What To Do Instead Of Teaching

  This video provides a detailed overview of the passive voice of the English language. Watch the video to find out exactly what distinguishes the active voice from the passive and vice versa. 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. Troubleshooting common problem situations was the title of this uni. When a teacher is meeting a new class for the first time it is vital to establish rappor. The teacher will want to find out about the students, their...  [Read more]

  Now here are some teaching ideas for the future continuous tense. Here, we have an activity where we'll be asking students to spontaneously make some excuses based upon some invitations. We can do this in pairs or small groups. The teacher will have cut these cards up and the students will place them into a pile, randomly picking up a card. So one student might pick this card up and say 'Would you like to play tennis with me tomorrow?' The other student will be challenged to come up with an excuse as quickly as possible, which might be 'No, I'm sorry I'll be working.' Then, we have the next student pick up the next card and we challenge an additional student to make an excuse. Here we have another teaching idea for the future continuous tense and this involves two students trying...  [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]

  Connected speech is also an important element of phonology and it's involved in joining words together in an effect to make our speech more efficient. Some might say it's a product of being lazy but nonetheless it's what we all do and we want all of our non-native speakers to speak as naturally as possible, so we have to be aware of these things. Here are a few of the more common examples. We have linking, dropping, changing and extra lettering. An example of each would be with linking, we link our words together so that they almost in effect become one word. Instead of saying ?What do you want to do,? we typically will say ?Whatdoyou want to do?? Then, we can also have dropping. Rather than pronouncing each and every consonant, we can sometimes, especially in certain accents,...  [Read more]

  "In terms of the things that are negative about it, we've already said that it doesn't develop speaking but perhaps the biggest negative point about this particular methodology is that it's very unnatural. Ok, so despite the criticisms of this particular method, and particularly the fact that is unnatural, this particular methodology was in use all the way through the 17th, 18th and 19th century and indeed it's still in use today. However, Gouin in the 1880s and Berlitz in the early 1900s decided that this particular methodology was so unnatural that they wanted to come up with something new. The method that they came up with, they called the direct method. You will also sometimes see it as the natural method. What these two people were saying is that if we wish to learn a...  [Read more]

  This video is part of our video series on "Evaluation and Testing of Students". In this video, we look at practice and external proficiency tests. Practice tests are usually used for revision purpose before internal and external exams to prepare the students. There are three types of external proficiency tests that English learners can take. Find out which ones in this video. 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. The unit is giving us an image of...  [Read more]

  The next item that we're going to consider is the use of resource books. There are many different types of resource books available and within those books there tends to be a general pattern and typically the resource book pack will come in a three book series and typically that three book series will be in the form of the student book, a workbook and a teacher's resource book. So for example here are those three books for this particular series called ?Total English? and in the student book the type of information that we can gain from here is the actual background to the teaching points themselves plus some additional information in terms of short worksheets and so on and so forth and tape transcripts at the end for listening activities, which these days often come on a CD...  [Read more]

  Here's an idea for teaching the present perfect continuous tense. However in this activity what the students will be doing, is comparing and contrasting this tense with the present perfect tense. This is something that a teacher will want to do after they've explored both tenses and because both tenses are quite confusing, we'll ask the students to compare and contrast the two, making sure that they can tell the difference. In this activity, the teacher will have cut out each individual card. The teacher will distribute the cards to the students and after a minute has gone by, the teacher will then ask the students to fold their cards over and get into a pair. One student in the pair will then present a certain result and ask the student to form the question. Here, with the...  [Read more]

  The dynamics of classroom interaction is often dictated by the arrangement of the classroom itself and the way in which the classroom is arranged could depend upon a number of factors and they might include things such as the age of the students, so for example we're unlikely to have the same arrangement for adult learners as we would have for young learners. It could also depend upon the actual physical space available. The physical space may determine how we have to arrange our classroom to maximize the opportunity for interaction and so forth. It will also depend on what material is available and by material in this case we're talking about the actual desks and chairs and so on and so forth. Perhaps the final thing we might put here is that it could also depend upon the...  [Read more]

We have all spent a lot of time in classrooms during our lives and we have probably all experienced what it is like to be taught by a good teacher and varying degrees of less than good ones. The good ones seem to make it all look very easy as everyone in the class is interested, engaged, and keen to learn, but how do they do it? In most cases experience is the main reason why they make it look so straightforward, as doing something over and over again allows a good teacher to develop their skills and the best methods for getting the best results. However, there are a few common skills that are generally present in good teachers no matter how long they have been in the job. It probably goes without saying that a good teacher needs to have exceptional communication skills. Successful...  [Read more]

