Why Would You Like To Become A Teacher

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]

Zainab Sadriwala Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas “The most challenging of the tasks during this COVID era has been to make my children read” states a frustrated Amena; a mother of two children, one in the primary years and the other in middle school. “It was much easier for me to monitor them and ask them to read and follow the schedule when they knew they had to report to their teacher. The school environment is just so integral for sustaining discipline in young people” she continues. Like Amena, there have been many parents worldwide trying to strike a balance for their children to maintain their healthy habits, which not only helps them develop academically but also grow in every aspect. Reading is one of such...  [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 TEFL Information Many people start teaching English as a means to fund their world travels. Once they have started teaching, they find it to be an immensely rewarding experience and would like to make a career out of it. They’d like to progress within the field but are unaware of the options available to them. In fact, there are many opportunities in TEFL/TESOL beyond the classroom and below we show some of the places a career as an English teacher can take you. Here’s how to advance in your EFL career! After teaching for a couple of years, many teachers move on to this position. A teacher trainer usually works for a TEFL or TESOL language center and teaches the modules part of a teacher training course such as grammar,...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences At the cafeteria during lunchtime, a student of mine approached and asked me, “Why did you become a teacher?” Dumbfounded by this brazen question, I did not know what to say. I could have chosen motherhood statements like “I want to make a difference in the world,” “to have a positive impact on my student’s lives, “or that “I love children.” I ended up saying to him, “Well, I am good at teaching.” However, the truth of the matter is, I needed a job and there was an opportunity so I took it. You can say it was fate that called me to be a teacher. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself being a Grade 3 homeroom teacher! After having experienced a variety of jobs in my life from...  [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]

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]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Abstraction is in essence, the formation of broader, and more difficult and subjective systems from inputs. It is a concept that can be applied to the four language skills: reading, listening, speaking, and writing. As an idea becomes more abstract and subjective, it requires more information and becomes more difficult to answer. Some of the easiest and least abstract pieces of language are simple Yes/No statements and questions. “Do you like ice-cream?” “Yes, I do.” “No, I don’t.” A more difficult question might be, “Who likes ice-cream?” More difficult still would be, “Why do you like ice-cream?” A simple, but by no means an exhaustive list of abstraction moving from simple to difficult...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas In the world, there are many different professions that people dream of. If you ask someone to name some of them, they probably would say something like a doctor, teacher, singer, and so on. When I was a child, my dad wanted me to become a teacher. He thought that becoming a teacher was a great job. Not just him, but many other people also thought so. It has always been like that. Back then, I was too young to understand the reason. But now that I have become a teacher, I am starting to realize why my dad and everyone else liked it. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate OTGONTSETSEG S. Please note that this blog post might...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Young children, even when they are learning their native tongue, learn the words before they learn how to apply them correctly and as a result, children often make mistakes in their grammar, however, even when they do, it is mostly the vocabulary or the order of the words which still provides a degree of context which makes the message they intend to convey understandably and thus susceptible to improvement. It is exactly because of this fact that in this essay, I would like to dive into teaching vocabulary. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Johnny B. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. About teaching vocabulary, I could say that...  [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]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Confidence - how many times we’ve heard about it. That it’s important, that we should have it, that we should build it, that we should help students or any other people develop it. But what does it mean? This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Iuliia S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. It’s been always difficult to explain what is it, as it’s something that comes from feelings of well-being, acceptance of yourself, belief in your abilities, skills, your own experience. I would say it’s a ‘self-power’, that lets you move through any difficulties, helps you to grow and become a ‘someone’. The Merriam-Webster dictionary...  [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]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Over the years I have pondered whether or not to try and teach English as a career. Watching countless online videos and reading travel blogs of 'wandering teachers' and articles on sites such as ' Dave's ESL Café, I sort of got mixed emotions about ESL teachers. That is of course until I took the chance and became one myself. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Leon G. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. In the two years of being a teacher I have certainly learned a lot, I've experienced extreme highs and extreme lows in a country where basic English is a rare find. With no prior experience or knowledge of how to educate, my...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences The Cambridge dictionary defines troubleshooting as the process of discovering why something does not work effectively and making suggestions about how to improve it. In TEFL as in any other foreign language course, teachers are faced with lots of situations that make troubleshooting necessary. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Olivia L. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. And the reason why it is an essential part of TEFL is due, in great part, to the fact that humans make up a primary part of the equation. Humans, in general, feel a profound need to forge associations with each other through social inclusion and as a result,...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Budget and Salary TEFL Information Teaching Ideas Today, we are going to talk about the “biggest misconceptions about TEFL and TESOL and teaching English abroad”. We get a lot of questions here at ITT, and a lot of people are confused and I just want to clear a few things up, some myths here and there, and I think I've narrowed it down to eight misconceptions that we're going to look at and you can throw your questions at me at any time. I would also really like to know where you are like in your TEFL journey, are you currently taking a TEFL or TESOL course? Are you thinking about it? Are you already certified? Or are you already teaching abroad? Let me know, that would be interesting to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas One of the key elements to being an effective teacher is variety. One cannot teach by using the same lesson structure, the same activities, the same worksheets, the same plan every single time. No matter how effective it may be, students will still tire from the repetition, and their engagement will wane. And that is exactly why teachers have a toolbox from which to draw a wide variety of skills, activities, plans, and ideas to keep the classroom fresh and engaging. Changing scenery, environments, and going outside is all part of this toolbox, and can be used to an effective extent to keep lessons feeling stimulating and varied. And by doing so, the teacher is opening up lessons to a fun and exciting range of...  [Read more]

