Why I Like Teaching

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas As a new teacher, grammar was initially very difficult for me to teach. It was difficult to demonstrate grammar patterns succinctly. Luckily, the school that I work for has provided help by having an established curriculum. The key to teaching grammar, however, has been teaching variable inputs in otherwise unchanging structures as part of student-centered games. 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. If I were to teach the pattern, “What does Billy like?/ He likes _____”, then I would have several options. I could read the pattern and have the students listen. This would be ineffective...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas For years I have been thinking about my own personal experience as a student with the different institutions, methodologies, and teaching styles that I have been introduced to within my life to improve as a teacher in education that didn't work for me as a student. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Maria A. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. I remember two main experiences that clearly demonstrate the importance of consciously working on building rapport with students. When I was in High School, I really enjoyed reading and learning about why we humans are how we are and I enrolled immediately as soon as I knew that an...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences I choose" establishing rapport" as the topic of my summary, cause that's my priority and very important to me.establishing rapport is often overlook and undervalued by teachers.basic my own experience, building rapport with your student makes your student value the class more. they more motivated, they participate more. and their focusing class is much better.why? because of the experience I had.in my mind we all can pass the exam to be a teacher if we study hard. but that doesn't mean you can be a "qualified" one. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Doris M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. I'm from China, I'm still here. We...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences As a young child, I was, for some reason, obsessed with the idea of learning French. I tried a couple of languages, including Finnish at some point, but kept going back to French. I have no idea why because I was never exposed to the culture or the language itself at that age. I doubt I even knew anything about the country itself. I think I assumed learning French would make me sound smarter but, the joke's on younger me, I have no skill in French and never have. I tend to struggle with romance languages in general. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Nicole H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. When I was in high school, my...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas ESL teachers often encounter difficulties when teaching grammar patterns to students abroad. The following 7 activities for teaching the simple present for the ESL classroom will help your students pick up the tense in an easy and efficient way. This is a very good activity for when you start discussing the simple present and how it’s used for routines and regularities. You can place the students into groups or pairs and have them discuss their daily routines. What do they do in the morning? In the afternoon? In the evening? You can then also have them write up a schedule of their daily routines and share their findings with the class later on in a class discussion. Also read: Top Online Lesson Plan Resources for...  [Read more]

Karah Musani Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Teaching children can be challenging. If you’re teaching an adult, chances are, they’re there because they want to learn. Most children, however, would much rather be watching their favorite TV show, so it’s important to make the class fun and engaging. One of the best ways to do this is with a reward system. Plan a reward system with 4 to 6 rewards and give one to the student periodically throughout the class when they have done a good job. You can use this to reinforce good behavior and to encourage the student to try harder so that they get more rewards. All of my reward systems rely on a whiteboard the students can see. The rewards will be placed on the whiteboard. Here...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Why does the English language break all its own rules and have so many words or phrases that simply make no literal sense? How does one learn such a language like this? This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Bridget B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Football in most countries is a game where a ball is kicked around with one’s foot. In American English, this sport is called soccer. The sport of American football has much less to do with the kicking of the foot but yet is still called football. And we still also have soccer and handball. We have many other words in the English language that can be very confusing to those learning...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Alumni Experiences In my past, I have lived in many different countries and language environments. I have come to learn that the best way to gain an understanding of a new language is to be absorbed in it. In countries where English is widely spoken as a foreign language (Scandinavian countries for example), learning the language of the country can be much more difficult. It is uncomfortable not being able to express oneself, so English offers a cane of comfort, but also a disservice. Unless one goes through this part of the learning process where speaking is hard for you and maybe even for your listener, fluency can never be achieved. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Eija R. Please note that this blog post...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences English is one of the most widely spoken languages and it is taught in a lot of countries. Globalization, fast economic development makes many people study English. People learn English for different reasons: business, education, life abroad, traveling, personal interest. Chinese students are not an exception. With the growing economies of China, the need for learning English increased dramatically. What challenges do Chinese students face when learning English? What challenges does the teacher meet teaching Chinese students? What teaching approach can be found? This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Darya M. Let’s talk about the most typical challenges when teaching Chinese learners and...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences When talking about using songs in the classroom, the first things we should probably start by asking ourselves is why use them? And why are they important? This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Karina C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. To answer these questions, I will throw you back to your childhood for a moment, more specifically to the first five years of your life and ask you to think of this; how many things do you remember from your early childhood? Do you remember what you use to be told? Or any conversations you had with your mother/father or tutor? What about school lessons (forget about the songs here for a moment...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore 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. Mihaela Camelia Pirvu Spain I took the course because ITTT offers a complete TEFL certification. I especially liked the practical exercises offered during the course. I want to take the Business English course from ITTT in order to acquire professional...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Do you want to know what it's like starting to teach after completing your TEFL course? This alumni report shows you where a TEFL certification can lead. Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas There is a global trend of creating culturally sensitive lessons in schools worldwide. This article explains why it’s important to create cultural sensitivity in the EFL classroom. Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas As an EFL teacher, it is imperative that you know how to motivate your students. These 5 simple ways to motivate your EFL students...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Do you want to know what it's like starting to teach after completing your TEFL course? This alumni report shows you where a TEFL certification can lead. Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas There is a global trend of creating culturally sensitive lessons in schools worldwide. This article explains why it’s important to create cultural sensitivity in the EFL classroom. Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas As an EFL teacher, it is imperative that you know how to motivate your students. These 5 simple ways to motivate your EFL students...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences I have 3 years of experience in teaching English in a few kindergartens in Beijing, China and some experience in teaching adults in a training center. When I started in kindergarten, it was very difficult because I didn’t have enough information about how to make a proper lesson plan. I didn’t have enough materials, games, songs, and it took me a lot of time to collect all the necessary information for teaching and creating my teaching plan. Without experience, it wasn’t easy for me to build a good rapport between me and my students. It took me a while to build a connection between me and the kids. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Lidiia L. Please note that this blog post might...  [Read more]

