Negative Silence

  This ITTT video examines the negative structure of the Present Simple tense. The positive and questions forms are covered in other videos. Negative: subject + auxiliary verb 'do' + not + base form of the verb I/You/We/They do not teach. He /She/It does not teach. It is always important to teach the contracted forms i.e. do not - don't, does - doesn't. In the negative form the auxiliary verb (also called the helping verb) doesn't has the s so the main verb doesn't need an s -- for example, He doesn't teach. ITTT's teaching courses equip graduates with the qualification and skills necessary to obtain teaching positions globally. Our graduates are in high demand because of the professional level of training and learning acquired on our courses. As a result of this our...  [Read more]

  For statements in the negative form, what we have to do is add the auxiliary verb 'to do'. For subjects 'I', 'you', 'we' and 'they', we simply leave 'do' as 'do', use the word 'not', and keep the base form of the verb now for the negative statements. However, for 'he', 'she' and 'it', we have to conjugate our auxiliary verb into 'does'. We still use 'not' and we still keep the base form of the verb. The pattern performing questions is very very similar to the pattern performing negative statements. However, what we've done is invert our subject and our auxiliary verb so that the questions read the auxiliary verb first. Of course, again, we use 'do' for 'I', 'you', 'we' and 'they' and use 'does' for 'he', 'she' and 'it'. In both cases, we've left our verb form as the base form of...  [Read more]

  Our next consideration is going to be how we actually group our students. There are perhaps three types of grouping arrangements that we can consider and within those we'll have a look at the potential positive and negatives of those particular arrangements. So firstly, what arrangements can we use? We could arrange our group as a whole class so all of their activities will be done as a whole class. They could be working as individuals and the final grouping arrangement we'll consider is that of small groups or indeed the use of pair work. So for each of these types of arrangements what are the potential positive and negatives with that type of arrangement? For the whole class certainly one of the main positive features is that it gives that class a sense of belonging. Secondly...  [Read more]

  Margaret from Indonesia took the 120-hour online TEFL/TESOL course and had a great experience. She learned a lot about grammar, classroom management, and lesson planning. In her TEFL review, she recommends our training courses to anyone who is interested in becoming an English language teacher. 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 about the direct and indirect speech. It was great to repeat all the rules because some of them I...  [Read more]

  Some and Any are two words that often cause confusion, which is why we have decided to take a closer look at the difference of the two words in this video. Firsly, some is a determiner used for positive statements while any is a determiner used in questions and negative statements. Consider the following situation: I asked the teacher if he could give me some paper. I said ?Excuse me, have you got any paper?? Unfortunately, he didn?t have any. The first statement is positive and therefore requires us to use some. The second sentence is a question and therefore, we need to use any. The third and final sentence is a negative statement which also requries us to use any. It's worth noting that we do sometimes use some in questions and we also use any in positive statements. For...  [Read more]

  This TEFL review is from Will from the United States. After doing a lot of research, he decided that he wanted to follow a new career path in teaching English as a foreign language. Since a TEFL/TESOL course is one of the most common requirements for EFL employers worldwide, he decided to take our 120-hour online TEFL/TESOL certification course and enjoyed it a lot. Will chose the tutored version of the course and was able to ask a professional ITTT tutor any questions he might have during the course. After completing the course, he was also offered an additional 50-hour course for free and received excellent post-course services such as resume and interview preparation and access to job offers worldwide. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of...  [Read more]

  This video covers the difference between 'defuse' and 'diffuse'. Their similar spelling and pronunciation make them a word pair that is often confused. The word 'defuse' refers to the action of making a situation less harmful or tense, whereas 'diffuse' means to spread over a wide area. Watch the video for detailed examples on the two words. 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 shows how important is it to know how to teach a new...  [Read more]

  In this video lesson the teacher covers the present perfect continuous tense. Iban starts the lesson with a memory game to help get the students engage in the lesson and thinking and speaking in English. He then goes on to present his lesson on the present prefect continuous tense before finishing the lesson with activities to get the students to use the language they have learned. 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 covered teaching...  [Read more]

  This TEFL review is from Paavani. She is from Ohio, USA, but just moved to South Korea where she will work as an English teacher. As this will be her first full-time teaching position, she decided to take our online TEFL/TESOL program to get the best possible foundation in teaching before starting her new position. After completing the course, she feels ready and prepared to teach Korean students in her own EFL classroom and she recommends this course to other new teachers. 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...  [Read more]

  In this TEFL review, Boh discusses his experience on the 120-hour online TEFL course without tutor support from ITTT. He found that the course exceeded his expectations with plenty of information covering both grammatical features of the English language and strategies for dealing with different students. 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 learnt ways to identify differences in constructing verb tenses. Like in present continuous how to make...  [Read more]

  This TESOL review is from Biao. He works as an English teacher in China and wanted to improve his teaching skills. That's why he decided the 120-hour online TESOL course. He enjoyed the course a lot and learned new techniques and methodologies. He also found the units on classroom management to be very 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. From this unit, I gained information on the different groups of students and how to accommodate...  [Read more]

