TEFL Prague and Abroad

Chris Westergaard: TEFL in Prague I've created an Ask Me Anything page dealing with Prague and teaching abroad on Facebook. If you are interested in teaching in Prague and don't know how to start, go ahead and check out the page. I'm trying to post a TEFL related question and answer every other day. Check out the link here  Facebook TEFL in Prague

   Video Demonstration Coming Soon!  A fun, creative and interactive ESL lesson that uses physical characteristics of animals as the language point. Students first create a new dangerous animal and then debate with other students why their animal is the deadliest. This particular lesson is great for intermediates, but the language can be adapted for lower or higher levels. Special materials needed: Audio and flip chart paper. Introduction: 1-2 minutes.  Tell your class to listen carefully and ask them what they think about when they hear this music. Play the famous theme from Jaws. From the music elicit shark and deadly/dangerous animal. Lead in: 5-7 minutes. Have these questions pre boarded.   1. What is the most dangerous animal in the world? Name three reasons why it's dangerous   2. Name 4 dangerous animals that live in your home country.   3. Have you ever seen a dangerous animal in the wild? What happened? If you haven't, what would you do if you saw a v

Teaching Beginners is a much different animal than teaching any other level . Since the students have such a low level of language, you have to really change up the entire approach and lesson structure. Some general tips are to... 1. Hardly ever speak and only use the target language of the lesson when you do. 2. Drill, drill and then drill some more. (And then drill even more). 3. Plan out exactly what you want your students to be using and stick with that. 4. All mistakes need to be corrected. 5. Even at the lowest levels, still work on contractions and natural language. 6. Use your body and picture to teach words. Avoid any kind of verbal explanation when possible. 7. Build up your language points slowly and don't jump all over the place. 8 Assume that they know nothing and teach/introduce all language one point at a time. Introduction to the 5 points (stages) From observing and teaching hundreds, if not thousands of lessons, I've devised a pretty effective me

  Here's a a video of me teaching a beginner class for a lesson demonstration to some of February TEFL course students. The Language House TEFL involves about 12 hours of real teaching experience to Czech students of a variety of different levels. These language students shown hardly know any English at all. It's really fun (and challenging) teaching the lowest levels.  I'll post later about the specific methodology used to make beginner classes work.

 I'm pleased to announce that I'll be working directly with cinematographer, Lindsay Jackson! We'll be making professional looking methodology videos and more demo lessons over the next year. I'm really excited to be working with her. The first video should be ready in less than a week with at least one new video every week. I can't wait to get started! Lindsay at TLH   Chris Westergaard The Language House TEFL