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Teaching English in Hong Kong: Level Up Your Career

Already living in Hong Kong, or thinking about making the move? Then you’re in a great spot to supercharge your teaching career. Whether you're aiming to climb the ladder in local schools, land a role at a prestigious international school, or score a spot in the sought-after NET Scheme, this guide will walk you through your options, and how to stand out. Local Schools: Start Strong, Grow Steady Teaching in local schools gives you the chance to build deep connections and grow your career right… Careers in TESOL, Certificate courses

Assessment for Learning with AI Text Generators

Most of the time, when we think about assessment, we think about grades, tests, and final scores. But what if assessment wasn’t just about measuring learning, but actually improving it? That’s the idea behind Assessment for Learning, or ‘AfL’ for short. In AfL, teachers use assessments to guide students and help them improve. Students are encouraged to discuss what success looks like, self-assess, and give feedback to their classmates. These activities help students better understand what they… Teaching skills, ESL activities

Adapting ESL Reading Activities with AI

Someone, somewhere, wrote your coursebook. They don’t know you, they’ve never met your students, and they might not even be familiar with your country. This means the content of your coursebook wasn’t made specifically for your class. It's more like a store-bought suit - close enough, but not a perfect fit. It probably needs a few tweaks. In this post, we’ll look at how AI can help you make those adjustments. Online Workshop - AI Teaching Skills: Authentic Listening with AI - Tuesday… ESL activities, Five ways to, Teaching skills

Teaching Pronunciation with AI

Pronunciation sometimes gets called “the Cinderella of language teaching” (Kelly, 1969:87). It’s overlooked and undervalued compared to its siblings, grammar and vocabulary. Teacher training programs rarely address it in depth, and coursebooks either avoid it or present activities that don’t match your students’ needs. After all, coursebook writers have never met your learners. But knowing your students doesn’t necessarily help you teach pronunciation. The more you interact with your… Teaching skills, ESL activities, Five ways to

Use AI to Improve Your Writing Without Cheating

Writing is difficult. While almost everyone learns to listen and speak in their first language, not everyone learns to write. Until relatively recently, being able to write was the exception rather than the norm. And even now, being able to write is not the same as being able to write well. The challenge of teaching writing has become even more complex with AI. Many teachers see it as a threat. If AI can write essays for students, how will they ever learn? But this argument misses something… Teaching skills, How to...

Teaching and Learning Vocabulary with AI

In this blog, we’ll look at how to use AI to help with vocabulary learning and teaching. So much of language learning is about learning vocabulary. Regardless of your students’ level, well-formed sentences mean nothing without the right words to fill them. Online Workshop - AI Teaching Skills: Authentic Listening with AI - Tuesday, 27 May For better or worse, vocabulary is often taught in the order, present, practice, produce. For anyone who took a long nap around 1983 and just woke… Teaching skills, Five ways to

Using AI to Create Custom Listening Materials

All teachers are materials writers. We all make worksheets, think up activities, select texts and create writing assignments. There is however, one type of material which is extremely challenging for us to make ourselves: audio. Online Workshop - AI Teaching Skills: Authentic Listening with AI - Tuesday, 27 May Matching the quality of audio from coursebooks is extremely difficult. Audio recordings from coursebooks usually includes a range of accents, speakers of different ages, and… Teaching skills, Five ways to, Theme based learning

Using AI for English Roleplay Activities

Roleplay is one of the most common ways to practice speaking, especially at higher levels. Roleplays can bridge the gap between the classroom and real-world communication. By encouraging students to be someone else, roleplays can allow students to be themselves - solving problems, driving a hard bargain or simply having fun. All this builds students’ confidence in their ability to communicate. But roleplays can be difficult to plan – sometimes they fizzle out after just a minute or two. Role… Teaching skills, ESL activities, Five ways to, Theme based learning

Creating Reading Comprehension Activities with AI

Few things in teaching polarise opinions as much as reading activities. Some educators argue that reading comprehension questions are inauthentic. They detract from the joy of reading. Instead of inspiring students to read, reading comprehension questions train students to find correct answers. Reading comprehension questions aren’t popular because they further learning - they’re just easy to grade. Online Workshop - AI Teaching Skills: Authentic Listening with AI - Tuesday, 27 May On… Teaching skills, ESL activities

Create Mock English Language Tests with AI

Test prep can be daunting. Students come to us with minimal time and maximum expectations. They might want to focus on the test, even when they really need to focus on improving their English. Teachers are supposed to know everything about question types, strategies, and grading criteria, all while keeping students engaged and motivated. It’s an almost impossible job. In this blog post we’re going to look at how AI can help lift some of the burden. We’ll start by looking at why AI can be… Teaching skills, How to..., Five ways to, ESL activities

Creating Worksheets with AI

Creating engaging and effective worksheets is a time-consuming process. Even if you download worksheets from a website, the process of searching for something suitable can be as onerous as making your own. In this blog post, we'll look at a different solution: using AI to generate worksheets. As well as saving you time, AI can add interesting twists to traditional worksheets. With AI assistance, you can personalise, target and differentiate your worksheets. In this post we’ll cover: adapting… How to..., Teaching skills, ESL activities, Theme based learning

Using AI in ESL Classrooms

In the summer of 2023, I ran a one-day workshop for recent graduates on writing effective emails (in English). Near the end of the day, I asked the participants to summarise what they had learned in an email. I walked around the training room, looking at what the students were typing and noticed one participant carefully copying and pasting from ChatGPT. Instead of reflecting on what she’d learned, this participant outsourced the activity to AI. This was the moment I realised that AI was… Teaching skills, ESL activities, Five ways to