TEFL Prague and Abroad

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...

Teaching is hard and teaching language is harder. You have to have both knowledge of your subject matter and a technical, skill-based knowledge, to pull it off. If I were to list the top 7 mistakes that new teachers make in the classroom, they would be the following. 1. Teacher Talking Time (TTT) This is all of the output that teachers make while in the classroom. I'll include here Graded Language, Running Commentary, Speed, Tone, Question Stacking, Confusing Directions...etc. The trick to get your students speaking is to speak less and to speak clearly. Don't explain what you're going to do, just do it. Don't use confusing or complicated language, speak directly and clearly. If you can limit your output to the essentials, you'll improve your pace, student comprehension and student output. 2. Lack of Language Awareness. Know your grammar. You shouldn't be lecturing your students on grammatical points, but you should be aware of the mistakes that they are...

Here's a video of demo of an Introduction and Lead In with a focus on error correction. When students are in groups, notice how I'm constantly trying to interact with them and improve their language by eliciting the correct words and responses. The key to correcting students is to do it fast and relatively often without breaking too much fluency. If you actively error correct group work, you'll find a noticeable improvement in their ability even over the course of only a few lessons.

 I've always thought of teaching as being a collection of skills. To be a good EFL teacher, you need a lot of innate qualities like empathy, charisma, creativity...etc., but you also need a plethora of classroom skills. These can include error correction, eliciting and concept questioning, pace, rapport, lesson formation, and a whole host of others. Often times teachers peak in the skill department while their general knowledge of language teaching increases. Most MA programs in teaching rarely touch on skill development and only focus on increasing your general knowledge of EFL theory.  If you want to get better in the classroom, work on your skills. What I recommend while teaching is to focus on a few of them at a time. Read up on different techniques, let's say error correction for example, and practice them while you are teaching. All good teacher are skilled teachers. You can know everything about EFL methodology, write dozens of books on the subject, but that doesn'...

Good lessons are lessons that have a brisk pace. Not only will your lessons be more engaging, but you'll obviously be able to accomplish more with the extra time. Lag in the classroom is a dreadful thing. Why settle for it? Here are some tips to improve your overall pace and flow in the classroom. 1. Cut out your Extra Language : You don't need it and it's not beneficial most of the time. You don't need to explain everything you are doing to your class. You don't even need to speak in complete sentences. Work on limiting your own TTT so that your commands/directions are clear and concise. 2. Avoid the Echo: New teachers tend to want to repeat everything their students say back to them. Why do this? Unless you are error correcting, it serves little to no purpose and just slows things down. Instead, just say "good" or "next" or even just nod and move on. It's a common thing that practically everyone does to reaffirm what their studen...

What is an Introduction to a Lesson? All good lessons for the most part should have a greater topic that your target language fits under. The Introduction is a way introducing your topic and possible target language in an interesting and engaging way. In general, introductions are only a few minutes long and don't necessarily have to include a lot of student output.                           Why are Good Introductions Important? Introductions serve to engage the class right from the beginning. You want your students to get involved and be interested in what they are about to learn. Most teachers that complain about their students being lazy or apathetic or unmotivated or unresponsive probably are not engaging their students enough and probably don't have really solid Intros. If you can get your students engaged in the first few minutes of the lesson you're likely to carry that energy throughout your lesson. This ...

Dressing up/taking on roles is a great way to increase motivation   The concept of motivation and motivating your students is really TEFL 101, but we should nevertheless go over it briefly. It's really easy for everyone to nod their heads and say 'yes motivating students is important', but actually doing it and doing it consistently and effectively is a different matter. let's begin... There are Two main types of motivation and  an additional two that are specific for language learning. Motivation for Language Learning Instrumental/Integrative Instrumental meaning that the students are using the language to perform an outside task or duty. Perhaps they need to improve their language to complete a test for university or for their job or because they need have to travel somewhere. Integrative involves them learning the language because they have an affinity for the culture or people of that language and want to be more involved with it. What does this mea...

See, even Robin Williams gets it - wait he's bipoloar What makes a good teacher? It's a question that gets asked lot by students of The Language House TEFL/TESOL and university students that I connect with who are interested in teaching abroad. While the question is vague and definitely a bit subjective, it's not that hard to answer. Here's a list of what I think is important from my own experience in the field and watching literally thousands of lessons from other teachers. These aren't in any particular order but I have added an asterisk on some that I think are really important. 1. Creativity* Creative people will obviously have an easier time being creative in the classroom. Such a needed skill for making your lessons interesting and finding new and dynamic ways of presenting material. The props you use, the interactions you create, the role-plays you design will greatly help you in the classroom. Note - a lot of more analytical minded teachers will make...

   Most of my training experience comes on a face to face basis and I've never really had to write in depth my teaching techniques and how I really get it to all work in the classroom. It's pretty easy to list a bunch of tips, and they do help a bit, but without depth behind them, they really won't be of much use. Most of the previous posts have dealt with deciding to take a TEFL course and how to get the most out of it. What happens after that though? How do you actually teach well? It's going to be a daunting task, but I'm planning on making the next few dozens posts related specifically to getting better in the classroom. I'll try to keep all of the posts systematic and have a logical progression. That being said, don't shoot me if I jump around a bit. TEFL Prague Courses  The Language House  http://www.thelanguagehouse.net