Epiphany Party Ideas

  Liven up your business English classes and encourage high student talking time with these fun and creative activities. NEGOTIATIONS In pairs students role-play a negotiation. Each side will be given a sheet listing demands and concessions. Each side of the negotiation is awarded points for the type of concessions they get from the other side. For example, if one side manages to get a 25% discount, they get 10 points and the other side gets 0. TELEPHONE CALL ROLE-PLAYS Telephone role-plays can be used with a variety of different topics such as leaving and taking a message, placing an order, arranging a meeting, making a complaint etc. The main point is to give students the chance to practice communicating in English without the visual clues that are present in face-to-face...  [Read more]

  In this TEFL training video we look at one of three teaching ideas for the present continuous tense. English grammar lessons like this are taught on a regular basis and ITTT's TEFL training courses can show you how to use these activities to your advantage in the classroom. 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 range of expression is greatly growing by this point in the class. This chapter emphasized the kind of sentence blueprints that would...  [Read more]

  And now we'll take a look at a few teaching ideas for the present continuous tense. The present continuous tense is quite a visual tense. We use it to describe actions that are happening at the present moment. So, we could give our students a picture, such as the one seen here. It is important that in the picture there are many activities going on. The teacher can give a time limit to pairs or small groups. In that time limit, the pairs or small groups will make various sentences based upon what they see in the picture. These sentences may include 'He is taking a picture,' 'He is throwing a boomerang,' 'They are playing with the ball,' 'He is digging a hole.' At the end of the time limit, the teacher will ask for some feedback and get feedback from the pairs and the groupings to...  [Read more]

  "Now let's take a look at the future perfect continuous tense. This tense is used to talk about how long an action had been taking place up until a certain point in the future. Our examples are for the positive sentence we have our subject "you" and three auxiliary verbs "will have been" and then our main verb in the present participle form again that's the verb plus "ing". For our negative form, again, we're simply inserting the word "not" between "will" and "have" and to ask our question, we invert "will" with the subject here we're using "you" and we come up with a question "Will you have been watching?" and the rest of our sentence. As with the other future tenses the word will can be substituted for other modal verbs. These modal verbs would indicate very levels of certainty...  [Read more]

  The future simple tense can be used for threats, promises and predictions. In this video we look at a teaching idea for the predictions usage. In pairs students are given a card with some prompts and responses. One student reads the prompt and the other responds with the given comment and their own sentence in the future simple tense. For example: Student 1: I've lost my shoe. Student 2: Don't worry. It'll turn up somewhere. For anyone wanting to Teach English Certification is the best route to take. An online TEFL course from ITTT will equip you with the skills needed to be successful in the classroom. Not only will it cover tenses such as the future simple featured in this video but it will also cover other grammar points such as modal verbs, reported speech etc. and...  [Read more]

  Now we'll have a look at the teaching ideas for the future simple tense. As we said earlier, the future simple tense can be used for threats or promises or, in this case, for predictions. Here, we'll have a pair of students working together. One has a prompt to say something and the other will begin it with a certain comment and then make a sentence using the future simple tense. Here, 'I'm taking my driving test tomorrow' 'Good luck. You'll pass for sure'. 'I lost at tennis again.' 'Cheer up. You'll do better next time,' so on and so forth. Of course, having a bit of feedback at the end. Some additional ideas for the future simple tense include things like horoscopes. Here you'll divide your class up into groups, provide them with zodiac sign, they'll create a horoscope for that...  [Read more]

  ITTT's online TEFL/TESOL courses are designed to help anyone thinking of teaching English overseas. On them you will learn teaching methodologies, important parts of English grammar and ideas of how to teach this grammar to your students. This video looks at one idea for the future continuous tense. For this activity students are each given a planner filled with different activities on different dates. The planners are rigged so that there is only one day when the students are both free. They have to interview each other to find out which day they are both free. To find out more about how you can become qualified and suitably prepared for teaching English overseas click the link above. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online...  [Read more]

  Being able to use the correct tense when communicating with others is essential. We often use more than one tense when talking to others so it is important that our students have the confidence to be able to know which tense to use in any given situation. For the teaching idea in this video a card game is used to give students the opportunity to ask questions and give answers using more than one tense, in particular reinforcing the Present Perfect Continuous tense. The activity requires the students to work in pairs, taking it in turns to ask a question and give a correct answer. Each card will have a result and a reason, and one student will be required to form the correct question and the other student the correct answer. ITTT offers a variety of TEFL courses. For example, for...  [Read more]

  Here's a teaching idea that focuses on two very specific aspects of the present simple tense, one of which will be making statements about a habit and a routine. The other will be conjugating the verb into the 'he', 'she' or 'it' form. Here we'll present students with a picture. They will see various objects in the picture. Based upon the presence of these objects in someone's room, the students will have to make an observation such as 'She drinks coffee,' 'She plays the guitar,' 'She watches television,' 'She doesn't smoke.' Again, it's very specific used for the 'he', 'she' or 'it' form and habits and routines. At the end of the activity, the teacher will have the pairs or the small groups report back their various findings. Another idea for the present simple tense will be the...  [Read more]