Estefany Garduño Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas It is evident that, in every classroom, there is a great diversity of students. Diversity talks about race, culture, customs, thinking, etc. Diversity also includes different learning styles of a group of students, for instance, how each student remembers, understands, and applies a concept, new grammar, new vocabulary, and more. The learning styles are cognitive, affective, and physiological features that are relatively stable indicators that help to analyze how students perceive interactions and answer in a learning environment (Gomez, 2004). There are learning styles’ strategies that are developed according to cognitive abilities that are classified either in the Model of...  [Read more]

  Valentina is a proud graduate of ITTT's 120-hour online TEFL course with videos and tutor support. Watch this TEFL review video to hear Valentina talk about how the course helped her to develop her teaching skills. One of the main advantages of ITTT's online TEFL courses is their flexibility, allowing you to work at your own pace in your time. This makes it easy to fit your study around your prior commitments and allowing you to gain certification without having to take time off work. 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...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore 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. Oana Palimariu Spain To obtain a qualification that would eventually allow me to teach English to speakers of other languages. I especially liked the the part where I had to write down everything I had understood from the unit. It made me pay attention and...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences All people are susceptible to boredom and confusion. Either of these or their combination can lead to frustration. Once frustrated, a learner will find it exponentially more difficult to grasp or retain new information. The student’s mind will be elsewhere, unmotivated and uninterested. Therefore, an instructor should make it a priority that each and every student can not only understand the created material but be interested in it as well. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Patrick O. So how does one create engaging and educational material for groups of vastly different people? I believe that the first step is always the same: getting to know the students. On a very fundamental and...  [Read more]

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]

Anna Bondar Destinations Alumni Experiences Being in China for over ten years, I've worked at more than 30 places, combining schools and training centers, kindergartens and private classes, etc. For the past five years, working as a recruiter, I would like to give you a few valuable tips on getting hired for your dream job. Moving to a new country could be stressful enough, so make sure to do your research about the schools and places before signing the contract. First of all, I'd like to ask you, mainly as a new teacher, to think about what kind of school is suitable for you? Keep in mind that different institutions have different requirements. There are several institutions you can choose to work at, for example: Before you...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Until now, I have been an English teacher for 6 months. Before that, in 2016 I was a teaching assistant. That is my part-time job. And this is a journey even though I have not yet taken a TESOL class but I am still confident that I can become a teacher. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Tieu T. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. For the first half of the year, I was an assistant tutor for the preschool. I had very little contact with kids before so I was very confused at the time. I told the teacher that I couldn't make them obey. She is a master of special needs education. She told me to play with them and not to care about...  [Read more]

