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Individual Lessons vs. Group Lessons: What Works Best for Teachers? - TEFL Blog
Elizaveta Pachina
Teaching Ideas
Teaching is probably one of the most rewarding professions that can exist. I've always dreamed to be a teacher, being able to make a difference and be the one students can look up to. This opportunity was given to me when an English training institute from China called Web international English (also called Web) hired me as an ESL teacher. The web is a private English school which provides different class sizes such as VIP(1 to 1), Private(1 to 4), Salon(1 to 10) and Social(1 to 25+). These various courses helped me to differentiate and experience the difference between teaching one to one and groups.
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Options for Private Classes
Disadvantages of This Approach
What's Important for any Lesson Types?
Disadvantages of Group Teaching... [Read more]
Tefl reviews - Lesson Planning Part 1 Why Do We Plan Lessons - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
Hello. This presentation is going to cover this section on lesson planning and what we're going to do is to have a look as to why we go about planning a lesson, what do we actually put in it? We'll create an empty lesson plan pro-forma and then having done that what we'll do is to fill in that lesson plan for a particular teaching point. So, our starting position is going to be: "Why do we plan lessons at all?" There are a number of reasons why we need to plan a lesson. The first and foremost perhaps is that it's going to create a logical sequence for our lessons. If we didn't have a lesson plan, it is quite possible that we could go all over the place and it would become confusing for the students. By having this plan, what we've created is a structure that we can work from. So,... [Read more]
How Will My Personal Teaching Experiences as a Russian Teacher Help Me as an English Teacher? - TEFL Blog
Federico Riva
TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas
You have to put the emphasis on the right syllable," I said, finishing my demonstration.
Challenges in the Second Class: Timing and Assumptions
Learning from Mistakes: Lessons for Effective Language Teaching
Apology and Humility: A Turning Point
Valuable Lessons for Language Instructors
Carrying Lessons Forward: Teaching English with Confidence
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My very first class of students learning Russian had expressed their disdain for their books with stress notes denoted on every word. They started reading from the copies without the stress marks and consequently were butchering the... [Read more]
Useful Tips on How to Adopt Lessons for One-to-One Teaching
Elizaveta Pachina
Teaching Ideas
When teaching English lessons, a teacher will more than likely find themselves in the position of teaching a class with only one student. It is for this reason that it is useful to consider the ways in which a teacher needs to adapt their lessons to be suitable for one to one teaching. It is also useful to consider the advantages and disadvantages of such classes in order for the teacher to be better prepared for any issues that may arise.
How many students?
Consider Your Prepared Activities
Anticipate Possible Problems
Adjust Your Techniques
Find Appropriate Materials
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The Teaching Dilemma: Group vs. One-to-One Lessons - TEFL Blog
Federico Riva
Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas
As someone who currently teaches both one-to-one students and groups of students, I find it easier to discuss this topic based on my personal experience.
One-to-One: A Satisfying Experience for Teachers and Students
Cultural Considerations: Groups Add Complexity
Grammar Teaching: A Comparison
Talk Time: Group vs. Individual
Resource Management: A Cost Comparison
Class Dynamics: Group Challenges
Homework: Accountability Matters
Personalized Learning: Tailoring the Experience
Challenges of One-on-One: Student Commitment
The Choice: Personal Comfort vs. Individual Attention
Conclusion: The Flexibility and Depth of One-to-One Lessons
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The Importance of Lesson Planning for ESL Teaching - TEFL Blog
Linda Dunsmore
TEFL Information
Having a form of structure has always been a vital element in order to perform any task to my best ability. Therefore, lesson planning was a subject which I knew would be a large factor in order for me to become a successful teacher.
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1. A lesson plan keeps a check on time within a class.
2. A lesson plan is a written record.
3. A lesson plan allows the teacher to be prepared.
Other things to keep in mind
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This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jessica M.
The two main principles of a successful class are direction and flexibility; flexibility relies strongly on the teacher's experience and... [Read more]
How much should I charge for private English lessons? - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ TEFL FAQs
Setting rates for private English tutoring should reflect your teaching experience and qualifications. Beginners in the field typically start with rates from $15 to $20 per hour. Experienced educators with a solid track record and additional credentials, like a TEFL certificate or specialized training, can sometimes charge up to $50 per hour. Many TEFL teachers complement their main teaching roles with private lessons and may eventually move to full-time tutoring. When establishing your fees, consider factors like your experience, the local demand for English lessons, the cost of living in your area, and what the market can bear to ensure competitive yet fair pricing.
