Esl Lessons Online

  Before we go into looking at the actual receptive skills lesson, if we were thinking about what potential problems there could be in these lessons. So, what things could go wrong in a reading lesson? Well, firstly the students when they are reading in a language that is not their native language, they tend to read every word as a separate piece and by reading word to word it?s very difficult to get an overall impression of what that particular text is saying. Secondly, the sentence length in a lot of articles that we will get will be very long and many of our students will not be used to that structure of language. So, here it's important to have a think about the way in which the text has actually been written and will it be fairly easy to read. The final thing is the actual...  [Read more]

  The final stage of the lesson will be the activate and the activate phase is going to form the main speaking activity within the lesson. So, it's very very important that here, we do a good demonstration of what it is that we're expecting them to do, that we elicit the type of target language we're expecting them to produce from the activity. So, one way we could go around it is to, firstly, form pairs. Each pair is going to be given a card and onto that card they're going to write the country and a month. What the teacher can then do, just to add a little bit of spice to it, is to collect all of the cards and shuffle them around and then redistribute them to the pairs so that they get a card that doesn't have their country or their month on it. What they're then going to do is...  [Read more]

  So let's have a look now what might take place in a typical writing lesson and, again, we're going to use the format of a straight arrow ESA lesson. Our first stage is to the go to the engage stage and, if we think back to what we said before, what we need to do is try to generate interest. So, an example here could be we show a picture first of all taken from a newspaper or magazine and then we can ask the students some questions. From looking at the picture we can ask them if they can tell us what is actually happening now as shown by the picture. Then, we can generate a bit more interest by asking them to give us ideas about what they thought was happening before this picture took place and what happened after. So, here we're just trying to build up the idea of a sequence of...  [Read more]

  So, we'll focus first of all on a speaking skills lesson and perhaps a starting point for this would be to ask a question which is: Why do we speak to each other? The reason that it's important to ask ourselves this question is that whatever answers there are to this should be present in our lessons. So, why do we speak to each other? Well, there are a multitude of answers to that but when you boil them all down to their essence, they probably actually come down to one or two things. We communicate to each other by speaking because of either a need. We need something. We want something or a desire to achieve something. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into...  [Read more]

  For the lesson that even takes place, there are a number of things that you need to have considered. Obviously, you need a very clear idea of what it is you're expecting the students to have to do and they need to know why. It's very important before you ask them to do an activity that they have an understanding of the purpose of that activity. You should, secondly, have had a thought about what they already know. Linked to that is, will it be necessary to do any form of pre-teaching before I can expect them to do this activity and finally, we need to make sure that we have prepared all our materials and our instructions for this particular activity. So, we'll consider a straight arrow ESA lesson, the focus of which is to be speaking skills. So, we'll start with our engage and in...  [Read more]

Anyone who has spent time as a teacher in any capacity will know that having a pre-written lesson plan is an important part of the job, as without one things can go off track very quickly. Once you have gained some experience the amount of effort you need to put into your plans will be reduced, but in the early stages of your teaching career it can sometimes be the difference between an efficient and successful lesson and a complete and utter disaster. A proper lesson plan allows you to lay out your targets for the lesson, organize your timings efficiently, ensure you have all the necessary materials and equipment, and identify any expected problems and how to deal with them. With a solid plan in place you should be able to move through every stage of the lesson on time, without...  [Read more]

  So, let's have a look at a typical receptive skills lesson. The main focus of this lesson is going to be reading, although there will be some listening involved as well and it?s going to be a patchwork ESA lesson. As a patchwork lesson, it will start off with an engage and this engage what we're going to do is to play an extract about Elvis Presley and it's going to be an Elvis Presley song and we can ask the students if they know who it is and if they know anything about him can help generate the interest in this. We can also ask them what they'd like to know about it. What we can then do is just to introduce them to the text but they're going to read the detail later on but just at this stage we'll do a quick skimming or scanning exercise to find some information from that...  [Read more]

  This presentation is going to have a look at the idea of receptive skills and how we can go about teaching receptive skills lessons. There are two receptive skills and they are reading and listening. If we think about first of all, why do we read or listen, then there are probably two main answers to that. Firstly, it could either be for entertainment or it could be for a specific purpose. Within the reading and listening areas there are a number of sub-skills that we can teach our students. Firstly, what we can do is to show different examples of reading. So, let's say, for example, that we have just bought ourselves a new video camera and along with that video camera came a whole book of instructions. In order to find out how to get that camera working, then we would need to...  [Read more]