Umber Sherjeel Destinations Alumni Experiences Being in the teaching field for more than a decade and having taught in Saudi Arabia for the last 7+ years, I will give some pointers about my experience here as an English Language teacher. The education industry in Saudi Arabia is very blooming. There are many international schools, colleges, and universities - and the English education field in Saudi Arabia continues to grow and expand. Due to the rapid shift in the education system during the past few years, the country has established an insatiable appetite for ESL English Language teachers. English language learning has become mandatory in pretty much the entire school system. Since English is considered as a key skill for...  [Read more]

  Being interviewed for a TEFL related position is much like any other interview situation; it can be an intimidating prospect. However, if you do your homework and prepare for some general questions in advance, you can remove a great deal of worry from the whole process. Unfortunately you cannot predict exactly how any interview will unfold but most will include a similar range of questions that are aimed at assessing your suitability for joining the existing workforce. So what questions should you expect to be asked? The employer will certainly want to form an impression of who you are as a person, so expect questions such as: What do you like to do in your spare time? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Where do you see yourself in five years? If the job is outside of your...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information I founded an English training center in China in 2017 and have been teaching a wide variety of English classes since then. I teach both one-to-one and groups, and I find them to be very different. Prospective TEFL teachers may want to consider: which kind of class fits you best? Below I would like to compare my experiences in teaching and managing these two types of class, and also give some suggestions for prospective TEFL teachers to make a realistic choice. This post was written by our ITTT graduate Yan Z. The first difference, obviously, is the class size, which decides your budget. When teaching one student, a single room of 10-20 square meters big would be enough. A group class will require at least 30 square...  [Read more]

Federico Riva 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. Vu Thi Van Anh (Claudia Vu) I'm from Hanoi, Vietnam, I did not major in English, however I wanted to become a teacher of English. My favorite part of the course was Unit 3: Methodologies and Techniques. I would like to implement my own courses with its focus on TOEIC training and English for...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas As teachers, we often assume that we understand what our students are going through and that we can relate to the experience of learning in school because we have been there ourselves. However, many of us who teach English as a foreign language require a different empathy element to relate to our students truly. Learning a new language is a humbling experience, and doing it as a foreigner in a foreign culture is even more humbling. The question is, how many language educators can relate to this? Personally, though I do not know how many TEFL teachers have experienced a foreign language and culture for an extended period, I have had the privilege to experience it myself for...  [Read more]