  Now here are some teaching ideas for the future continuous tense. Here, we have an activity where we'll be asking students to spontaneously make some excuses based upon some invitations. We can do this in pairs or small groups. The teacher will have cut these cards up and the students will place them into a pile, randomly picking up a card. So one student might pick this card up and say 'Would you like to play tennis with me tomorrow?' The other student will be challenged to come up with an excuse as quickly as possible, which might be 'No, I'm sorry I'll be working.' Then, we have the next student pick up the next card and we challenge an additional student to make an excuse. Here we have another teaching idea for the future continuous tense and this involves two students trying...  [Read more]

  This teaching idea for the past perfect involves matching pictures of historical events with the appropriate sentence and describing what had just happened in the picture using the past perfect tense. For example: A picture of the Titanic would be matched with the sentence "hit an iceberg" and the student should say "It had just hit an iceberg". As the trainer notes in the video; the scenarios in this activity are western centric. When teaching English overseas it is important to bear in mind how you can adapt your activities to make them more suitable or more interesting to your students. Learning about the local culture and history can make your lessons more relevant to your students and therefore more engaging. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one...  [Read more]

  This video is part of our series on the past tenses in English. In this video, we take a look at the past continuous tense and suitable teaching ideas for this tense. The past continuous is very conducive to using pictures and talking about actions. We give our group of students cards with images and ask them to create sentences for what the people in the picture were doing at a certain time in the past. 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...  [Read more]

  The teaching idea for the future continuous covered in this video involves students picking a card with a picture of an activity on it and inviting their partner to join them. The other student then has to think up an excuse not to as quickly as possible in the future continuous tense. For example: Student A: Would you like to see a movie at the weekend? Student B: Sorry I can't, I'll be washing my hair. Ideas such as this are a great way for ESOL students to put the language they are learning to use in the classroom. Teaching ESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) is a fascinating and highly rewarding career choice and one which has a growing number of opportunities at the moment. One of the best ways to become an ESOL teacher is to take an internationally...  [Read more]

  The teaching idea in this video is for the past continuous involves students miming an action; however, unlike the mime activity for the present continuous students will not be doing the mimes for others to see. Instead they will stop the mime before the other students open their eyes. The students will then have to say what their classmates were doing before they stopped. For example: You were driving a car. You were eating a sandwich. Being able to come up with interesting teaching ideas for what students often see as boring grammar points is an important skill for any English teacher. Taking an online TEFL course with ITTT will give you an understanding of the grammar points that you need to teach when starting out as a new teacher of English and will also give you some great...  [Read more]

  The Present perfect tense is a very useful tense. It is the tense that relates the past to the present. It also tends to be the tense that can often present some difficulties to the English language learner and sometimes the English language teacher. The activity in this video has the students examining two pictures, picture A and picture B. The pictures depict a scene in a house; Picture B is similar to A but with a number of changes. Students are asked to spot the changes and to express the change using the Present Perfect. For example in Picture A, a pile of unironed clothes can be seen next to the ironing board but in picture B the clothes are ironed. So the student would say "He has done the ironing." Another example answer would be, "He has hung up the towel." There are...  [Read more]

  In this TEFL training video we look at one of three teaching ideas for the present continuous tense. English grammar lessons like this are taught on a regular basis and ITTT's TEFL training courses can show you how to use these activities to your advantage in the classroom. 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 helpful in providing different types of class discipline issues and effective ways of dealing with them. I will make sure I...  [Read more]

  This video from one of ITTT's teach English as a foreign language courses covers three teaching ideas for the future perfect tense. The future perfect is used to talk about things that will have been completed by a certain date in the future. The first idea involves asking students the following question "What will you have done by ...?" with an appropriate time in the future. For example: "What will you have done by the time you are 25?" "I will have become an English teacher". The second idea involves giving students monthly calendars to complete and asking them to say what they will have done by the end of the month. The last idea involves asking questions about a famous person and what they will have achieved in the future. "How many awards will she have won by 2025?"...  [Read more]

  The future perfect continuous is not used a lot in everyday English usage. However, it does come up in when your EFL students get more advanced and if you plan to teach English overseas it is important to have an understanding of the less frequently used tenses. As the future perfect continuous is not often used it can be a struggle to think up teaching ideas for it. The trainer in this video shows us one idea that can be used for the tense. For this activity the students conduct a survey to find out how long someone will have been doing something by a certain point in the future. For example: Student A: How long will you have been learning English by the end of next month? Student B: I will have been learning English for three years. To find a course that will help you to...  [Read more]

  In this online TESOL course video we will look at a useful teaching idea for the past perfect tense. Students are given statements written in the past simple and will have to complete the statement with sentences in the past perfect. Each statement would have been cut out before the class and distributed to pairs or small groups. The student will turn over their card, read out the statement then complete it with their own past perfect sentence. For example: I didn't do my homework ... because I hadn't brought my book home. Teaching ideas such as this become an important part of an English teacher's resources, enabling them to create interesting plans when required. To learn more about this tense and others consider taking one of ITTT's online TESOL courses. Follow the link above...  [Read more]