  Take a look at any online TEFL forum and there is a good chance you will come across stories of unscrupulous employers taking advantage of their teachers. Due to the huge number of English language training providers operating in countries all over the world, it is inevitable that there are some that are badly run. The good news is that by asking a few simple questions you should be able to avoid the jobs you don't want and greatly increase your chances of landing the right position to suit you. Whether you are an experienced EFL teacher looking for a new challenge or a newly qualified TEFL graduate looking for that all important first teaching position, it is vital that you ask the right questions during the job interview process. Although you can never guarantee that any job...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I would start by saying that talking about my own experience either as a learner or a teacher it is really important to love what you are doing. As a student, I like a teacher that may help me not understand the subject but also be so interested that I would start doing research and learn more about the topic. We as teachers have a lot of responsibility, we can make the difference between someone who has to learn the language only because of her or his parents told them to learn a foreign way to communicate with people from other places. I want to go further and make them fall in love with this language. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Arturo G. Please note that this blog post might not...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Hello everybody, it's Liza here. We are just about to start today's live session that is devoted to ideas on how to improve English skills. While I'm waiting for more people to join me let me just tell you about these live sessions. So we are doing them weekly and right now there are a lot of videos to check out on our YouTube channel and our Facebook group. If you missed any of these live streams you can go to our social networks and see any of them there. Welcome to the new session and if you haven't heard already my name is Liza and I'm a non-native English teacher from Russia. I can see that there are some people from the Philippines here....  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Hi, I am back for another live session this week. My name is Linda from ITTT. I took a break last week, I was traveling a little bit in Korea, not too far but I got to enjoy the cherry blossoms. That's why there was no live session from me last week. But I'm back this week and I'm super excited. Today we're going to have a Q&A session, so you guys can ask me questions about TEFL and TESOL, teaching abroad, teaching online, whatever you want to know about. So something a bit more casual, let's have a chat. I would like to get to know you guys better and you can get to know me, ITTT and TEFL. If you can see me and hear me please drop a hi or something into the comment box so that I know that everything is working...  [Read more]

  In this TEFL/TESOL review, trainee Pam describes her experience with ITTT's four week in-class course in Phuket, Thailand. She outlines the program of the first week of the course. Pam talks about why she chose to do the course in Phuket and she gives a brief synopsis of the week's program. 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. I didn't like how the norm-referenced test was not explained in the unit reading. Some of the questions were confusing...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas ‘Teacher, Can we please have a class outdoors?’ this question was asked by a lot of my students, and ‘No’ was my typical answer. Why do students want to have an outdoor session? Is it really useful? What outdoor activities could be done to help when teaching English? These questions ran through my mind every time one of my students asked me to have a class outdoors. So, I decided to find answers to these questions. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Ahmed A. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Why teach outside at all? It is known that students like variety and diversity. Of course, some students enjoy the typical in-class...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences I chose to write about this subject because I feel that the role of the teacher is a really important part of the classroom and also in the student's life. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Tabitha B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. If the class is boring, then the students don't have any interest in learning, so it is up to the teacher to teach knowledge to their students but also making the class interesting for their students. This is not an easy thing for the teacher, it requires a lot of thinking and lesson planning. In my experience, almost anything entertains younger students but the older they get it gets harder to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences I consider the TEFL/TESOL certificate as a great opportunity in my life. I see this certificate as a great option for my teaching career in the future. The course has given me a lot of information that I gathered during my online studies. I can use that information to teach students of different ages virtually all over the world. Every single unit gave me something specific and in some sense helped me to improve my previous knowledge and enrich me with a lot of other information and ideas that I will use in the future as a teacher. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Gabriel K. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. I learned a lot...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Hello everybody, welcome to the ITTT weekly live stream. My name is Liza, and today we are going to discuss an extremely important topic which is related to English teaching as a non-native teacher. Because the field is pretty competitive, many people want to find out if it is possible to stand out or not. Let's just quickly change the slide. So the reason I decided to choose this topic is that one of my regular viewers asked me about how to actually stand out as a non-native teacher, especially online. I find it is really important, so let's discuss it today and before we move on, please let me know that you can hear me and see me clearly. If...  [Read more]