Dorothy Brown Smith Destinations Alumni Experiences I have always wanted to travel and go abroad. I talked about it with family and friends on many occasions. When the opportunity came for me to teach in China, I immediately said, “NO!” I was thinking of traveling to places like South America, France, Italy, Greece, etc. because I had romanticized these places in my mind from what I had seen on television and read about in magazines. China was not even a thought in my mind! The opportunity kept coming to teach in China. I would see advertisements, run into people who had just came back from China. I even met someone studying Chinese to be an interpreter! I kept running into people who had some kind of connection with...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Even in the first language, it can be difficult to get children reading. There are many reasons they may turn their nose up at a book. In some way, I think most of those reasons can be boiled down to boredom. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Bailey N. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. I have the privilege of remembering my journey to reading. When I was very young, my parents would read simple books to me, and I would enjoy looking at the pictures. I would enjoy the way they sounded especially when they rhymed. I remember the moment it clicked in kindergarten when I was so excited to understand the correlation between the words...  [Read more]

Gianluca Costa Destinations Alumni Experiences Do you want to navigate Hong Kong like a local? Then you better check out this list of the 11 most useful apps when traveling in Hong Kong that locals love! Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas In this blog post, our TEFL expert shares 3 useful digital apps for ESL lesson plans. You will learn about Evernotes, Trello, and Notion, a 2020 favorite planning app. Create your own system or choose a template, plan ESL classes with a team or manage your freelance TEFL work. Dana W TEFL Information Alumni...  [Read more]

Gianluca Costa Destinations Alumni Experiences Do you want to navigate Hong Kong like a local? Then you better check out this list of the 11 most useful apps when traveling in Hong Kong that locals love! Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas In this blog post, our TEFL expert shares 3 useful digital apps for ESL lesson plans. You will learn about Evernotes, Trello, and Notion, a 2020 favorite planning app. Create your own system or choose a template, plan ESL classes with a team or manage your freelance TEFL work. Dana W TEFL Information Alumni...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information As technology grows, people become busier dealing with modern issues, for this reason taking online courses has taken a noticeable place recently. Despite all advantages that an online course might have, yet many prefer taking the on-site courses. However, the main reasons why people prefer onsite courses to distinguish from one another. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Hanie S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. If you ever happened to ask yourself the differences between online and on-site courses, I would like to mention some perceptible dissimilarities in the following. Initially, online courses are well designed for...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Discipline in the classroom is a point of concern for any teacher, be it new or experienced. Since it is a learning center, we expect the students to be disciplined, which is correct. However, to expect the same from the students, a teacher's core responsibility is to set the right expectations in the student's mind. The students must be following the same. Every new teacher is worried and split thoughts regarding what to follow and what not to as there is a fine line between being strict and being a disciplined teacher. If you are severe, you are hated. If you are liberal, you are taken for granted. But bear in mind that it is not a...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences It is common knowledge that teachers play a crucial role in fostering the intellectual and social development of students during their formative years. The education that students receive is key to determining the future of those students. Whether in kindergarten, elementary school, high school, or in private schools, teachers provide the tools and the environment required for their students to develop into responsible, conscientious students. Teachers act in many different roles such as motivators, leaders, role-models, mentors, and—most importantly—a good friend to their students. Furthermore, teachers serve as facilitators or coaches, using classroom materials, presentations or individual instruction to...  [Read more]

  Then, we have a set of objectives and aims. Here, the learner objectives relate to what we're hoping the students are going to be able to do by the end of your lesson and quite often, that can be a useful way of writing out what the objectives are. So, we would start the sentence "By the end of the lesson, students should be able to?" and then a list of two, three or four items that we're expecting the students to be able to do by completing this lesson. The learner objectives are different to the teacher aims the teacher aims are what you are expecting from that lesson itself. Now, when you first start teaching, quite a normal aim might be to complete the lesson successfully, to get through the whole thing without having any problems. As time goes on and you become more...  [Read more]