One of the benefits of being an English language teacher or involved in TEFL is the opportunity to travel around the world. Not many other jobs offer the opportunity for people to travel, learn about a culture or learn more about the language. One country which is very popular for many EFL teachers is Turkey with its rich and immersive culture. In this post, Emre gives his top ten tips for working in Turkey.
Observing teachers can be quite a challenge, especially if you have limited observation experience. However, it shouldn’t be too stressful and you can also help teachers with the whole process. There are of course different observations which are considered: pop-in observations (where a senior member of staff pops their head through the door to get a general idea of the class), formal observation (which is arranged by the Director of Studies or a senior teacher) and a peer-observation. Each have different objectives and this will be looked at in a future article. In this article, we shall look at ten tips for observing teachers and things to consider.
A few months ago, I decided to invest in some Story Cubes and have been trying them out with some of my classes. If you are unfamiliar with Story Cubes, they are a collection of nine dice with images printed on each side of the dice. They are stored in a convenient box which is super portable, with them being small enough to just place in your pocket. Anyhow, when using the Story Cubes in class, the students responded positively and created some very engaging and funny stories. If you want to find out a bit more information about these Story Cubes, you can check Rory’s website.
In this article, we look at ten teaching ideas for using Story Cubes in the classroom.
A few weeks ago, I was honoured to teach a group of Chinese primary learners (aged between 4 and 8 years of age) for the first time in a long time. The last time that I had taught primary-aged English language learners was in my initial few years of teaching in South Korea. However, it was a rewarding and highly motivating group of learners to teach. Fortunately, I had a chance to reflect much of my knowledge and awareness of primary learners from a Young Learner Extension Certificate which I undertook a number of years ago. With much reflection and consideration, I have now thought of my top ten tips for teaching primary learners.
Teaching in China is becoming more and more of a popular destination for teachers of English who are keen to earn a decent salary and developing their career in English language teaching. Looking at recent job posts on this website, the majority of the job submissions are from China. So, what is the best way to survive as an English teacher in China? In this blog contribution, Kim Ooi attempts to answer this question.
“Pronunciation Practice Activities” by Martin Hewings
So the past few months, I have been focusing more and more on pronunciation for all levels of learners, no matter whether they are young learners or adult learners of English. Anyhow, I tried out a new lesson idea today which was partly inspired from the wonderful book, “Pronunciation Practice Activities“, written by Martin Hewings. I would recommend any teacher worth their salt to purchase this book, as it offers some great pronunciation lesson ideas which could be incorporated into class immediately.
Most teachers would identify word stress with the teaching of new vocabulary or as a technique to support pronunciation for problematic lexical items. This is all well and good but it reminds me of a teacher reacting to issues rather than proactively focusing on areas of language learning. Personally, if a teacher is able to develop a lesson based around pronunciation and developing learners’ awareness of pronunciation, so much the better. There is by no means anything wrong by reacting to pronunciation issues as they arise but I think it would be a nice change of focus when we remind learners that there are some basic principles that they can learn no matter how large or small the lexical item. Nevertheless, lets look at one lesson idea which is published in “Pronunciation Practice Activities“.
It is the first time that I have attempted to do a book review via video before and I decided the lucky book would be “50 Activities for the First Day of School” by Walton Burns. Watch the video below to find out more about the book and whether it would be useful for teachers.
Again, please let me know what book reviews I should do in the future. Again, a huge thanks to everyone who has been supporting my YouTube Channel – I now have over 42,000 minutes of watch time and over 12,000 views on my Channel. So a huge thank you to everyone.
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