Speaking Activity Example

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Speaking activities are essential for English learning as they give a chance to learn new linguistic points, including grammar and real-life listening skills. Unfortunately, teachers often omit communicative tasks in the classroom because they feel that it is difficult to manage them. There is also a lack of time to practice speaking; many course books provide ESL speaking activities only at the end of a unit. The educational system requires reading and writing skills to succeed in tests, so the value of communicative speaking is often underestimated. In this blog post, we offer you 5 engaging ESL speaking activities for English learners to enhance their communication skills. Teachers can use these ideas to develop language usage...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Tianzhuang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Yan'an 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. Although all parts of a lesson are equally important, the "engage phase" may be the most important. The “engage phase” is the departing point of the lesson, and where you will focus the attention of the students away from the other occurrences of the day, and make them focus on learning the English language. Choosing the activity in which to grab the students'...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Daliuxing Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Yantai 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. It is very important to be aware of how much time is spent during a lesson with the students listening to a teacher compared to students undertaking activities and also talking for themselves. First of all as a teacher it isn't necessarily a bad thing talking to a class because it eposes the students to the language they are learning. It also means what they are...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Although all parts of a lesson are equally important, the "engage phase" may be the most important. The “engage phase” is the departing point of the lesson, and where you will focus the attention of the students away from the other occurrences of the day, and make them focus on learning the English language. Choosing the activity in which to grab the students' attention can be a challenge, as it must grab the students’ attention within one or two minutes. The best types of activities are those in which students are fully engaged in a cognitive, critical thinking process. Through various studies, music has shown to be an activity which utilizes many parts of the brain at once and therefore is a great activity to “jump-start” the brain, and get...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Jianchi Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Ankang 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. Speaking and writing are called productive skills. Both are used for the same purpose which is communication. When we learn a language, we listen to those around us at first (Listening). Then, we try to make utterances (Speaking) and finally we learn to read and write in that language. Speaking: To make students speak, the teacher must create a desire and need for...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Speaking is one of the most important skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing). We do not only help students to understand, write and read it, but also speak it fluently. Teaching speaking skills for a mixed-ability classroom is not easy. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Huyen N. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. When we are teaching a class with has students who are clearly of different levels. They may have different starting levels of English or they may learn at very different speeds. the teacher easy to get frustrated in a class of mixed ability. The students also feel bored and frustrated. The stronger students may feel held back, weaker students may feel...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Teaching Ideas What are ice breakers and when and where do we use them? In this blog post, we will cover these issues and give actual examples of activities you can use with your classes. Icebreakers are games or activities that are designed to ‘break the ice’. Typically you would use these kinds of games or activities at the beginning of a new school year, when you have a new set of students, or a new class that you don't know and they don't know you. You also can use icebreakers to get your students going at the start of the lesson speaking in English and that's really important as you don't want to come into the classroom and say, “Open your books to page five” and then start studying. Often your classroom may be the only place where they are...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The more a teacher speaks the less attention the learners will pay. Decreasing teacher speaking time can be done with a few practical steps and wonderful teaching methods. It all starts with proper planning. When designing a lesson plan be sure to include assignments and activities that will engage your students and do not call for a teacher dominant role. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Johnelle M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Using activities in the classroom that engage the students is very important. For example, instead of going right into a lecture, using a pass the ball activity allows the students to get engaged and the teacher to observe strengths and...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas In a previous post, we looked at various teaching ideas for future simple and here we’re going to describe some fun ideas for teaching three other future tenses. There are a wide variety of usages for future tenses and it’s always important to make sure your activities focus on the usages that you’ve taught in your lesson. For example, future continuous can be used to talk about an ongoing action at a point in the future, a fixed future event, polite enquiries or to predict the future or the present. Predicting the present is one that students often have trouble conceptualizing, so we might as well start from there. When someone we care about is going on a long journey we often think about what they might be doing at any given time. When we do this we...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in XujiahuZhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Linyi 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. At first, teaching beginner students may seem difficult, especially in a mono-lingual classroom where the students use their native language most of the time and you know nothing of their language. Soon this will be the most rewarding teaching experience one can have. Beginners can be at any age and have their own reason for learning English as a second language. They...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Jingyou Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Taiyuan 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. Teaching English is a career path that brings many rewarding learning opportunities. The aspect of teaching or learning a new language itself opens up a world of possibilities for both the teachers and students alike. For the teacher, there is the possibility of travel, cultural knowledge exchange, and watching students mature as an English learner. For the...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Huangqian Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Tai'an 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. Teaching young learners is quite a lot of fun, but not always easy. Teachers always have to be on guard (not physically, of course) and ready to deal with whatever problems there may occur. I am not talking about "big" problems but the "small" ones like losing students' attention and willingness to learn. Being prepared does not necessarily mean to prepare the...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Xiajiaying Zhen [incl. Xiajiaying Shengtai Gongye Yuanqu]? Are you interested in teaching English in Luliang 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. Games and other fun activities are just as stimulating for adults as they are for students from younger age groups. The games and activities will help bring your class together, raise their energy levels and, most importantly, provide a framework which will motivate students to produce the desired language. Usage of games...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Yuze Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Changzhi 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. Creative writing allows English Language Learning (ELL) students to express themselves in the classroom while gaining invaluable English experience. Students who balk at the idea of filling in worksheets or others who avoid speaking during class time may feel more comfortable expressing their English abilities through the controlled writing environment. Furthermore,...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Mazhuang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Tai'an 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. A teacher is someone who provides knowledge and improves the skills of her students. A teacher must first and foremost be passionate about her role so that her students are in turn motivated to learn from her. She must have good knowledge on the subject she is teaching and show kindness and compassion when sharing that knowledge with her students. A teacher is...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Gutao Zhen [incl. Gǔcheng Jiedao, Chengdong Jiedao, Chengxi Jiedao]? Are you interested in teaching English in Jinzhong 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. As a native English teacher myself, teaching English in a country where the primary language is not English you must, whether the students are children, teenagers, or adults, keep them interested and intrigued in learning a new language. Humans in general get bored very easily if they just sit in a class and...  [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 might be: Yes/No, sentence analysis,...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas For this Summative Task, I will be discussing the topic of teaching productive skills in the classroom. As opposed to receptive skills learned previously (reading and listening), productive skills focus on speaking and writing. Regarding writing, this function of language education is often the most neglected in the TEFL world, due firstly, to the fact that teachers and students don't want to monopolize class time with quiet individually driven work. Writing skills are mostly practiced in the form of homework which can often be neglected and completed without necessary focus and effort. Concerning speaking, this function requires a higher deal of language fluency as well as an understanding of the accent and pronunciation of vocabulary. Additionally,...  [Read more]

