English Speaking Teacher

  Are you thinking of going to Thailand to teach English, but are worried that you don't speak Thai? Fortunately, it is not usually necessary for international teachers of English in Thailand to speak Thai. Most schools operate on an English only policy in the classroom.  [Read more]

  On completion of a TEFL course many teachers start a new adventure living and working in a foreign culture, for others it offers the chance to work in a familiar English speaking environment. Although this is a valid option, there are still a few things to consider.  [Read more]

  In this lesson Iban covers the uses of ?wish?. Iban starts the lesson with an activity to warm the students up before covering the lesson point. He ends the lesson with activities to give the students practice using the language point he has taught. 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 is focused on teaching special group. in teaching a multilingual class,The students have no common language other than English and that is a very big...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word propensity. This word is a noun and refers to a natural tendency to behave in a particular way. Synonyms for propensity include tendency, inclination or proneness. The word comes from Latin 'propensus' meaning ?inclined'. 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 what it takes to be a good teacher. Also learned about appropriate scales to rate students English levels from beginner to...  [Read more]

  This video is part of our video series on "Evaluation and Testing of Students". In this video, we look at placement tests. This type of test is also referred to as a level test. Its goal is to find out the current level of the student tested. A placement test generally tests all four skills (reading, listening, writing and speaking) and progresses from easy to hard questions. 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 one is about Teachers and...  [Read more]

  The two most common usages for the present continuous tense as it relates to speaking about things in the present. We have actions in progress at the time of speaking, specifically right when it's being said. So I can say ?I am teaching right now.? However, we also have actions in progress around the time of speaking. ?I'm reading a good book.? Now, of course I'm not reading a book just now but I started reading a book in the past I am reading it perhaps today sometime and I'll finish reading the book at some point in the future. Again, I'm not doing it just now but around the time of speaking. 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...  [Read more]

  The idiom "sweet tooth" refers to having a strong liking for sweet foods, for example: It's difficult for me to lose weight because I have a sweet tooth. 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 enjoyed this unit and hadn't considered the pros and cons of using workbooks. I usually prefer creating my own presentations but I can see how loosely following a book could be good since it's been tested for efficiency. Certain examples were definitely...  [Read more]

  In part 10 of her TEFL review video journal, Linda tells us that she has been studying unit 11 of the 120-hour online TEFL course from ITTT. Unit 11 covers receptive skills which involve the ability to listen and read. The unit teaches trainees how to develop strategies for helping students improve their ability to understand English through reading and listening. 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. In this unit, I felt that the repetitions of...  [Read more]

TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) and CELT-S (Certificate in English Language Teaching - Speaking) are both certifications that demonstrate a level of expertise in teaching English as a foreign language. However, they have distinct differences in terms of focus, content, and target audience. TEFL certification is a more general certification that covers various aspects of teaching English to non-native speakers. It typically includes modules on lesson planning, classroom management, language skills development, and assessment techniques. TEFL courses are designed to provide a broad foundation for teaching English in a variety of contexts, such as schools, language institutes, or online platforms. On the other hand, CELT-S certification specifically focuses on teaching speaking...  [Read more]

  The zero conditional is the most basic form of the conditionals in the English language. This is a teaching idea for the zero conditional that can also be adjusted for any other types of conditionals. 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. It gives me an overview of choosing topics, text and tasks to create interest among the students. I personally think that the pre-existent knowledge of students is very important to identify the cultural...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word lampoon. This word can be used as a verb and as a noun. Used as a verb, it describes the action of criticizing a person or a topic by using ridicule. The noun lampoon refers to the actual speech or text used to critize someone or something. The word was taken from the French word lampon. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. the art of teaching has become in an interactive and constant...  [Read more]

  Chantelle is taking a 120-hour online TEFL course with tutor support and videos with ITTT. This is the first of her video diary entries outlining her experience taking the course. Chantelle took the online course because it was better for her to study online than to commit to attending an onsite course. In this video she talks about the first unit of the course. Unit 1 deals with teachers and learners discussing what makes good teachers and learners as well as the types of roles teachers perform in class, motivation levels of different types of learners and the different language levels. 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...  [Read more]

