generally. It effectively helps build a great classroom atmosphere for everyone in it as well as create rapport between the teacher and the student. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Amelie R. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Few of the most important skills the teacher needs to acquire are the special details towards their eye contact, gesture, and the voice, as it is can determine the outcome of the class. It is essential for the teacher to always have good eye contact technique which will help in a number of ways...  [Read more]

  http://www.teflonline.net In this video we look at a TESOL teaching idea for the past continuous tense. For this activity students are put into groups and are handed pictures of people doing different activities. The pictures are placed upside down in a pile and the students take it in turns to turn them over. When they have turned over a card they must make a past continuous sentence based on the picture they have. For example: If they turn over a picture of a woman swimming they would say: She was swimming yesterday. For more advanced students this activity can be used to compare past continuous and past simple. For example: While I was doing the washing up, I broke three plates. Becoming a TESOL teacher enables you to travel the world experiencing new cultures while...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Teaching English online is becoming a more and more lucrative career for many TEFL and TESOL certified teachers out there. You can work from home or go full digital nomad and travel the world while teaching a couple of classes of English a day. To help you create fun and interactive lessons, we have compiled a summary of 5 amazing props with investing in for teaching English online below. Who doesn’t love playing with plush toys? Having a good selection of the most common foods and animals can go a LONG way when teaching English online. Using plush props is a lot of fun and can be used in so many different ways: you can use them to teach numbers and counting, you can use them to talk about different colors and also...  [Read more]

  http://www.teflonline.net For this TEFL Teaching idea we ask the students to look at a scene in a hospital where there are several people doing different things. Students are given time to memorise the picture before it is turned over. The students would then be asked to say what the people were doing in the picture. For example: A nurse was giving a patient an injection. A man was pouring a glass of water. As the trainer notes in the video, this activity can be adapted to make it into a competition by having students in teams compete to remember as many actions as they can. Grammar points such as this are often seen as fairly boring to most English language students, especially those who do not choose to study English. So being able to come up with ideas that encourage...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas It is effortless to get into a rhythm of teaching a certain way and relying heavily on your resources at hand. As a relatively new teacher, I spend a lot of time with the help (mainly books) I am provided, and in lessons, I teach the content necessary to complete a given objective. I often rely on the readers for additional activities, transitions, and traditional book work. While the students never spend the entire class with their noses in the books, I felt that we were not having quite as much fun as we could. Studies began to feel a bit stale, and interest seemed to be diminishing. So, I decided to conduct a small experiment and...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences I learned English when I was 20 after my family and I decided to immigrate to Canada from Brazil. I hadn’t had much exposure to the English language prior to the move. 25 years have gone by, and now I have the opportunity to teach English back in my home country of Brazil! Take our 4-week in-class course in Natal, Brazil, and start your own TEFL adventure! This post was written by our ITTT graduate George K. After coming back to my small hometown in the Brazilian countryside a couple of years ago, I met one of my childhood friends, Rodrigo. He had just opened a small English school in town and after a quick chat, I told him that I have decided to come back to live in Brazil after having lived abroad for more...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas David Brooks once said, “The point of being a teacher is to do more than impart facts, it's to shape the way students perceive the world, to help a student absorb the rules of discipline. The teachers who do that get remembered.” In my experience as a teacher, I have had students from different backgrounds enter my classroom. I have come to acknowledge that each one is an individual who has needs and a personality shaped by external factors such as their family life, social interactions, and beliefs. Nevertheless, I have also discovered that positive discipline in the classroom creates a healthy environment which not only promotes learning but gives each student an equal opportunity to be challenged and excel....  [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 Alumni Experiences Throughout high school and college, I mainly focused on learning how to speak Japanese as my second language. Unlike English, Japanese is a fairly phonetic language. Two of its three writing systems, hiragana and katakana, are phonetic. This makes it easy for foreigners to learn because each syllable, also known as sound clusters in some circles, is almost always said exactly how it is spelled. The third writing system, kanji, is not and, as such, is much more difficult for foreigners to learn because kanji are essentially pictures that describe their meaning. They are much more difficult to learn and use in everyday speech. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Nicole H. Please note that...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I choose this task because I’m a mother of two children and raising them in a modern world like ours is not easy. Playing is an important element in child development, but when I say play and don’t mean to stay in the house with video games in their hands I mean playing outside with other kids, interacting and socializing with others. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Anca A. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Outdoor activities have a much bigger impact on kids. For example, burning calories, avoid obesity while they can have a lot of fun. Through play, children can gain an increased range of emotions as well as coordination....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Students in ESL classes, especially those newer to English, face what may seem to be a daunting set of tasks related to learning a new language. A teacher's encouragement will ease the students' stress, provide positive feedback and, gently, areas of improvement, and provide an amicable environment conducive to learning. The age and experience level of the students should be considered in what specific words of encouragement are given--too effusive and older, more experienced students may be turned off, while too complicated and the younger students may not appreciate the teacher's phrasing. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jonathan W. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences This story is written by one of our TEFL course alumni who discovered their passion for teaching by accident and decided to pursue a career in ESL. This post was written by our ITTT graduate Qiankun Y. About 2 years ago, I was working as an English tutor and taught adults in China. I graduated with a science major and had little teaching experience but I was keen to try out teaching. Before my first class, I was sent to a training program which taught me how to structure a class and how to teach with adult students. However, even after I completed the internal training program I still did not feel confident to be a tutor and I considered teaching English only as a temporary job. When I held my first class, I had...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas After doing some research online and asking some of my friends who are experienced teachers, I have compiled a list below of what we believe to be the five favorite flashcard games. Until I am a practicing teacher myself, I cannot come up with my favorite list and it would also, of course, depend on the age and ability of the students. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Alessandra F. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. This is a classic game from our childhood and always guarantees to make everybody laugh. The way it works is, you place a flashcard on each chair, and there is one number of chairs less than there are students. You...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Without a doubt, English is the most popular second language around the globe. It has served as a bridge of communication in the rise of globalization. Business English has found its way in the global business market and has also worked its way up to the digital age with all of the technological advancements available. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Clarence A. There has been a significant increase of non-native English speakers using the English language as a specific tool in competing inside the international market. It has turned into the universal language for business and can unite people from various cultural backgrounds for them to discuss their thoughts in a clear, efficient and...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Teaching has always been a profession of great importance. For centuries teachers have been highly appreciated and respected because what they did affect the others and took part in forming a society. That's why it is so important to be responsible for how well you work. Continuing professional development is obligatory for those who chose this profession. You can improve your skills by reading books, watching webinars, discussing emotive issues with your colleagues. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Ekaterina B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. But the easiest and still one of the most effective ways of professional development...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences One of the most crucial roles of the teacher is to improve students’ performance. In daily lessons, teachers are engaged in different classroom scenarios, performed teaching duties, and rendered extra effort to help maximize students’ learning. Another thing that adds to this noble task is the diverse roles of the teacher he/she has to play. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Glen Mar L. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. With this, I thought of three basic roles that teachers need to portray in the 21st century. This Engager-Servicer-Activator (ESA) teacher roles serve as an important reminder for the teacher to this...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas English is a language that has a variety of dialects: particularly, there are three different major English segments. English (American ), English (Australian), and English (British or Uk). The three segments have differences in the way they are written and spoken. In this article, I will compare American English versus British English and my own experience with these two. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate maria c. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. British English is a very formal form of the English language. The Uk practices formal speaking and dictation while the United States of America uses slang and informal English. The...  [Read more]