Is There Going To Be Another Lockdown

Faster than global Starbucks addiction, English is sweeping the Planet. With over one quarter of the people on Earth speaking English 4, the language is fast replacing French as the new lingua franca 2. There is a reason that English is considered by some, to be on the fast track to becoming the World?s first Universal language 2. It is simply necessary to be able to communicate with people from around the globe these days. Powered by telecommunications and the internet along with distance breaking inventions such as airplanes 2, the world has become a much smaller place. We can now chat via the Internet with someone in another hemisphere and then go out to lunch with an exchange student who has flown in from another continent at a restaurant where the server is a native of yet another...  [Read more]

Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, stop. They are designed to help readers to make sense of the written word. Punctuation herds words together, keeps others apart. Their placement, or absence, can vastly change the meaning of a phrase, this is the basis of all those “I’m sorry, I’ll read that again” jokes.Think of the difference to meaning the punctuation marks make in the following examples: Go get him, surgeonsORGo, get him surgeonsWhat is this thing called, love'ORWhat is this thing called love'He shot himself as a childORHe shot, himself, as a childA woman, without her man, is nothing. OR A woman, without her, man is nothing.My son, if sinners entice thee consent thee, not refraining...  [Read more]

  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. Phonetic is the most tough, different ways of using it is been explained.Its a good way in teaching an individual sounds and it can be fun both to teachers and students. Pronunciation is a must and it is been very nicely explained in this chapter.Most pronunciation a a result tends to concentrate on individual sounds it is also an integral part of teaching. Intonation carries a message in the sentence. it depends on...  [Read more]

  This video looks at various teaching ideas for the 'going to' future tense. Pictures are a great tool for lower-level students to look at evidence based on the pictures and making predictions using the 'going to' future. Other ideas might include weather predictions, as well as planning a party or holiday. 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. Unit 17 deals with teaching aids and equipment to be used inside the classroom. Some of these teaching aids are...  [Read more]

  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. After studying the unit on Coursebooks and Lesson Materials, I learnt some valuable lessons regarding the way one would use these resources in a classroom. It became clear that these resources, like texts books, should be used as guides, and that a teacher should to the best of his/her ability, try to adapt teachings to the need of the class. It is important to use the reference and guide that one does get from these...  [Read more]

  The 'going to' future tense is used to indicate future plans with intentions and predictions based on evidence. It is a very common future tense used in both spoken and written English. 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. This lesson reviewed the many types of material to be used in the classroom. They offer many advantages such as: providing a good mix of knowledge and review for the students; giving lessons at the academic level of the students; and it...  [Read more]

Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, stop. They are designed to help readers to make sense of the written word. Punctuation herds words together, keeps others apart. Their placement, or absence, can vastly change the meaning of a phrase, this is the basis of all those ?I?m sorry, I?ll read that again? jokes. Think of the difference to meaning the punctuation marks make in the following examples: Go get him, surgeonsORGo, get him surgeons What is this thing called, love?ORWhat is this thing called love? He shot himself as a childORHe shot, himself, as a child A woman, without her man, is nothing. OR A woman, without her, man is nothing. My son, if sinners entice thee consent thee, not refraining thy foot from...  [Read more]

  This presentation is going to focus on the theories, methods and techniques of teaching and we're going to start with a quote. This is an interesting quotation because it contains within it a philosophical argument and it's a philosophical argument in the way in which we learn. Basically, this one is saying that the intelligence of their own children comes about due to a natural process. So this one could be said to be due to nature. This is exactly the opposite of this one, which is saying that they're teaching the environment that we create, creates that intelligence. So this one can be said to be due to nurture and this argument 'nature versus nurture' has been going on for thousands of years. These two viewpoints are two ends of a scale, or a continuum if you like, and every...  [Read more]

  Okay, so we're going to use this pro-forma as our lesson plan and we're going to fill one out as though we were planning for an actual lesson. So, we start off with some basic information about the class. So, the name of the teacher, date and time and the class level. In this particular case, our class is going to be an elementary class and the room will be room 3. Having looked through the registers we see that the expected number of students for this particular class is going to be 10. This will help us in creating our worksheet copies. The context of the lesson for this class is going to be present continuous tense and it may well be the first time that this particular level of class has been introduced to this tense. So, our focus is going to be fairly general and it's going...  [Read more]

  The first part of my study phase is going to be the board work and I'm going to use the information that I generated in the elicitation part of my engage phase to move on to the actual board work. What I'm going to do is to show the structure of this particular tense. So, the phase study I'm expecting to take about ten minutes on this particular part and, again, the interaction will mainly be the students talking to me. So, how am I going to achieve that with this information? Well, we could ask the students to have a look at the sentences themselves and to tell us what they can see. If we look at each of the first words in here, then at this level, I should hopefully be able to elicit from my students what each of these words have in common and they may well give an answer that...  [Read more]

