ELT Experiences - Experiences of an English Language Teacher

Get Students Blogging to Develop Writing Skills

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With previous semesters, I had some challenges with students clearly submitting AI-generated work. At first, I wanted to put a stop to this by incorporating weekly in-class handwritten assignments, but I soon discovered that it would take a large amount of time to provide suitable feedback on time. This semester, I decided to embrace AI and to develop my Writing and Presentation Skills course by incorporating the digitalisation of their writing by getting students to write blogs. This is despite the overreliance of AI, particularly with auto-generated content and the loss of student voice with their writing.

In this blog post, I will share some personal experiences of incorporating blogging with my students, best practices if you wish to do the same, as well as some final pointers should anyone be interested. As ever, if you have any advice for student blogging, then do please let me know and drop a comment – even if you enjoyed reading my ramblings today.

KOTESOL Connections Day: A Fantastic Weekend Away

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Last Friday, I was fortunate to have the chance to visit Seoul. It’s always nice to get away from the habits of one’s place, to explore elsewhere. Yet, it was more than just a weekend to visit Seoul, I attended the KOTESOL Connections last Saturday as well as to discuss the upcoming KOTESOL International Conference for 2026. It was also the perfect opportunity to use my new camera, in the field, and to capture some pictures while attending.

How To Diversify Your Income After Preply

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One of my previous posts I shared was more a current review about Preply as a platform and the growing concerns that I had regarding the reduced number of bookings that I had over the past number of months. However, since that honest and candid review, I received quite a lot of feedback from other tutors on the platform sharing their experiences which were rather similar in this regard.

I created a dedicated page on my website for potential students to book a trial lesson with me which gained some interest over the past few weeks and have already had a few bookings, but I have kept my Preply profile live with anything just in case.

In the video above, I shared a few thoughts about post-Preply with a scheduled lesson with a student but they never turned up. However, despite some of the challenges that I had encountered, there has been an improvement of late. In this post, I share some of my thoughts and reflections.

A Practical Guide to Charging Online Students

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One of the biggest struggles facing online tutors and teachers is knowing how much you should charge potential online students. Tutors will first need to establish what services they are offering online students before deciding how much their hourly rate is to be.

In this blog post, I will share some key points that you need to consider when charging students and how best to get paid for the online lessons that you are offering potential online learners.

An Honest Review of Preply for New Tutors

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For the past 5 years, I have been teaching on Preply and they market themselves as the leading market place which connect online language learners with potential online language tutors. However, I would like to share my experiences and offer an honest review of Preply for current and prospective tutors.

In this post, I will draw upon personal experiences and provide some more information about why I consider Preply is now placing profit above their tutors and students as well as the worrying trend that there are not as many paying students that has been claimed.

Brace yourself, this is a long read.

Going Back to Basics in the Classroom

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I have just finished a two-week intensive English course with Korean high school students that were to help them prepare for their academic studies at university. It was so nice to teach pre-intermediate to intermediate English learners as most of my students are high level. However, what I have noticed with young adult learners is the over reliance of technology and to have everything automatically translated or generated by Artificial Intelligence.

In this post, I am sharing my thoughts and reflections on getting learners less reliant on technology while also getting more comfortable and confident speaking English.

Why I’m Finally Upgrading My Sony ZV-1 in 2026

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I first purchased the Sony ZV-1, along with the Sony Handgrip, in July 2020 during the height of the pandemic with the aim of creating more dedicated video content for English teachers. This camera has helped me create around 120 videos on YouTube and I have also taken quite a lot of photos, yet I reach a stumbling block with the Sony ZV-1 for content creation.

The lack of interchangeable lenses has led to much frustration, and I have to rely upon the backscreen when taking a photo. Furthermore, when I take some talking head videos, it is a little challenging to keep myself in autofocus. I kept this little niggles to myself but it has reached a point where I find myself wishing I could have more ability to customise when setting up a photo or video, as well as changing the lenses for the shot. So where does this lead me? Getting a dedicated camera for both photography and videography.

Twenty Teaching Tips from 20 Years in the Classroom

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Well, I don’t know about anyone else but this year has flown by, and it reached the end of the year before I knew it. Therefore, I’ve written this article sharing twenty practical and personal tips that you could consider (or not) with your teaching. I hope this gives you some inspiration into how one could approach their teaching as well as their lessons.

https://youtu.be/_-Rh2tAKfFw

Five Personal Aims for the New Year

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In my previous post, I looked at what I had achieved over 2025. It was a rather long read, but in this post I am sharing five personal aims for the New Year. Obviously, most people tend to share the usual resolutions: stop smoking, improve their health, change their career. However, I am keeping my resolutions more grounded, but let’s start now.

A Review of the Year

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As it edges towards the end of another year here in South Korea, it is always a good opportunity to review 2025. As with everybody I suppose, much has happened this year personally and I have really not blogged as much as I had wanted. However, one thing that I have been working on busily is planning, filming, and editing video content for my YouTube Channel. So apologies if this website has been rather quiet of late.

Anyhow, let’s start at the beginning of the year.

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