  This ITTT video outlines the structure of the Present Perfect Continuous tense, the tense that is used for events which started in the past and are still continuing, or which have stopped, but whose effects are still ongoing. This one of two videos -- this one focuses on the structure of the positive and negative forms. Positive form: subject + auxiliary verb 'have'/'has' + been + present participle I have been working for ten years. Negative form: subject + auxiliary verb 'have'/'has' + not +been + present participle She has not been working here for some time. It is essential for any TESOL course to provide teachers with a sound knowledge of the English language tense system and to give teachers the confidence to present productive, meaningful and correct information to...  [Read more]

  "In terms of the things that are negative about it, we've already said that it doesn't develop speaking but perhaps the biggest negative point about this particular methodology is that it's very unnatural. Ok, so despite the criticisms of this particular method, and particularly the fact that is unnatural, this particular methodology was in use all the way through the 17th, 18th and 19th century and indeed it's still in use today. However, Gouin in the 1880s and Berlitz in the early 1900s decided that this particular methodology was so unnatural that they wanted to come up with something new. The method that they came up with, they called the direct method. You will also sometimes see it as the natural method. What these two people were saying is that if we wish to learn a...  [Read more]

  So let's take an example of what those drills might involve. So here is an example of a repetition drill. I will model the language and then my class will repeat after me. So "This is a cup." "Spoon" ? "This is a spoon." "Knife" - "his is a knife." Thank you. The reason that it's called or also called the army method is that it was the method adopted by the United States military who had personnel stationed around the world at the end of Second World War and they realized that they needed those personnel to pick up the language very quickly and one of the positive things about this particular methodology is that you do very quickly learn vocabulary. Another positive thing about it is that you quickly learn the correct pronunciation of that vocabulary. However, there are some...  [Read more]

  Regardless of which particular business English setting you find yourself teaching in, there is a typical process that is recommended to go through before you start your course. Watch this video for helpful tips and tricks for anyone who is teaching business English classes. 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 am particularly fascinated with the section on rising and falling intonation and how that indicates or predicts mood and/or information,...  [Read more]

  What are ESL games? ESL games are games that can be used in the classroom to practice certain language points and encourage active and creative communication between your students. There are many different games created specifically for use in the English language classroom that can be found online or in any number of resource books. But we are not limited only to those games designed for the class. The majority of games that we played as children or still play as adults can be adapted and used in lessons. Whether games are co-operative or competitive, they provide students with a goal and in the English classroom this goal can only be reached by using the English they have learnt. Common Misconceptions about games in the classroom. "Games are fun but are not suitable for the...  [Read more]

  This video is a sample EFL lesson in a real-life classroom setting abroad. The classroom activity "find someone who" is a great way to get the students to use the new learned vocabulary or grammar point as it can easily be applied to any kind of topic. 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 helped me to revisit the past part of the tenses. Learning the present tenses just a few days earlier greatly helped in going through this part of the...  [Read more]

  This video is a sample EFL lesson in a real-life classroom setting abroad. In the activate phase of the lesson, the teacher starts a class activity with his students. The class is split into two teams and a member of each team is competing against the other team to build a correct sentence about modal verbs. This phase of the lesson is important for the students to actively use the newly learned grammar or vocabulary. 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. ...  [Read more]

Many TEFL qualified teachers choose to teach English online as the flexibility and convenience of working from home means you can fit it around all your other personal commitments. However, when applying for jobs with online teaching platforms you might be expected to provide your potential employers with a demo video. This can be in the form of an introduction to yourself and your teaching ethos or it can be an actual demo lesson where you need to showcase your teaching skills and personality. Some companies will use this purely as part of the interview process, while in many cases the video will be available to potential students who can watch it to see if they like your approach to teaching English. When teaching online we are forced to rely on facial expressions, body language, hand...  [Read more]

  This video covers the difference between 'affected' and 'effected'. As these two words have a similar pronunciation and spelling, their usage is often confused. 'Effected' means executed, produced, or brought about. On the other hand, 'affected' refers to the action of making an impact on something. Some example sentences would be: "The BP oil spill adversely affected marine wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding areas." or "After the BP oil spill, the government effected sweeping environmental regulation." Both words are used in the past tense in these examples but can also be used in the same way in the present tense as 'affect' and 'effected'. They are also often used as a passive, such as 'was affected by...'. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate...  [Read more]

  Our final methodology is accredited to Jeremy Harmer and it's known by the letters ESA. Around 1998, Jeremy Harmer produced a book called "How to teach English" and basically what Harmer did, is a background to this book is to do what we have done today and to work through all of the different methodologies that have come about over the last 300 years. He highlighted for each of those methodologies what was good about it, what was positive and what didn't appear to work and then put all of the positive things into a melting pot and came out with this methodology, which he called ESA. It's a three-stage methodology, where each of the letters represents a particular phase of the lesson. The first one being called the engage phase, the second the study phase and the final one the...  [Read more]