How much should a newly-qualified teacher charge?
What about online lessons?
How much can I charge once I have some... [Read more]
ESA (Engage-Study-Activate) Writing Skills Lesson Plan for an Elementary English Class - TEFL Blog
Federico Riva
Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas
Teaching writing skills to elementary English learners can be an exciting and rewarding experience. With a well-structured lesson plan, you can engage students, introduce key concepts, and provide opportunities for practice. In this blog post, we'll walk you through a sample one-hour straight arrow ESA (Engage-Study-Activate) writing skills lesson plan, tailored for an elementary English class.
Engage (10 minutes):
Study (25 minutes):
Activate (20 minutes):
Summary (5 minutes):
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To kickstart the class, begin with a lively warm-up activity that activates students' prior knowledge and generates interest... [Read more]
Tefl reviews - Lesson Planning Part 2 What Does A Lesson Plan Contain - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
So, the document itself needs to contain some general information about the class, for example the name of the teacher, the date and time of the lesson, what level of class is being taught and in what room, how many students are we expecting, this is important, when we've got things like photocopying and materials to do, what is the context of the lesson, in other words, what is the lesson actually about, what vocabulary or grammar point is this lesson covering and sometimes it's also useful to write out what the focus of the lesson is. So, in effect, the context of the lesson is telling us the grammar point, for example, that might be the present continuous tense, whereas the focus is telling us how we're going to go about teaching it. Another example to illustrate this: Let's... [Read more]
Phrases for Negotiating Prices in English - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
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Lessons on negotiating price are common in EFL classrooms worldwide as it is practical language that your students are likely to use when visiting an English speaking country.
Once you have taught the basics of prices and negotiating in English your students might want to try some of the more complicated phrases above that can be used when buying items in shops and markets in English speaking countries. To practice what they have learned you can set up a role playing game where the students play either the buyer or shop keeper.
fixed budget – a maximum amount you can afford to pay tight budget – very little flexibility in what you can afford to pay particular budget – meets your estimate of what... [Read more]
Top Tips for Teaching English to Young Learners - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
hi welcome Linda here from ITT back this week with another live session I hope you're doing well thank you so much for joining me today I'm happy to see you if you can see me and if you can hear me clearly if everything's working please just leave a high in the comment section and uh maybe also let me know where you are right now where are you watching from today what time is it there how are you doing let me know in the comments we are live on Facebook and on YouTube at the same time and we also always turn our live sessions into podcast episodes so if you're listening to this as a podcast thank you so much for the download and thank you so much for listening we really appreciate that don't forget to like And subscribe um so you're always up to date whenever we go live um last week we had... [Read more]
The Importance of Teaching Slang to ESL Students - TEFL Blog
Elizaveta Pachina
Teaching Ideas
In January, I stood in front of a class of breakthrough English students at a university in Bogotá, Colombia. I'd never taught students in an ESL classroom before, but I was pretty confident having seven years of experience under my belt and a degree in literature. I was naive. I began the lesson with the class that my co-teacher had lent me for the first time. The objective of the lesson was to practice using past tense through storytelling; five minutes into it, I called on a student with his hand in the air. " What up, My Nigga!" He said it and I almost lost all of my composure on the first day while I should have been thinking about building rapport.
Tool for communication
Pronunciation peculiarities
Advanced level of vocabulary
Do you want to... [Read more]
How is teaching business English different from general English? - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ TEFL FAQs
Business English and General English serve distinct purposes and audiences:
In essence, while General English provides foundational language skills, Business English hones in on the nuanced communication needs of the business realm.
Business English classes
What's the difference between business English and general English?
