ESL activities

Creating Teaching Materials with ChatGPT and DALL-E2

Creating teaching materials is one of the most time-consuming things that teachers do. Finding a text on a specific topic can take ages. Even once you’ve found or written a text, you might then need to edit it to match the level of your students. Then you might go through the text to pick out useful vocabulary. You might even search for images to… Teaching skills, ESL activities, Five ways to, Theme based learning

Jigsaw Activities in Receptive Skills Lessons

It is well acknowledged among TESOL & TEFL instructors that a focus on receptive skills is important in language learning. Learners who are effective readers and listeners in English are better able to communicate and open themselves up to useful sources of language input. It is, therefore, important that receptive skills lessons engage… ESL activities, Teaching skills

Teaching Reading: 5 Common Mistakes EFL Teachers make

Many English language lessons involve reading. Reading can engage students, encourage autonomy and help improve other skills, like speaking and writing. But if done badly, reading can bore students, waste time and create cognitive overload. In this article, I’ll show you five common mistakes TEFL teachers make while teaching reading and how to… Teaching skills, ESL activities, Five ways to

Teaching Register: the forgotten component of English Language Teaching

Exposure to variation in English is something that all English teachers should try to encourage. But what happens when learners are only exposed to English through one source? It’s not as uncommon as you might think. There are Young Learners who are only exposed to gaming videos on YouTube. There are older learners who may only read a certain… Teaching skills, ESL activities, Five ways to

Teaching Tenses in English: a complete guide

What is the difference if someone says ‘I have lived here for five years’ or ‘I have been living here for five years’? If you are reading a newspaper article and the writer states ‘an agreement has been reached’ rather than ‘an agreement was reached’, why did they make this choice? Why do we sometimes use the present tense to talk about the future… ESL activities, Careers in TESOL, Teaching skills

Listening: the most important skill for teachers

We’re always encouraging our learners to listen for a purpose. But, how often is it that we focus on our own listening skills as teachers rather than maintaining that ‘instructional teacher mode’ and ‘tune in to the language and errors?’ Nothing’s wrong with identifying errors; it’s an essential part of our role as TESOL teachers,… All categories, Teaching skills, ESL activities

The Key Ingredients to Successful Online Learning

The challenges we've faced in 2020 have led to an incredible surge in online teaching and learning. For many of us, learning online is a new (and possibly intimidating) prospect that can leave us unsure about how to get started. Through my own process of trial and error as an online CertTESOL teacher trainer, I've come up with… All categories, Certificate courses, ESL activities

When students say, we’ve done this before… Perfect!

How often have you heard a learner say, ‘I know this’ or ‘we’ve done it before’? I can sometimes raise a smile when a learner says it, but when a teacher says, ‘they know that’ or ‘they’ve done that’, I can only stop and ask myself, ‘do they?’ or ‘have they?’ When learners and teachers say they ‘know it’ or have ‘done it?’ They likely mean they’… All categories, ESL activities, Teaching skills

Christmas Quiz: 11 words that time has almost forgotten

It's that time of the year again when I take a delve into the words of Christmas. It might be nerdy but it is Christmas and I like it … I thought I might take a look at some of the more obscure and perhaps forgotten words that might find their way into your Christmas teaching repertoire for good or bad or one of those games that some of… All categories, ESL activities

Back to school activities for the EFL/ESL classroom

Sadly the summer holidays are almost over and the next couple of weeks mark the return of the school year. During the first week of classes it can be difficult to know what to do with your students, as it is often a busy time where you need to communicate rules and expectations to your learners, perhaps get your bearings yourself in a new job and… All categories, ESL activities

How to teach writing: writing lesson ideas

So you're looking for writing lesson plan ideas, and you're not sure where to start. Does any of this sound familiar? Yes, but writing is boring. Is it? Sure, but writing could be time spent in class doing fun speaking tasks. Who said you can’t do both? But my students get more out of class from interactive activities. Exactly – writing lessons… All categories, Teaching skills, How to..., Certificate courses, ESL activities

Gamification in English language teaching: more than child's play

Ever feel like your students are stultifying, bored and demotivated? Maybe it’s not the subject, but your teaching. Competing for the splintered attentions of our learners has never been harder. It has now become a chronic situation, familiar to all teachers when struggling to motivate learners. There is now a generation of… All categories, Certificate courses, How to..., ESL activities, Diploma courses, TESOL Masters