  As mentioned earlier, our example sentence has used a regular verb 'to play'. With the regular verbs we simply add '-ed'. This spelling pattern changes for words that end with a consonant and a Y: 'cry' goes to 'cried', 'try' to 'tried'. Another spelling pattern we have to be aware of is our consonant plus vowel plus consonant. In these instances, we double the consonant used: 'shop' needs the double P; 'ship' needs the double P. With these spelling patterns, and most spelling patterns in general for the English language, there are always exceptions to the rules. So we have to be aware of those exceptions. We also have to impart those exceptions on to our students. We can do so through various exercises and various activities to end our class. To form the negative sentence here,...  [Read more]

  The purpose of grammar translation then is to basically translate between L1 and L2 and vice versa. So, we could take a simple example. Let's imagine that our native language was English and our target language was French and let's assume that we want to translate a document from French into English. Let's take a simple sentence. Here's a sentence in French "Ouvre la fenêtre" and we'll add "s'il vous plaît" at the end. What we want to do is to take this L2 and translate it back into English. Now, if we have a reasonable knowledge of French then we may well know that this particular verb "ouvre" "to open" translates directly and this female form of the and finally the fenêtre "Open the window" and this polite form of "please". This is all very well if the two structures that...  [Read more]

Across the world there are millions of people working as teachers in a wide variety of environments, all of which require certain knowledge, skills, and personal qualities to be successful. This is certainly the case when it comes to teaching English to non-native speakers. Many teachers fail to provide the high level of instruction that their students deserve for a wide range of different reasons, such as not listening to feedback, being overly strict, or simply not having the enthusiasm required. But what are the qualities that are most important for an ESL teacher if we want to produce the best results for all our students? Communication is certainly key in any teaching environment, but when teaching a foreign language it is even more crucial as the teacher often doesn’t speak...  [Read more]

  This presentation is going to focus on the section of classroom management. We could start with a definition of classroom management as being the skill of organizing the class individual students within that class and what takes place within the class. Perhaps one of the most important resources for achieving these things is you and in terms of you there are a number of things that you can use to help with the classroom management and they include though they're not limited to the use of your eyes the use of your voice and the use of gesture. So let's take each of these in turn and see how they can be used to help with their management of the classroom. So starting with our eyes. First of all the eyes can be used in a number of ways and they can certainly be used to hold...  [Read more]

  Our next consideration is that of giving instructions to our students. In order for those students to effectively carry out an activity, we need to make sure we have given clear and unambiguous instructions. It's also very important to check that the students understand the activity before you start. If you've done that work correctly then the teacher shouldn't need to say anything once an activity has started because the students are very clear about what they're supposed to be doing. So some ideas when giving instructions. As we've mentioned use simple language. Secondly, rather than trying to explain an activity, then do a demonstration which is visual. Thirdly, try to use wherever possible common words that come up within every activity. These would be things like ?look?,...  [Read more]

If you are looking for a tesol course location that will combine high quality training with a blend of amazing locations and cities, seeped in culture and rich history, then Kolkata is for you. Throw in a friendly local population and the opportunity to utilize your TESOL certificate in India and the rest of the world, and Kolkata may just be the ideal location to begin your teaching career. What truly sets India apart from the rest of the world is the amount of diversity it has to offer. Perhaps nowhere else in the world can so many different cultures and religions live and work side by side so harmoniously. The vast array of traditions, languages, costumes intertwine to create a truly unique place. Home of one of the seven modern wonders of the world, The Taj Mahal, India also boasts...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in colombia? Are you interested in teaching English in colombia? Check out our opportunities in this beautiful US state, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Check out which city/town you may be more interested in and start your journey| Writing might be one of the most neglected skill compared to other language skills, not many students are interested into writing as much as they're interested into speaking. Student who is fluent in This unit has provided definitions of good teachers and good learners,...  [Read more]

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  This unit tackled different ways on how to evaluate students' levels and progress. There are three ways to do it namely tutorials, evaluation by the students, and tests. Tests were discussed more in-d This three part unit was different in that it addressed the competing modes of communication in a classroom. Many of my experiences have been with teaching speech, while the head teacher mainly lets w Material use in the classroom is important to move students from beginners with created materials to an intermediate level with authentic materials. Comfort of created materials allows for more shy st The video unit was very interesting. The unit provided two videos of an ESL lesson with very different vibes. The first showed a seemingly unprepared instructor who mumbled through much of...  [Read more]