Business English resources
Business English is a unique area of teaching that comes under the banner of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Business English courses are designed for employees of any type of company who need to communicate using English in the workplace. Business English classes can cover a range of areas including:
A business English course often includes employees from all levels of a particular company, from salespeople and receptionists, to... [Read more]
How to Create Lessons Based on Videos - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
hey there it's lizzy here and i'm super happy to welcome you to our weekly live stream uh so this live stream is provided by um itttt international tefl and t soul certification uh training um if you haven't watched our recent live streams please feel free to go to one of our social networks and check out the previous videos because we usually try to give you some value and uh we share really useful topics um on the regular basis and today's live stream is going to be devoted to um creating uh lessons based on videos and uh i'm going to change the size of the slide right now let me know guys if you see and hear me clearly there is a comment section uh in the live stream uh so feel free to um write down type in any words any um i don't know any greetings there uh so that i know that... [Read more]
Great Ideas for Teaching Listening Skills in the ESL Classroom - TEFL Blog
Mark Crocker
Teaching Ideas
Of the four language skills taught in an ESL classroom, listening skills are often overlooked as teachers can be unsure how to make these lessons interesting and relevant to their students. However, as listening skills are a fundamental part of the language learning process, it is vital that we give them the classroom time they deserve. The good news is that there are many ways to make listening skills lessons both fun and productive. Here are 6 ideas for livening up your lesson plans.
Popular Culture
Secret Phrase
Celebrity Squares
Describe the Picture
Listen and Quiz
Vowel Cards
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One simple way to engage your students in a listening lesson is to use popular... [Read more]
Review From Tefl Student Akira - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
Akira is from Japan and he recently took the 120-hour TEFL/TESOL course with tutor support and videos. He learned how to create a lesson plan, interactive teaching activities and useful tips and tricks how to present English lessons effectively. He enjoyed the resources to keep his students interested in his lessons and recommends the course to anyone wanting to live abroad and teach English.
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Designing Syllabus for Flawless Lessons - TEFL Blog
Elizaveta Pachina
Teaching Ideas
Designing the syllabus of a course is one of the greatest challenges a teacher has to face and undertake way in advance to the actual implementation of the said syllabus – and before the actual beginning of any language course. When a teacher starts to plan a syllabus, he/she may not even have an exact, clear and set idea of what is expected of him/her and the students to achieve and complete during and by the end of the course. Still, planning is essential as it can save a lot of time for everyone involved, eliminate many problems, and provide the teacher with a framework and a starting point for plans and modifications.
Students and their abilities
Needs in the real-life environment
Types of materials
Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a... [Read more]
Problems of First Lessons and How to Overcome Them - TEFL Blog
Linda Dunsmore
Alumni Experiences
Challenges are inevitable especially if you want to be successful at what you do and teaching EFL is not devoid of them. In fact, teaching English as a Foreign Language can be very much exciting but also very challenging as it comes with lots of problems. Among these problems are what to do for the first lessons and how to get students motivated for the EFL course. These problems like many others have solutions and this essay seeks to highlight the problems and provide some practical solutions to them.
First impressions are the most lasting
Overcoming this issue
Getting your students motivated
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This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Belinda S.
What to... [Read more]
Tefl reviews - Lesson Planning Part 4 Lesson Plan Example - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
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 to... [Read more]
Enhancing Listening Skills: Key Considerations for Adult ESL Classes - TEFL Blog
Federico Riva
TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas
Listening is possibly the least covered of the four skills needed by ESL learners in most classrooms. As it is a fundamental skill, teachers should try to create as many listening skills lessons as they do for the other three skills: reading, writing, and speaking.
Challenges of Listening Compared to Reading
The Stages of Listening
The Receiving Stage: Hearing and Attending
The Understanding Stage: Decoding and Comprehension
The Evaluating Stage: Forming Opinions and Thinking Ahead
The Remembering Stage: Processing and Storing Information
The Responding Stage: Verbal or Written Answers
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Do TEFL teachers need a second language? - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ TEFL FAQs
The simple answer is no, you do not need to have any knowledge or experience of languages other than English to take a TEFL course or to become an EFL teacher. The ability to speak other languages is not required as the vast majority of TEFL classrooms around the world rely on the communicative approach to English teaching that specifies that English is the only language used in the classroom.
How can I teach English if I don't speak the student's language?
Does it help if a teacher has learnt a foreign language?
Should I learn the local language while teaching English abroad?