As Spain is a member of the EU, language schools generally prefer to hire teachers from fellow EU countries as they do not need to go through the hassle of applying for a work visa. However, this doesn't stop thousands of non-EU citizens from coming to Spain each year to work as English language teachers. Many of these simply enter on a tourist visa and technically work illegally. While this is common practice and rarely has any negative consequences, there is an alternative for those who want to live and work in Spain. By enrolling on a study course (typically a Spanish language course), teachers can apply for a student visa that also allows them to legally work a certain number of hours per week. To start the process you should visit your nearest Spanish Consulate at least three...  [Read more]

  Our next consideration is going to be building and maintaining rapport. The importance of rapport is that within our communicative activities, we're asking the students to talk to each other. If they feel comfortable with each other and with us, then that interaction is much more likely to be useful. So how do we actually build and maintain rapport? Well, it's easiest if we consider two stages of the course itself. What we can do at the start of the course and what we can do throughout the course to help build and maintain that rapport. So at the start of the course, it's very useful if we ask the students to create a name card and to make that name card visible to everyone. Secondly we need to try to do some ice breaking activities that will allow the students to interact with...  [Read more]

  The structure of the question form of the Present Simple tense is the topic for this ITTT video. The positive and negative forms are discussed in other videos. Question Form: auxiliary verb 'do/does' + subject + base form of the verb Do I/you/we/they teach? Does he/she/it teach? Teaching English as a second language is an exciting and rewarding experience. The major qualifications necessary to gain a position teaching English as a second language are an internationally recognized TEFL or TESOL Certificate. ITTT has a range of courses that will provide you with the skills to begin your career teaching English as a second language. If you are interested in gaining your qualification follow the link above. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section...  [Read more]

  Why teach in China? First the Facts: 2014 College Graduates in China: 7.26 million and rising 30,000 organizations or companies offering private English classes in China The market has nearly doubled in size in the last five years and is now worth around $3.1 billion Salary for foreign English language teachers: English teachers in China can expect to make between 6,000 - 16,000 RMB ($942 - $2,500 USD) Those teaching at an international school, however, can make up to 30,000 RMB ($4,700 USD) Depending on the type of educational institution the salary varies enormously Public Schools: 6,000-10,000 RMB Private Language Institute: 6,000 - 16,000 RMB per month Universities: 7,500 - 10,000 RMB per month International Schools: 12,000 - 30,000 RMB per month How much does...  [Read more]

  The next category we are looking at in our series on teaching special groups in ESL are individuals. Teaching individuals, or one-to-one, forms a large part of the ESL market. Find out the positives, negatives and tips in this video. 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. After reading Introductory Unit I found out how the whole course will be structured, what are the objectives of the course. It was useful to find out the general terminology used...  [Read more]

  Now, let's take a look at the present continuous tense. The continuous tense is used to talk about actions in progress at the time of speaking or around the time of speaking. The first thing to notice with the continuous tense is that we must use the verb plus '-ing' form, also known as the present participle. You'll see it in any continuous tense, especially with the present continuous. We have three different forms of this tense. First, we have the subject 'I' used with 'am teaching'. Then, we have 'you', 'we' and 'they are teaching'. Finally, we've got 'he', 'she' 'it is teaching'. The 'am', 'are' and 'is' are forms of the verb 'to be' and here with this tense is used as an auxiliary verb or a helping verb. In order to form negative sentences, we simply add the word 'not'...  [Read more]

  We've seen the present tenses in isolation. Now, let's look at them together. Our first example is 'I play football every week.' This is the present simple tense and it has the structure 'subject I' + verb 'play'. This is quite a simple tense for students to form. However, they have to be aware of the third person singular form 'he', 'she' or 'it', which usually adds an '-s' or an '-es' to the end of the base form of the verb. 'I play football,' but 'He plays football.' Also, the question of negative forms using the auxiliary verb 'do' or 'does' 'Do you play football?' 'I don't play football.' 'Does she play football?' 'She doesn't play football.' The present simple tense is used to talk about habits, routines, facts and general truths and as such it's probably the most commonly...  [Read more]

  The next category we are looking at in our series on teaching special groups in ESL are young learners. We consider students aged 2 to 16 young learners. Find out the positives, negatives and tips when teaching young learners in this video. 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 has definetly taken the rust off my knowledge of grammar and it's implimentation within speech. Very refreshing! The biggest hurdle for myself was simply just taking my...  [Read more]

  And now let's look at the future continuous tense. The future continuous tense is typically used to indicate an action in progress at a particular time in the future. To form this tense in the positive form, we have our subject, here we've used 'Karen', the word 'will', our auxiliary verb our helping verb 'to be' and then the present participle or the verb with 'ing', so 'Karen will be going'. In order to create the negative form, we keep with our positive form but add 'not' in between 'will' and our helping verb 'to be'. Finally, we ask a question by beginning with 'will', then we have our subject being sure to include our helping verb and the present participle: 'Will Karen be going?' Some of the more common usages for the future continuous tense are as follows. We can use them...  [Read more]