William-Harper

This post fits in the Things they forgot to teach you at your TEFL training school category of TEFL. When new teachers of English as a foreign language imagine their first job posting, they may picture themselves teaching in all kinds of scenarios: Large university classes, one-to-one coaching sessions, and small groups. But they might not imagine that they’d have a partner teacher. Many jobs that...[Read More]

Give Back to go Forward. On the fence about whether or not you dare teach English abroad? Or, maybe, you’re saving up money to make sure you have a nest egg you can hatch later when you’re overseas. If, for whatever reason, you feel the desire to teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) but can’t go abroad to do it right now, I’d like to offer you a great alternative for the meantime that will he...[Read More]

[Guest written by our friend, Beth Verde] It’s a classic scene from a 1980s coming-of-age movie: a confused and anxious substitute teacher bombarded with a hail of spitballs, paper airplanes and a raft of abuse from the class he or she is supposed to instruct. Well, put away your shoulder pads and tweed jackets, substitute teaching in an English as a Foreign Language classroom is no reason for anx...[Read More]

You’re taking a TEFL certification course because you want to be in front of a group of students, leading them to better English, right? So, it may seem strange, especially for those of us who have been out of school a long time, when we assume the role of the student, and not the teacher. If you hang out in online forums about teaching English abroad (like I do) you’ll have encountered plenty of ...[Read More]

In some countries, teachers of English as a Foreign Language are expected to be half EDUcators and half enterTAINERS—or edutainers.  “Edutainment” is the term the industry has coined to explain the situation when your employer and your students are looking for games and laughter to go along with the English taught in the classroom. Edutainment is a Cultural Thing Now, if you’ve got a posting in Sa...[Read More]

Its better to deal with things in a positive manner Most new teachers fear the whole subject of discipline and avoid talking about it, but it’s an important subject for English teachers to discuss. How do you elegantly control difficult or disruptive students before they leak their behavior onto their classmates? How do you grab the attention of hyperactive learners who are doing everything except...[Read More]

Use your Real-Life Skills to Teach English for Specific Purposes After a long day at work, you might find your class full of sleepy and tired students. You’ll need to energize them. Once you’ve been around the block a time or two teaching English as a Foreign Language, you’ll probably want to branch out into ESP. No, I don’t mean you should hire yourself out as a psychic.  In our industry, ESP sta...[Read More]

Fitting it all together Teaching job? Check. Class schedule? Check. Lesson Plan? Uh oh… If you find yourself ticking off items in the checklist above and groaning when you get to “lesson plan,” read on and relax. Lesson planning is an important part of being a good teacher, but it doesn’t have to be worrisome. Today I’m writing about the big picture of lesson planning—the what, why and how. The Wh...[Read More]