In a diverse EFL classroom, where students may hail from varied linguistic backgrounds, speaking one or two native languages isn't always beneficial. In fact, in monolingual settings, students might lean on... [Read more]
Master Your TEFL Interview Demo Lesson: Tips and Strategies for Success - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
Hi, welcome Linda here, from ITTT. Back with another live session this week. And this week we're talking about the demo lesson and how to hold effective demo lessons for your TEFL interviews so you get hired. Yeah, welcome back, I'm back here again. You know we go live every week. I hope you know by now. Don't forget to like and subscribe so you always stay up to date, you never miss any of our upcoming live sessions. We usually go to go live at this time on this day so please stay tuned, give us a like, give us a subscription wherever you're watching from. We're actually live on Facebook and on YouTube at the same time, so whichever platform you prefer you can tune in.
Of course you can leave a bunch of comments as well, please let me know where are you right now, where are you watching... [Read more]
Tefl reviews - Lesson Planning Part 3 What Does A Lesson Plan Contain - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
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]
Where to Find Materials for Online English Lessons - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
hello hello welcome to the weekly ITTT session my name is lisa and i'm glad um that some people have been joining already so um i hope everything works smooth here and you can hear me clearly and see me well if not if anything goes wrong please let me know in the comment section uh so that i could fix it quickly and i'm happy to j uh i'm happy to welcome you here today thanks for coming to this session today we are going to talk about a vital topic of lesson materials i know that many people still struggle uh looking for resources and contents for the lessons so um this is something i want to dwell upon today and uh just while we are waiting for some more people to join us please let me know where are you guys tuning in from um i'm located in the euro region of russia in yekaterinburg... [Read more]
3 Best Tools to Gamify Your Online Lessons - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
hi again everyone this is another live stream session by itt and my name is lisa i am happy to welcome you to this livestream session and today we're gonna discuss um three interesting tools you might utilize to make your lessons uh interactive and engaging because these uh things will help you to gamify to gamify your classes so in my previous live stream i actually shared uh several trends uh like 10 uh trends for 2022 that you have to think about to implement in your online classes and today i will dive into this idea of gamifying lessons and share several tools that you might actually use to help your students uh get excited and engaged into your content and i hope that you will love these ideas uh these are going to be actually um online teaching tools so they are um some of them um... [Read more]
3 Best Tools To Gamify Your Online Lessons - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
Tools for Online Lessons: Last week we talked about trends in online ESL teaching in 2022. In this live stream, Liza will help you implement one of them. Come to this live stream to learn about three fantastic gamification tools! With these instruments, your students will love your classes like no one else's. #TEFL#BestTEFL #TeachEnglishOnline Are you ready to teach English abroad or online? Click here and get started today: bit.ly/37gs5vO What is TEFL Certification? Where is it valid: bit.ly/36ma2Fg Check out our wide range of TEFL Courses: bit.ly/3ltqt73 Teach English online from anywhere you want: bit.ly/3ltqEPL
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How Can Knowledge of First Language Acquisition Aid Successful Second Language Acquisition? - TEFL Blog
Elizaveta Pachina
Teaching Ideas
Successful acquisition of a first language (otherwise known as an L1) has almost a 100% success rate. Aside from a few people that are unable to read or write everyone can communicate fluently in their L1. Successful acquisition of a second language, however, does not occur nearly as often. Why is this so and can anything be learned from first language learning to improve second language fluency.
Variations in the English Language Form
Language Acquisition Process
Second Language Acquisition Process
Teaching Ways
Children and Language Acquisition
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This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Rebekah I. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the... [Read more]
Tefl reviews - Lesson Planning Part 6 Lesson Plan Example Study Phase - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
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]
Tefl reviews - Lesson Planning Part 5 Lesson Plan Procedure Engage - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ITTT
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 the... [Read more]
ITTT - ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ Lesson Planning
Lesson planning is an important part of being a teacher. While experienced teachers may appear to not require a plan it is only because they have probably taught a lesson so many times that the majority of their plan is in their head. They will still have a good idea of how they want and expect the lesson to proceed. Inexperienced teachers will need the structure a good lesson plan provides. A good plan acts as a guide to your planning.
It helps a teacher consider the direction of the lesson and possible pitfalls and diversions. It also helps a teacher keep on track during the lesson but should not be so restrictive that it prevents flexibility in class. A lesson plan also serves as a record of what you have taught before enabling you to easily see what to review at later dates and to... [Read more]