  Before we move on to the planning of a lesson for speaking skills, something that we need to look at first is the idea of the accuracy versus the fluency of speaking. Accuracy relates to the correct usage of grammar and vocabulary, whereas fluency relates to our ability to continue speaking without any interruption. Now, ultimately within a whole ESA lesson or within language learning itself fluency and accuracy are equally important. Within an ESA lesson, however, depending upon which stage we're at in that lesson, then we're either focusing on accuracy or we're focusing on fluency. Remember in the ESA lesson, in the study phase, this is where we're looking at the target language where we're doing our language learning, so it's very important in this stage that we focus on the...  [Read more]

  We are going to move on to the second of the productive skills, which is writing and, again, we'll have look at the background, too, and create a typical lesson for a writing skills session. One of the things to be aware of in a writing skills lesson is that writing tends to be more formal than spoken English. So, there will be some differences between the two, such as writing very often uses less contracted forms and so on, but having said that there are many similarities between the two particular skills. So, many of the considerations that we had for a speaking skills lesson will also apply here to a writing skills lesson. Within writing skills itself there are some sub-skills that we may want to teach and those sub-skills could include, but are not limited to, hand writing...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Niger? Are you interested in teaching English in Niamey, Niger? Check out our opportunities in Niamey, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT! Unit 13 covered the various types of groups ESL teachers teach. The groups range from individual lessons, multilingual lessons, specific language lessons, and monolingual lessons. With each group of lesson...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Canada? Are you interested in teaching English in Regina, Canada? Check out our opportunities in Regina, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT! In this unit, we focused on lesson planning and how a teacher can help a class run smoothly. As I am already teaching ESL, I have found a lot of this content relatable. However, there are things I took...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in China? Are you interested in teaching English in Yulin Shaanxi, China? Check out our opportunities in Yulin Shaanxi, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT! Now that I better understand boomerang versus patchwork lesson teaching, I can better reteach Spanish to my English speaking students. Some of these orders/processes I already utilize but now...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Turkey? Are you interested in teaching English in Nazilli, Turkey? Check out our opportunities in Nazilli, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT! This lesson helped me consider the many technologies and resources that can be used in an ESA lesson. The lesson provided me with an overview of many tools and resources, such as Interactive White...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Russia? Are you interested in teaching English in Vladivostok, Russia? Check out our opportunities in Vladivostok, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT! I have looked at some course books over the years and I have seen many books that do not teach at the level it says for the students. ESL Students do not understand the material, and most of...  [Read more]

There is a very large market for ESL teaching books and all the major publishers have some amount of involvement in their production. These books fall into a number of different categories and here we will look at the three main categories. Every teacher will have come across a few different book series that have been specifically written for the ESL teaching market. This type of resource generally comes in five different levels: starter/beginner, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, and upper-intermediate. Each series will also contain three types of book: the teacher book, the student book, and the resource book (or something similar). The teacher book is key as it outlines the syllabus covered and it also breaks each subject up into individual lessons. Each of the lessons...  [Read more]

  Globalization and the increasing demand for English speaking professionals all over the world, especially in emerging regions, has brought about a new, steadily growing sector: English as a Second Language (ESL). An ESL teacher is, therefore, an educator who works with English Language Learners (ELLs) whose native language is not English. The goal of the ESL teacher is to help the students reach a certain level of fluency in English, on both a spoken and written level. ESL educators are not to be confused with foreign language teachers. ESL teachers do not share the same native language and are specifically trained to offer explanations and directed teaching methods to non-English speakers. This teaching style is mainly focused on repetition, drills, demonstrations, and...  [Read more]

  Our next category in our series of teaching special groups in ESL is English for specific purposes. This video focuses specifically on teaching business English. How is business Enligsh different to general English? Will you be able to teach business English? Find out in this video. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. Unit 9 explains why lesson planning is a great tool to set goals, measure productivity as well as keeping record of what a...  [Read more]

If you have spent any time looking into the world of English language teaching (ELT) you will probably have noticed that the industry has a fondness for acronyms. Terms such as TEFL, TESOL, ESOL, EFL, ESL, among others, are all regularly used when talking about teaching and studying English, as well as when referring to teaching qualifications. Here we will look at ESL and the first thing to make clear is that ESL stands for English as a Second Language. ESL, and any of the other acronyms mentioned above, are routinely used interchangeably when discussing scenarios where the English language is being taught to or studied by non-native English speakers. As previously mentioned, ESL and EFL are commonly used interchangeably within the English language teaching world. However, there is...  [Read more]

If you have had enough of the usual day-to-day work schedule and are keen to see as much of the world as possible, then maybe you should think about teaching English online. This form of ESL teaching allows you to teach from anywhere with a good internet connection, which means you have no obligation to stay in one place for more than the time it takes to teach your lessons for that day. It will also give you a decent income which you can use to fund your transport, accommodation, and other expenses involved when traveling. This is not that easy to answer as every online teaching platform has its own set of criteria that teachers have to meet. Some companies will require one or more of the following, while some require none of them: If you don’t have a degree, don’t panic, as...  [Read more]