  The teaching idea for the past perfect continuous tense covered in this video is an adaptation of a present perfect continuous idea. The past perfect continuous is rarely used so it can be quite hard to think up original and interesting ideas for it so adapting ideas for other tenses where suitable is useful. For this idea students are given situation that was happening in the past and the other students having to say what they think had been happening before that event to cause it. For example: Yesterday you were crying (because you had been watching a sad film). If you are thinking about becoming an English teacher you should consider getting yourself properly qualified. In addition taking a TEFL certificate course will open up a large number of ESL jobs to you. Take a look...  [Read more]

  For the teaching idea in this ESOL video students are given a set of pictures that feature events in a person's day. In pairs the students will need to put the pictures in an order of their choosing and then create a story about the person's day using the past simple tense. For example: She woke up and had a cup of coffee. She went to be at 9 o'clock. If you would like to become an ESOL teacher and travel the world experiencing new cultures while enabling people to improve their opportunities in life, then you should take a TESOL course. Taking such a course will give you the knowledge and skills needed to make you an effective teacher of English. Visit our site by following the link above for more information on the courses available to you. Below you can read feedback from...  [Read more]

  This video presents a teaching idea for reported speech. The activity includes having the students walk around the classroom asking other students for various bits of information. At the end of the activity, the students will report back the answers in reported speech. 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 about teaching receptive skills. These skills are reading and listening and both have different purposes. These skills can be used...  [Read more]

  In this video we look at a TESOL teaching idea for the past continuous tense. For this activity students are put into groups and are handed pictures of people doing different activities. The pictures are placed upside down in a pile and the students take it in turns to turn them over. When they have turned over a card they must make a past continuous sentence based on the picture they have. For example: If they turn over a picture of a woman swimming they would say: She was swimming yesterday. For more advanced students this activity can be used to compare past continuous and past simple. For example: While I was doing the washing up, I broke three plates. Becoming a TESOL teacher enables you to travel the world experiencing new cultures while earning a living and helping...  [Read more]

  The teaching ideas in these ITTT videos are intended to be used in the Activate stage of a lesson. During this stage students are encouraged to use the language as freely and communicatively as possible. The focus is more on the fluency than on the accuracy of the language. When selecting any activity it is important to ensure that the timing is appropriate and that the activity is appropriate for the students' age, language levels, class size, interests and culture. The video looks at one of three teaching ideas for Present Simple. The activity is called "Find someone who...." Each student will be given a sheet with a number of facts/habits/routines. For example ...plays a musical instrument,.....does a lot of sport, ....has a brother and a sister. The students then mill...  [Read more]

  This video looks at various teaching ideas for the 'going to' future tense. Pictures are a great tool for lower-level students to look at evidence based on the pictures and making predictions using the 'going to' future. Other ideas might include weather predictions, as well as planning a party or holiday. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. This is a general unit that introduces the levels of student ability, and provides a framework for...  [Read more]

  An English teaching certification course will cover teaching methodologies, grammar and teaching ideas such as those covered here for the future simple. In the video the teaching ideas are horoscopes, fortune telling and wedding vows. For the horoscope activity students will be given zodiac signs and will create a horoscope for that sign before finding out who in the class the horoscope applies to. The fortune telling idea enables the students to role play using the future simple tense with one student being the fortune teller and the other the customer. Lastly, students create their ideal wedding vows or alternatively they can create silly vows. For many people, gaining English teaching certification is the first step on an exciting and rewarding journey as an English teacher...  [Read more]

  The teaching idea covered here is one that would be particularly appropriate for more advanced English language learners, those who can use different tenses accurately. The activity is a board game that focuses on comparing and contrasting the tenses, focusing on the Present Perfect and the Present Perfect Continuous. Each student takes a turn at rolling the dice and moving around the board. For example a student could land on a square that says "Something you have been learning for a long time." An appropriate answer for the student could be "I have been learning English for a long time." The next student takes a turn and could land on a square that says "A beautiful place you have visited." This time the student could use the Present Perfect rather than the Present Perfect...  [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]

  For this TEFL teaching idea we ask the students to look at a scene in a hospital where there are several people doing different things. Students are given time to memorise the picture before it is turned over. The students would then be asked to say what the people were doing in the picture. For example: A nurse was giving a patient an injection. A man was pouring a glass of water. As the trainer notes in the video, this activity can be adapted to make it into a competition by having students in teams compete to remember as many actions as they can. Grammar points such as this are often seen as fairly boring to most English language students, especially those who do not choose to study English. So being able to come up with ideas that encourage students to practice the...  [Read more]

  In this video we look at a TESOL teaching idea for the Present Perfect Continuous. This tense is the one we use when we want to say what has been happening. The activity in the video is called "Guess what I've been doing?" It is a fun activity that can generate a lot of student talk time. Students each receive a card that has two pieces of information on it, a past activity and a result. Each student has a turn of telling the class the result and the class then has to guess the activity using the Present Perfect Continuous. For example, the past activity on a card is "You have been driving your motorbike in the rain", the result written on the card is "You are all wet. Your clothes are wet". The other students could ask, "Have you been swimming?", "Have you been washing the dog?"...  [Read more]