  Another point that students find difficult to understand is that modal auxiliary verbs have no tense. Some modals cannot be used to talk about the past or the futures. Watch this video to find out more about this topic. 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. Speaking and writing skills are very important skills. They are crucial as they give students the opportunity to practice real life activities in the classroom↵Teaching writing is important because...  [Read more]

  "Who" and "whom" are another set of words that often causes confusion. Howeer, there is actuall a simple trick to deciding which one to use in a sentence. "Who" is used to refer to the subject of a sentence and 'whom' is used to refer to the object. Keeping this in mind will eliminate the chance of making mistakes. We recommend the following trick. The usage of these two words is the same as he and him. "He" is the subject and "him" is the object. If you are confused about which one you should use, look at the sentences and check whether "he" or "him" should be used. If it's "he", then you should use "who". If it's "him", then "whom" should be used. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our...  [Read more]

  This presentation is going to focus on the ESA methodology of teaching. In our teaching methodologies section, we briefly had a look at what ESA was about, but in this presentation, we're going to look in greater detail about that particular methodology. This particular methodology is accredited to Jeremy Harmer from his "Practice of English language Teaching" book. It's a three-stage methodology and what we're going to do is to look at the purpose of each one of these stages and some typical activities that take place during those stages. So, the first stage is known as the engage and its sole purpose, as the name implies, is to get the students talking and thinking in English. There is no reason whatsoever, when these students come to your class, that they should have said a...  [Read more]

  Another way to approach teaching modal auxiliary verbs is in context, for example, "How to give advice". This is especially useful for students of higher levels that have some knowledge of the various modal auxiliary verbs. 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. Unit 8 taught me about the different future tenses of the English language. It was very useful for me, because I did not learn all the different tenses in school in such detail. The examples were...  [Read more]

  In this TEFL review video another group of trainees share their experiences during the TEFL/TESOL four-week in-class course in Corinth, Greece. They talk about the challenging and rewarding aspects of the course. ITTT's in-class course covers grammar, phonology, teaching methodologies, and lesson preparation techniques. You will also be given the opportunity to teach real students. Our course will give you the confidence to stand up in front of a class of students, we will also teach you how to plan lessons and help you to create and select activities and teaching materials that will make your lessons interesting and productive. 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...  [Read more]

  This presentation is going to focus on the use of course books, materials and teaching aids. There are many materials that we can bring to our classroom that will help with the teaching of our lessons and these include, though they're not limited to, things such as the wipe board, similar to the one that we're using here, various types of visual aids, created or bought worksheets, the use of cassettes CDs and DVDs and the use of video and in these classroom materials, we can also include things such as dictionaries and course books, various types of resource books that we'll have a look at and other materials such as photo copiers, computers, OHPs. So what we'd like to do is just to take a general look at some of the issues relating to each of these types of materials. Below you...  [Read more]

  Another idea for the present continuous tense focuses on the action of miming. Because it's in the present continuous tense, it'll be critical that the student, who is doing miming, continues to do the miming as the students guess what he or she is doing. In order to do this, the teacher will ask one student to come to the front of the class and present them with a card. The card at low levels will just be one word such as 'sleeping,' 'surfing,' 'eating,' or 'playing'. As soon as the student is able to mine any one of those actions, the students continue to guess with 'You are sleeping,' 'You are eating,' 'You are surfing.' Now at higher levels what you could do is continue on from the base of the action and include something like 'You are playing football,' or 'You are playing...  [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]

  This presentation is going to cover the teaching of productive skills. To start with, if we think about the way in which you learnt your first language, most of us go through a particular process. Firstly, we listen to those around us, after that first silent period of listening to other people, then we start to make utterances. Having learned to speak to a certain extent at least, we then go on to learn how to read and to write and this process that we go through is actually covering the four skills that we're trying to teach our English students. So, we have listening, speaking, reading, and writing. If we group those skills into their different types, then the two skills of reading and listening are known as receptive skills, whereas the skills of speaking and writing are...  [Read more]

  The next example is going to be that of a boomerang lesson and remember the structure is like this. So, again, we're going to start with an engage phase and for our engage, the students are just going to have a discussion about jobs. What happens at interviews and so on and so forth. So, during that engage phase, what we'd hope to do is to elicit some useful language about jobs and interviews and the types of questions that are being asked. Then, we're going to move immediately into an activate activity and this is going to involve a role-play. So, we'll break the students into pairs. One will be an interviewer, the other will be an interviewee and they'll generate the language that that role-play will produce. What the teacher can do whilst that is taking place is to go around...  [Read more]