  "In this video, our OTP trainee Richard introduces the topic of quantifiers to his students in Florida. After talking about quantifiers he uses an online game platform to start the activate phase with his students. ITTT's Observed Teaching Practice courses (OTP) are ideal for teachers wanting to improve their teaching skills remotely from anywhere in the world." 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 has explained the productive skills of...  [Read more]

Yes, you can start a new career teaching English abroad without any form of teaching experience. Due to a huge demand for English language teachers in countries all over the world, tens of thousands of English speakers head overseas every year to work in a variety of different classrooms. Of this number, approximately 90% will have never worked in any kind of teaching role before. Wherever you find yourself living and working as an English language teacher, you will most likely teach your students using a method known as total immersion, whereby no other language is used in the classroom besides English. As most learners are not in a position to move to an English speaking country in order to be surrounded by the language, it is the teacher's job to bring this immersion to the student...  [Read more]

  Before we move on to the planning of a lesson for speaking skills, something that we need to look at first is the idea of the accuracy versus the fluency of speaking. Accuracy relates to the correct usage of grammar and vocabulary, whereas fluency relates to our ability to continue speaking without any interruption. Now, ultimately within a whole ESA lesson or within language learning itself fluency and accuracy are equally important. Within an ESA lesson, however, depending upon which stage we're at in that lesson, then we're either focusing on accuracy or we're focusing on fluency. Remember in the ESA lesson, in the study phase, this is where we're looking at the target language where we're doing our language learning, so it's very important in this stage that we focus on the...  [Read more]

  The trainees who complete an ITTT course come from a wide variety of backgrounds, age groups and countries. Ages range from 18 to people in their sixties and occasionally even older. Some have come straight from school, college or university. Others can be teachers who want to update their teaching credentials and then there are people from other professional and non professional backgrounds. We accept trainees who are native English speakers as well as fluent non native English speakers. We do not require trainees to have any previous teacher training experience. Our courses will provide you with the necessary knowledge and skills to begin your career as a qualified English language teacher. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their...  [Read more]

  Unit 10 provides students with the opportunity to see two real English language classes in progress one effective and one not so effective. During this unit you will analyze the two lessons and gain an understanding of how your attitude as a teacher and the way you interact with your students affects their ability and motivation to learn. 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 have learnt why it is so important to know the language English. I came...  [Read more]

  "In this video, our OTP trainee Richard introduces the topic of quantifiers to his students in Florida. After talking about quantifiers, Richard is playing another game with his students. The students need to come up with 2 foods each that are a) too sweet, b) too sour and c) too salty. ITTT's Observed Teaching Practice courses (OTP) are ideal for teachers wanting to improve their teaching skills remotely from anywhere in the world." 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...  [Read more]

  In this episode, Linda takes on the pronunciation of the word "futile". Enjoy the episode! Linda is a German/American ITTT alumna, teaching English in South Korea. Be sure to like and share this video if you find it helpful. 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. In this unit, we focused on the productive skills: speaking and writing. Both have a common purpose, to communicate something; Therefore, teachers need to create the desire in the...  [Read more]

  There is no simple answer to this question as it depends entirely on which type of TEFL course you choose to study. At ITTT we have a range of courses that are designed to suit the various needs of our trainees, each with its own time scale for completion. Please see below for a breakdown of our various course options. Online courses are often the quickest route towards TEFL certification. If you are in a real hurry a course such as our 60-hour introduction to TEFL may be a good choice as you can conceivably complete it in as little as five days. Even those who prefer to study at a slower rate should find they can complete the course within one month. However, it is worth remembering that the majority of employers worldwide insist on job applicants having a TEFL certificate of...  [Read more]

