TEFL Prague and Abroad

What's it like to teach English in Prague? I've probably been asked this question nearly a hundred times over the last 15 years. To give you a feel of the daily day to day life, we shot a video with a couple of graduates of The Language House TEFL . Take a look below and follow both of them on a typical day in this beautiful city.  No two English teachers have the same kind of work or schedule. There's so much variety between all of our graduates and we really help our teachers find a job and schedule that works best for them. I hope you like the video!

The largest study abroad/work abroad website goabraod.com did an interview with me last week about teaching in Prague and The Language House TEFL. Check out the article here. snippet  As one of the oldest TEFL training centers in Prague, The Language House TEFL is known for its successful TEFL certification courses that are internationally accredited and externally monitored. To date, the school has graduated about two thousand students, with whom the organization has maintained close contact with. Chris Westergaard founded The Language House TEFL a few years after he began teaching English as a foreign language in Vienna and Prague, and he now serves as the company’s director. Read the whole there here  GoAbroad article with Chris Westergaard

Here's a lesson plan that is suitable for Intermediate and Upper Intermediate language students with past modal verbs being the focus. The lesson requires only about 15 minutes of prep to pull off and has a heavy focus on speaking. I recommend doing this lesson for groups of students who already have a decent understanding of past participles. Take a look! I also have a video demonstration of this lesson plan in action that I've posted below. Intro: 1 minute Come into class asking students how their day is going. Have a glass of water with you that you are drinking. When you they ask you about your day, spill the water all over yourself. Elicit the concept of having a bad day. Lead In: 5-7 minutes Demo out the questions and put students in groups 1. Do you often have bad days? 2. What are three things that can typically happen to make a day go wrong? 3. What are 4 bad, but funny, things that have happened to you this year? Target Language: 10 minutes  Before i...

Here's a video for a lesson I did on Past Modals for Intermediate students. I'll post the lesson in a day or two. In a nutshell, students have to create their worst week ever and use past modals to give each other advice. Check out the video!

Why would you ever study at home when you can train abroad for less price? Thinking of teaching abroad? Are you looking into TEFL certification courses? My advice for new teachers is to skip the online course and ALWAYS take your course abroad. From the money aspect, to your overall experience, a TEFL certification course abroad is the right decision. I recently published an article on Go Abroad (the largest study abroad website in the world) about why taking a course abroad is so important. Take a look at the article and check out my top 10 reasons why you should move abroad 1st and get your training 2nd. Article below! 10 reasons to take your TEFL course abroad.  Cheers, Chris Westergaaard

Here's a fun lesson you can do with levels as low as pre-intermediate, and up to advanced, depending on the language you want to use. Students will work in groups, create a movie and then pitch it to the class. Lexis: Language related to the film industry/describing movies. Materials:  A few pictures Flip chart paper Paper strips Potentially music to play in the background Introduction: 1-2 minutes  Enter the class acting like a director. You can tell the students to be quiet on the set and start giving them direction. Then mime out pretending to film them. Elicit the concept of a director. Lead In: 5-7 minutes  Demo these questions out and then put students into groups What kinds of movies do you like to watch? Are there any movies coming out that you are excited to see? Who are your favorite actors and directors? Are movies made better now or in the past? Target Language: 7-10 minutes Elicit and CCQ Note: There's a lot of freedom you can ha...

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 w...

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  

  Take a look at The NEW Language House TEFL's Official Course Video. Thanks everyone for all of the help creating it. The video is 13 minutes long, but it's well worth the watch. Take the plunge and go for this experience. You won't regret it. Sign up for our course here www.thelanguagehouse.net

Chris Westergaard TEFL teaching videos. These lessons were all demonstrated on new Czech practice students of The Language House TEFL Prague course.  Two are examples of lexis lessons and one is a grammar lesson. Enjoy!

    A bit of background  I've always liked the idea of living abroad, but if you had told me when I was in college that I would end up being a director of a teacher training program in Prague, I would have told you, you were crazy. It's funny how life works out. I started teaching in my early 20's in Austria on a teaching internship for a study abroad program. It was on a whim to be honest, but I really took to it, and it seemed like something I was natural at. During that year abroad, I visited Prague and fell in love with the city completely. I didn't really know what to do when I graduated university, but I knew that I wanted to get back to Prague. That's when I discovered TEFL and the reality that you could actually live and teach abroad all over the world without too much difficulty. I had known people who were teaching abroad, but I figured you needed a lot of schooling or experience to do so. When I learned that it was relatively easy to do, I knew that...