  The second conditional is used when speaking about dreams, fantasies and hypothetical situations. This video is specifically aimed at teaching the second conditional in an ESL setting. 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 unit was a great reminder about conditionals. I really liked the activity ideas in the unit, there were some great examples of activities that would be fun for students and help them learn conditionals and reported speech. I really...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas "Play is our brain's favorite way of learning" – Diane Ackerman. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Danila E. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. I could not agree more with the quote above as playing games in the classroom has many advantages: The main thing needed for a successful process of learning is, of course, motivation. And playing games certainly increases students' interest and their willingness to participate in the class. However, every teacher must ensure the group's understanding of the game rules and processes before starting the actual game. Incomplete understanding may lead to the opposite effect - some people may get...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Yinshan Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Tai'an 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. Jeremy Harmer in his book How to Teach English detailed the ESA method of teaching English. Using ESA is important because it keeps the teacher organized and students interested, motivated, and eager to learn. ESA really clicked with me because it can be used to teach anything. It isn’t limited to teaching English as a foreign language. I understand the logical...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Anli Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Weinan 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. Throughout the journey of a TEFL or a TESOL native or non-native English speaking teacher, there are many unforgettable moments of achievements and moments of challenges. Some teachers might think their challenges are easy, others find it very difficult. One of these challenges is building rapport with an English Class. Why is building rapport important for any class?...  [Read more]

Ramon Perez Teaching Ideas Every day, we learn something new. It can happen on the street, at work, at school and even in our home. We can attain new skills and knowledge through our interactions with our surroundings. Utilizing our 5 senses and past experiences to make sense of what is going on, we can ascertain new concepts and make proper use of them in our daily lives. However, as a teacher, we are tasked with transmitting abstract concepts that become difficult to fully grasp through traditional methods. Consequently, some teachers rely on literal translations to bring the point across. Since the student’s exposure to the target language can be extremely limited outside of the classroom, it’s important to fully immerse the students in the language while in the classroom. The...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Daiwan Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Liaocheng 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. In this course, we took a closer look at what it takes to be successful in teaching English to young learners. Young learners being defined as anyone between the age of five years and thirteen years. While this course covered many different topics, there was one specific topic that I found very interesting, namely the use of games in the classroom. In this paper, I...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Dongchang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Chengdu 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. When I was younger, my best friend and I used to do scavenger hunts all the time. Her mother would create and hide the clues for us to find and have a prize waiting for us at the end of it all. Not only was this activity really fun, but it also had us thinking throughout it’s duration. We would do these scavenger hunts rain or shine, sometimes inside, but mostly...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I would like to introduce five flashcards activities which I found fun and practical to enhance a student's vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, listening, and speaking. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate MOHSEN H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. This activity is designed to teach vocabulary as well as practice listening. It can be used for teaching various categories (animals, food, fruits, …) or a mix of them. The teacher gives each of the students a set of flashcards and asks them to show him/her the correct card when they hear the item spoken. For example: “Show me a pig” “Hands up if you’ve got a banana” “Stand up if you have the bread” This...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Qiongxi Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Aba Zangzu Qiangzu Zizhizhou —? 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. Games have always been associated with ‘fun’ and regarded as leisurely activities done for the purpose of amusement, especially in one’s free time. Having said that, more traditional and conventional approaches in classrooms frown upon games, and it was only in recent years that teachers started incorporating games more frequently in their...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Guoyingshanxishayuanqiye Gongsi? Are you interested in teaching English in Weinan 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. Lesson planning Why is lesson planning important? Lesson planning means that the teacher establishes his/her credibility. It shows that you are organized, structured, have thought about what you are going to do, and understand your area of expertise. Is lesson planning a 100% sure thing? Like all things in life that involve a group of human beings,...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Yushan Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Linyi 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. Teachers influence the lives of students much more significantly than we imagine. A teacher with the right skills inspires and influences entire student lives. They are instruments who can ignite powerful thoughts in students and unleash their true potential. To bring about such long-standing impacts, it is important for teachers to have certain skills. In addition to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas What comes to mind when one thinks of an English classroom? Is it organized rows of desks filled with students writing vocabulary and grammar into their notebooks while the teacher talks in the front? This is the classic image of a classroom. A student goes to school to learn what they don’t already know. When teaching English, it can be easy to fall into the trap of rote memorization and reliance on grammar and vocabulary. However, is this method effective? Does this way of learning motivate students to become lifelong learners of a foreign language? It is less useful to teach students many things than to teach them the skills needed to learn the things they don’t know. This essay will assess the current view of...  [Read more]