  The teaching idea covered in this video is a fun group game that should generate a good deal of student talk time using the Present Perfect tense. The students will be in small groups and each student will have the question sheet with a number of pictures and word prompts. Students take turns forming their question with the aid of the prompts. The groups then give their answers using the Present Perfect. The prompts include: win/a competition, go/scuba-diving, meet/ a famous person The questions would be: Have you ever won a competition?, Have you ever been scuba-diving?, Have you ever met a famous person? Group members would answer, Yes I have...., No I haven't... After a given amount of time each group share their answers with the class. The teacher could then encourage the...  [Read more]

  The acronym TEFL stands for teaching English as a foreign language. TESOL is teaching English to speakers of other languages. Today, both terms have much the same meaning are generally used interchangeably in the EFL field. In the early days, TEFL was more of a UK-based qualification and TESOL was more of a North American-based qualification. ESL is English as a Second Language, and is usually used when teaching English in an English-speaking environment. Some people argue that TESOL encompasses both EFL and ESL. In reality there is very little difference, if any. As the need for English language training has developed worldwide, the two terms have almost become synonymous. They are both used to describe the field of English language teaching and one of them is stated on...  [Read more]

  The idiom "yellow-bellied" refers to a coward or cowardly behavior, for example: My brother called me yellow-bellied when I didn't want to touch the spider in the attic. 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 discussed the productive skills. The productive skills are speaking and writing. The lesson encouraged teachers to not leave writing skills out of their lessons. Writing activities are quieter times but they are also incredibly...  [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]

Within the world of English language teaching there are many acronyms used to describe what type of teaching is involved in any particular scenario. EFL is one of the more common ones you will come across and it stands for English as a Foreign Language. You will find EFL is most commonly used when describing the teaching or learning of English in a non-English speaking country, such as Spain, Japan, or Mexico. It is very common for either of these acronyms to be used when talking about any situation where a student is learning English, however, there is a technical difference between the two. As previously mentioned, EFL is when the student is learning English in a non-English speaking environment, for example, a Japanese student learning English in Tokyo. In this scenario there is often...  [Read more]

  In this lesson Iban covers the future perfect tense. After warming the students up with a memory game, he moves onto to present the lesson. He ends the lesson with activities to give the students practice using the language point he has taught. 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. Prior to unit 11 and unit 12, I have always thought of Listening and Speaking as one skill set while Reading and writing as another skill set. After both these unit, it...  [Read more]

  This video is a sample EFL lesson in a real-life classroom setting abroad. After the class activity 'Find Someone Who', the students sit back down and feed their findings back to the teacher. In this phase the teacher can then correct any error or mistakes the students have made during the activity, particularly in terms of grammar. 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. In this unit we learned some more advanced concepts that may be taught to...  [Read more]

  So speaking activities will come in many different forms but we can generalize them into three basic types. Control activities tend to be used in the study phase and here, the teacher will be helping the students in terms of what they need to say and how they go about saying it. So, there's a high level of structure within a controlled activity. A guided activity has slightly less structure than this and it can be used in either the study or the activate stages themselves. The final type of activity or class of activity is called creative activity and this one would be used in the activation phase. In a creative activity, we're giving a scenario or a very small amount of structure and we're asking the students to actually create their own answers to this particular question....  [Read more]

  Andra is from Indonesia and is studying for his master?s degree at a university in Malaysia. In this TEFL review, Andra tells us how he has been teaching English to primary and secondary school students for more than two years. Andra points out that students? parents will have more confidence in their child?s teacher if he or she has a recognized teaching qualification and this is one of the reasons he decided to take the 120-hour online TEFL course with ITTT. 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...  [Read more]

  Whatever your nationality or background, there are plenty of EFL teaching jobs available as the worldwide market for TEFL qualified teachers is simply massive. In fact, the demand is so strong that you can even pick and choose which job you prefer in some areas around the world. Thanks to this demand, non-native English speakers with a TEFL Qualification are in a great position to find employment in many countries. The truth is, of the thousands of trainees who graduate from our courses every year, there are always more non-native speakers than native speakers. As long as you are a fluent English speaker with a good-quality TEFL certificate under your belt, there is nothing stopping you from achieving your goals as an EFL teacher. In reality, non-native English speakers actually...  [Read more]