A Common Valentine's Day Present Top 7

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Xinjiezi Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Hanzhong Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Theme: Valentine's Day Goal: Students will engage in spelling, grammar, and pronunciation and learn about Valentine's Day as an American celebration Class Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: Valentine's Day worksheet ("Eliciting Vocabulary A-Z"), a stick, some paper and pens (for mustache activity), MadLibs worksheet with theme of Valentine's Day,...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Use these 7 activities for the ESL classroom to teach the simple present to your students and help them understand the correct structure and usage of the tense both quickly and easily. Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Setting up your EFL classroom is a very important task for any teacher of English abroad. Here are the best tips on how to set up your EFL classroom the right way to maximize efficiency and fun with your students. Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Use these 7 activities for teaching the past progressive for the ESL classroom to teach the present perfect tense to your students and help them understand the correct structure and usage of the tense. Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Student placement is an important part of every classroom....  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Use these 7 activities for the ESL classroom to teach the simple present to your students and help them understand the correct structure and usage of the tense both quickly and easily. Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Setting up your EFL classroom is a very important task for any teacher of English abroad. Here are the best tips on how to set up your EFL classroom the right way to maximize efficiency and fun with your students. Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Use these 7 activities for teaching the past progressive for the ESL classroom to teach the present perfect tense to your students and help them understand the correct structure and usage of the tense. Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Student placement is an important part of every classroom....  [Read more]

Jon ITTT Teaching Ideas Grammar lessons can often be quite boring for students so it is important for us as TEFL teachers to have fun activities that encourage the students to use the target language creatively and foster high student talking time. Below is a list of 10 activities that can be used for lessons on the past simple. The teacher creates a set of cards with present simple verbs and a set with the past simple form of the same verbs. The sets are mixed together and placed face down on the desk. Students take turns to turn over two cards. If the two cards match i.e. both forms of the same verb, the student has to make a sentence with the past simple form before they can keep the cards. If they cannot make a correct sentence, the cards are turned over and it is the next...  [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 New and Advanced Teachers This activity is...  [Read more]

Mark Crocker Teaching Ideas If like many TEFL qualified teachers, you have moved your teaching online in recent times you will probably have found that it is much harder than you might have imagined. Although you spend most of your lessons sitting down on a comfy office chair rather than standing in front of the class, you still end the day more exhausted than you ever did in a normal classroom setting. If this sounds familiar, don’t worry you are not alone as teaching English online is a tiring proposition for many teachers. Here we look at the main reasons why it is so tough and more importantly, what you can do to make things that bit easier. One of the biggest differences between teaching online and teaching in-class is trying to read how your students are reacting to any given...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Teaching new tenses to students of a foreign language is often not as easy as you might anticipate, especially when the tense you are trying to teach them does not exist in their native language. The following 7 activities for teaching the present perfect for the ESL classroom will help your students pick up the tense in no time! This is a great warm-up activity to make your students understand what the present perfect is all about. After teaching the structure of the tense, have your students write down 2-3 things they have accomplished in their lives. When they are finished, have your students share their statements with the class, for example, “I have won a speech contest,” “I have traveled to America,” or “I have learned to play the piano.”...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas When the aroma of gingerbread and eggnog is in the air, you know it’s time to translate your love for the most beautiful season of the year into your TEFL classroom with winter ESL activities! While this is the perfect time to embrace winter in TEFL destinations with changing seasons, it’s also ideal to educate your students living in places with tropical temperatures and other cultures about the holiday celebrations. Here are 7 amazing winter and Christmas ESL activities your students will love! Tell your students to imagine the following: You wake up in your bed and look out the window when you see a brightly decorated Christmas tree. It’s cold and even looks like snow is slowly falling from the sky. The perfect winter day. What do you want to do...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Teaching grammar patterns often involves a lot of classtime and the more activities you have up your sleeve as a teacher the better. The following 7 activities for teaching the past progressive for the ESL classroom will help your students pick up the tense in no time! Pull up an image with a lot of actions going on, for example, people engaging in different activities at a park or another public place. You can either hand out printed images or show it to your students on an overhead projector or TV. After having your students analyze the image, turn off the TV or collect the prints and start asking what the people in the photo were doing. Also read: 5 Reasons Why Teaching English Abroad Enhances Your Career Prospects This is a great activity you can...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information Teaching Ideas Are you ready to teach English abroad? Before you step into the classroom, don't forget to read up on these 5 common types of EFL students and how to deal with them. Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Use these 7 activities for teaching the present perfect for the ESL classroom to teach the present perfect tense to your students and help them understand the correct structure and usage of the tense. Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information Teaching Ideas These top 10 mistakes to avoid in the classroom while teaching English abroad will help you become a better EFL teacher and make sure your students learn English in the most effective way possible. Mark Crocker Teaching Ideas No matter how well you plan your lessons, it is inevitable that...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information Teaching Ideas Are you ready to teach English abroad? Before you step into the classroom, don't forget to read up on these 5 common types of EFL students and how to deal with them. Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Use these 7 activities for teaching the present perfect for the ESL classroom to teach the present perfect tense to your students and help them understand the correct structure and usage of the tense. Linda Dunsmore TEFL Information Teaching Ideas These top 10 mistakes to avoid in the classroom while teaching English abroad will help you become a better EFL teacher and make sure your students learn English in the most effective way possible. Mark Crocker Teaching Ideas No matter how well you plan your lessons, it is inevitable that...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Nongchangchangbu? Are you interested in teaching English in Kashi Diqu — Kashgar, Kaxgar? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Unit 4 has helped me get a much better understanding of the present simple, present continuous and present perfect sentences. I know that the present perfect is the past that relates to the present connecting the 2 tenses which can start with has or have after the subject is assigned. There are 7 usages to the present simple which include...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In the early lessons of the course, I was able to better understand the components of the sentence, and the knowledge about word types was expanded. It includes a definite article, adjective, noun, verb, preposition, adverb, conjunction, gerund, personal pronoun. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Phuong P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. In unit 4, we have started talking about tenses in English. I looked at the four present tenses; the present simple, present continuous (sometimes called the present progressive), present perfect and present perfect continuous. Summary, the tense system is probably the area of the English language that causes students (and often...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas The simple past is one of the most important tenses in the English language. As it describes past actions, it's quite an easy tense to teach using a variety of fun and interactive activities. Here are 7 activities for teaching the simple past for the ESL classroom. For more activities check out: 10 Exciting Activities for the Past Simple For this activity, the students think of significant accomplishments in their lives. After sharing with the class what they have accomplished, the students should describe what they did in order to achieve this goal, for example they graduated college, studied English, took classes, etc. It’s important that the students use the simple past to talk about these actions. Also read: 7 Activities for Teaching the Present...  [Read more]

Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences I worked as an Emirates Airlines flight attendant for over 6 years. In order to be accepted you need to pass multiple group exercises, a written exam and a two person interview. There are always over a thousand applicants but they only accept a very small number. Two years ago I left the company and moved to Vietnam where I noticed a great interest in younger people wanting to become flight attendants, but many were fearful of the Open Day, a two day process of interviews and exercises because they were not sure if their level of English was good enough. It didn’t take long for me and two friends, who had also worked for the same airline, to decide to put together an 8 day course for people interested in becoming a flight attendant. This post was...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Schools are starting again and students and teachers flock back to the classroom. Check out these simple and powerful back-to-school ideas and your students will surely remember this first lesson of yours for a long time! Have your students write a short report (or let them do it verbally) about something newsworthy that happened in their neighborhood or town during the school break. Introduce a weekly journal to your students. The focus of this should be on fluency practice and less on correctness. Have your students write in the journal every day based on a topic that came up in class. Divide your class into groups and hand out one paragraph of a reading topic to every group. Then, have them share the information to complete the reading and create a...  [Read more]

Dana W TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Online learning has become extremely popular over the last several years. Many people take college courses and several other types of learning classes online, especially now during this global pandemic. If you’re considering online learning, you may have questions. What makes it different from taking a class in a language school? Are online teachers just as qualified to teach me? Will I learn the same information as I would face to face? I’d like to provide some clarity on what to expect when learning a language online. In one-to-one online classes, you can be sure that all of the attention will be dedicated to you! You and your instructor will be face to face with no concern about being judged by classmates sitting around...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I have been teaching ESL classes professionally for two years. In addition to this experience, I have several years of experience as a volunteer teacher/mentor with ESL students. Through my experiences, I have learned that importance of establishing immediate rapport in the classroom. In this short article, I will talk about why it is vital to establish rapport from the very first day between the students and teacher as well as among the students. I will offer advice from my own experience of teaching both young learners and adults. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Michael S. Establishing rapport between the teacher and student is something that begins on the first day of class and it starts with a smile and welcoming words. In...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences I am in my 3rd year of working in the countryside of Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in public elementary and junior high schools. An ALT's official job description is to be the assistant to a Japanese Teacher of Language (JTL). In my experience, especially in elementary schools, the ALT is not seen as an assistant but as "the English teacher" since the regular homeroom teacher has no training or experience with ESL. In most cases, the ALT has a degree in a field unrelated to teaching and has no qualifications. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Carl S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. At the moment, English in elementary schools in Japan is a class...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Every preschool/ kindergarten level teacher will swear by the need for excellent constructive circle time. It sets the tone for what is to follow throughout the day. A good circle time should be welcoming, engaging, and informative. Children should not be forced into participation; instead should be drawn into it. Circle time is the classic example of a good "engage" stage in an ESA teaching style. Therefore, during circle time, you introduce a topic that is to be covered that day or week. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Najia S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Depending upon the students' age, the activities listed below can be...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences The word ‘grammar’ is often feared by students and teachers alike. It has an image of being difficult to comprehend and hard to teach. However, with planning and a positive approach to the lesson, it can be a fun and interesting way to improve English skills. Also, students can often feel a true sense of accomplishment by being able to use the vocabulary and sentences structures that they have learned. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Janet K. So where do we start? How to use verbs and the study of tenses is a perfect first step. By dividing the tenses into three sections, present, past and future, and then again into the simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous forms, we can start to show the students that there...  [Read more]

Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas The difference between formal and informal grammar is very apparent both in everyday life and during ones time as a teacher of English as a foreign language. These differences, I believe, play an important part in why many language learners find it so difficult to understand and become fluent. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Daniel B. As a native English speaker and an ongoing learner of Spanish I find myself struggling with these differences as well. Much of the English grammar we learn in school in America is grammar that the person knows they are likely to use very sparingly. This is why most students fail to truly pay attention in their literature class. People speak more commonly in short form and with well...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Playing games is not only for fun, but we can use it to make students more understand about the topic of the lesson. Games also can build rapport between student-student and teacher-class. How a game is important to make students understand the topic of the lesson? This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Umi H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. For some students, playing a game is a fun thing. It also can kill boredom and increase the attention of students. Games also can make students more understand the lesson in class. For children who always want to play even in class, they have a short span of attention, playing games are quite helpful. A class of 10 years old...  [Read more]

  Willy from the U.S.A. is currently living in Japan and took the 120-hour online TESOL course with tutor support and videos from ITTT. In this TESOL review video, Willy tells us that he has been living in Japan for the last 7 years and working as an assistant language teacher. He really enjoyed the course which brought him a number of new perspectives and ideas and helped him to improve his teaching skills. 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 learned...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Teaching speaking skills is an important part of an ESL class. Sometimes, entire conversation classes are established that focus solely on speaking. Here are 7 great games for your ESL conversation class. Write down the names and key points about five celebrities and assign them to the same amount of students in your classroom. One by one, a student enters a “party” with another student playing the host. The host must then find out the identity of each guest by having a conversation with everyone. Have your students stand in a circle. Choose a specific grammar point and have the first person asks a question using the grammar structure. The student then throws a ball to another student who answers the question making sure to use the correct grammar. If...  [Read more]

  Once you have completed your chosen TEFL course and have that all important certificate in your hand, you can seriously start to plan the next stage of your adventure. Thanks to the sustained demand for English language teachers right across the world there are plenty of countries to choose from, each with its own unique set of attractions. But how long will you have to commit for when you sign the job contract? Europe The most common contract in European schools is for an academic year that generally runs from September to June. The great thing here is you will have a couple of months off during the summer break to travel or earn some extra cash working with private students or at a summer camp. Summer language camps are very popular across much of Europe and usually run for 4...  [Read more]

Already bear in mind that a good teacher is a combination of teacher's personality of being kind, patient, caring, lively, passionate and of teacher's ability of building up comfortable as well as suc I learnt from adjectives that many games can be played in the class room using students height, age, size and many more. And also it is very difficult for teachers and students to make common mistakes This unit has been extremely helpful i have learned the various forms of eliciting L2 and great ways to make my class interactive and very much didactic. One of the best topics were the plannings arou In unit two I have learned that parts of speech are a very difficult topic for foreign students. When teaching this section students that want to speak English, must have a proper understanding of...  [Read more]

Laura Payne Teaching Ideas Much of language learning comes through language experimentation; steering away from examples and formulas and attempting to arrange your own ideas into words. No matter what a student's goal may be in learning English, they will eventually have to do this by leaving the classroom and using English on their own. Activities like creative writing are one method to encourage the practice of experimentation and expression in ESL students. In this post, we're going to look at five different activities students can use to put their thoughts into writing. Celebrating a new year is practically a universal tradition, and all students have goals. Writing down New Year's resolutions allows students to practice various usages of the future tense. These include using the...  [Read more]

Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas As ESL teachers there are many things we can do to make our lessons both productive and enjoyable. In this post, an ITTT graduate discusses the benefit of games as a teaching tool. Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas By taking a TEFL certification course you will learn about many different areas of teaching the English language. In this post, one of our graduates takes a look at classroom management. Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Evaluation and testing are important areas of an English language teachers day to day job. In this post an ITTT graduate looks at what these terms actually mean and how to use them in your classroom. Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas In this article, an...  [Read more]

Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas As ESL teachers there are many things we can do to make our lessons both productive and enjoyable. In this post, an ITTT graduate discusses the benefit of games as a teaching tool. Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas By taking a TEFL certification course you will learn about many different areas of teaching the English language. In this post, one of our graduates takes a look at classroom management. Mark Crocker Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Evaluation and testing are important areas of an English language teachers day to day job. In this post an ITTT graduate looks at what these terms actually mean and how to use them in your classroom. Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas In this article, an...  [Read more]