  Our next consideration is going to be building and maintaining rapport. The importance of rapport is that within our communicative activities, we're asking the students to talk to each other. If they feel comfortable with each other and with us, then that interaction is much more likely to be useful. So how do we actually build and maintain rapport? Well, it's easiest if we consider two stages of the course itself. What we can do at the start of the course and what we can do throughout the course to help build and maintain that rapport. So at the start of the course, it's very useful if we ask the students to create a name card and to make that name card visible to everyone. Secondly we need to try to do some ice breaking activities that will allow the students to interact with...  [Read more]

  Another TEFL trainee shares his experiences of completing his TEFL/TESOL in-class course in Sydney, Australia. In this TEFL review he talks about some of the course components and why he would recommend others to do the course. ITTT's intensive in-class course meets all international standards and our TEFL/TESOL certification courses are internationally recognized and accredited. No matter which of our training centers you select to complete the course you will receive the highest standards and support. 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...  [Read more]

Teaching English without a degree is, fortunately, possible. Regardless of your educational history, there are plenty of language schools that will be happy to employ you. True, having a degree opens up more doors and opportunities, but if you don't have one, there is no reason to let that stop you from pursuing your dream of teaching English abroad. The question of whether you need a degree to find a teaching position is arbitrary, as it is with many other occupations. There is no reason why an English teacher with a university degree would be more effective than one without. Certain traits (passion, commitment, and the ability to create rapport with your students, for example) are more important than a college diploma in this career, as they are in many others. It is important to note,...  [Read more]

  In this TEFL review video another TEFL/TESOL student shares some of her experiences as a student with ITTT completing the four week in-class course. Gaining a TEFL certification from ITTT is the first step towards an exciting and rewarding experience teaching English overseas. During your training course you will have the opportunity to meet and study with people from all over the world. Our trainees come from a variety of backgrounds and age groups. 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...  [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 main issue is going to be that of giving students individual attention. Here many classroom management and leaving potential discipline problems can be avoided by applying some simple rules to giving your students attention. The first one is to think about the way in which you ask questions. Don't ask questions in a predictable order. If you just go around the class asking questions from one person to the next then the person at the end of the class will know that it's going to be some time before you actually get to them. So try to mix up the way in which you're asking questions. In terms of answers to questions don't allow individual students to dominate all of the answers. One of the things that we can do to help this particular issue is to use the students names as...  [Read more]

  Our next consideration is going to be how we actually group our students. There are perhaps three types of grouping arrangements that we can consider and within those we'll have a look at the potential positive and negatives of those particular arrangements. So firstly, what arrangements can we use? We could arrange our group as a whole class so all of their activities will be done as a whole class. They could be working as individuals and the final grouping arrangement we'll consider is that of small groups or indeed the use of pair work. So for each of these types of arrangements what are the potential positive and negatives with that type of arrangement? For the whole class certainly one of the main positive features is that it gives that class a sense of belonging. Secondly...  [Read more]

  The next example of a game that we can adapt very easily for classroom use is the game of Jeopardy and in this particular game, what we can do is to have a set of levels for our questions, I'd say one through five, where one is going to be the easiest example and five is going to be the most difficult and then, in each of these sets of boxes, we can have various grammar points, such as tenses, perhaps modals, vocabulary and maybe even conditionals. So what the students can do is they can pick a particular topic first of all and within that topic, they can pick the level of the question that they want and then we can have a set of cards that have been created to fit into these slots and we can ask them that question at that level. So, a very simple adaptation of the game jeopardy...  [Read more]

  So, now we're going to fill the actual procedure of the lesson plan out itself. We mentioned at the start, the first thing we do, is to get some general information about the class that we'll be teaching and then, in order for someone to be able to cover our lesson, we need to present enough information in our lesson plan that they can actually carry it out. What I'm going to do is for each stage of the lesson, I'll indicate what I'm going to do in the lesson and then, we'll cut away from that to have a look to see how that will actually be achieved. So, our lesson is going to be based on a 45-minute lesson and the first phase is going to be the engage phase and it's going to be a straight arrow ESA lesson. I'm going to take approximately five minutes on my engage phase and in...  [Read more]

  There's another activity for comparing and contrasting the tenses focusing here in this activity on the present perfect and the present perfect continuous. So in the activity, students will start at the start and roll a die. Perhaps they can roll a 5. They will read 'something you've been learning for a long time'. The appropriate sentence may be 'I've been learning English for a long time.' The next student may go and roll 4. They read 'a beautiful place you've visited.' Then, rather than the present perfect continuous, they would use the present perfect tense: 'I visited Paris.' You can encourage students to even ask follow-up questions, which would also include other tenses: 'What was so beautiful about Paris?' Now, this activity will be particularly good for your more...  [Read more]