Turkish Native American

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Today, English has become a common language of people with different native languages in many fields such as science, aviation, communication, and commerce. For this reason, knowledge of English has become a necessity for those who want to pursue an academic career or who want to work in internationally recognized business sectors. This fact puts English in the first place among the officially taught foreign languages in most countries. But which English should be referenced in English education? British or American English? The answer to this question is not clear in Turkey yet. In seeking a heuristic explanation, one can dwell on which...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Who was your favorite teacher in elementary school? Mine was my 5th-grade Teacher, Mr. Powers. Not because he was super cool, or cute, or wildly entertaining. It was because he was an amazing teacher. He was a retired Air Force pilot, yet was never very hard on us and I can’t think of a single time that he got upset with us. I believe this is completely due to his amazing classroom management skills. I try my best to model my own teaching skills after Mr. Powers while teaching here in Istanbul, Turkey. Cultural and economic differences are actually the least of my problems while working with these amazing children. The most challenging aspects happen to be making the most of classroom space, ensuring the...  [Read more]

Jon ITTT Alumni Experiences For the native English speaker, English is easy. It is only when learning another language do L1 English speakers begin to see peculiarities in their own language. It is then compounded when beginning to teach English as a foreign language. Although the English language has commonalities with other languages, especially since English is derived from other languages, there are plenty of unusual aspects of English that can cause difficulties when learning and teaching the language. For example, English spelling, grammar, and pronunciation all contain such peculiarities. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Tanya L. Learning to read and write English is no easy task since English is one of the least...  [Read more]