Archive for the ‘TEFL links- Usingenglish’ Category

Hopefully it’s just Mayday bank holiday rather than my lack of effort TEFLtasticwise recently that has seen a sudden drop in my number of views, but if only to make myself feel better I thought I’d give a list of where I’ve been making much more effort elsewhere, with links:

TEFL.net Idea Thinktank

15 fun ways to switch students onto graded readers

15 fun gapfill tasks

15 fun job application practice tasks- CV writing, cover letter, interview practice, HR vocabulary etc.

TEFL.net articles

15 common misconceptions about Business English and ESP

15 cultural differences in the Japanese classroom

15 more cultural differences in the Japanese classroom

15 criteria for a good cultural training lesson

15 more criteria for good cultural training lesson

15 important cultural differences in the classroom

15 more important cultural differences in the classroom

Onestopenglish (Macmillan) articles

Motivating teachers whose Business English students miss class

UsingEnglish articles for teachers

Why your students overuse their dictionaries- with solutions

70 characteristics of a good grammar presentation- possibly the longest article on this subject ever!

Why your students don’t want to do pairwork- with solutions and some pondering about whether they might not sometimes be right

Why your students still make mistakes with grammar they know well- with solutions and a call to relax when there are no solutions

The advantages and disadvantages of peer observations- with how to exploit the advantages and avoid the disadvantages

Things to put in a Self-Access Centre or Student Library- with tips on how to do it on the cheap

Why do my students question me?- with solutions

Why your students have problems with listening comprehension- with solutions

UsingEnglish.com articles for students (teachers might also want to have a look at what I am writing about them)

Why does my teacher make me read silently?

Why doesn’t my teacher correct all my mistakes when I’m speaking?

Why does my teacher make me learn the phonemic script?

UsingEnglish photocopiable PDF worksheets

Travel English pairwork B and V

Business and technical English easily confused words

CAE Reading Part Two match the quotes

TEFLtastic worksheets (pain in the arse to print out but worth the effort)

English for job applications/ HR worksheets

Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes

Requests and offers functional language review

The Roots of Medical English LP and 4 worksheets

And that’s it for TEFL stuff. The other thing I’ve been busy with is my wedding speech for the day after tomorrow, which could well mean that May will be an even less busy month in TEFLtasticland. Anyone fancy writing a guest piece or feeding me a story to keep the 1700 viewers I get on a good day entertained until I get back into the flow? If so, try the “Contact me” link on the right…

Why does reaching for the play button cause snoring, sighs or panic? Possible reasons and solutions:

1. Build up of wax in students’ ears

You could try giving cotton buds as prizes for getting good marks in the test, or doing a cultural awareness lesson on “Personal hygiene around the world”

2. Lack of respect for your ancient sound equipment

You could try hiding your cassette recorder behind a computer monitor and randomly moving a mouse with one hand to distract the students as you turn the tape player on with the other.

3. Incomprehension that sound can exist without pictures

Oh, young people nowadays… A quick clip round the ear should sort them out!

Or alternatively, you could look at my sensible suggestions on why some students find listening difficult and what we can do about it on Usingenglish.com here.

You finally come to the end of students staring at you blankly through the grammar explanation, and introducing pairwork brings on jokes, chat, imaginative use of language, and maybe even some flirting- unfortunately, little of any of it in English! Why do students switch to their own language in an English class, despite your best Basil Fawlty-like shows of displeasure every time they do it? (more…)

Now that “Paul Lowe” and “Windsor TEFL” are so many places on the web he can hardly have time to write threatening emails to them all let alone sue them, I can strike up my pipe, put on my tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches, gaze at my navel and get back to considering “What is the meaning of TEFL?”

In todays episode, Uncle Alex will consider “Why don’t my students (especially the adults) pull their socks up and do their homework?” It could be because they are trying to drive me to such fits of disbeliving fury that I keel over from a heart attack and they get a teacher who isn’t so keen. It could be because they are M* and hoping I will introduce corporal punishment. Alternatively, it could be because:

 1. It’s boring
2. They don’t understand the instructions/ what to do
3. It’s too difficult
4. It’s too easy
5. They could understand the language, but couldn’t think of any ideas (e.g. arguments for and against or a storyline)
6. It’s not their priority, e.g. because it doesn’t involve speaking
7. They just forgot/ forgot exactly what they had to do
8. They don’t find time/ have bad time management
9. It’s a minor rebellion
10. They don’t see the point/ don’t think it will improve their English
11. Doing homework seems childish
12. They lack a place where they can do it in peace and quiet
13. They lack equipment (e.g. a CD player)
14. They have their own self-study materials or habits which they prefer
And here’s what you can do about it/ do about some of those points:

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You really do learn new stuff in TEFL all the time. Only a week ago I wrote an article on The Advantages and Disadvantages of Setting Up a TEFL Course  (something I did twice back when I was ambitious), and it never occured to me that one of the disadvantages might be having to spend hours on the internet every day defending your reputation until it drives you nuts (see recent comments on the right for an example).

Should that not have put you off, I have written another one on How to Set Up a TEFL Certificate Course as well.

Maybe because it is the most obvious next step for an experienced and ambitious teacher who still wants to do something related to teaching rather than stepping into management, over the years I must have met 20 times as many teachers who wanted to be teacher trainers as people who ever managed to find a full time job doing it. That demand and the lack of a standard qualification for teacher trainers means that it can be very difficult to break into teacher training, and many of the teacher trainers I know relied somewhat on luck to do so. As such, none of the suggestions below are guaranteed to work- but all of them are guaranteed to improve your chances over sitting and waiting, or over taking one of the very dubious online qualifications for teacher trainers: (more…)

To make up for all the navel gazing recently, have decided to give the public what it wants for once. And what the public wants is TEFL sex!

That first paragraph should get some nice bizarre Google searches coming my way, but actually I’ve already done that topic to death (really!), so I’ll instead be expanding on the most popular recent post, which was on writing the perfect CV and cover letter for a TEFL teacher. Now we have, for your delight and delectation:

The perfect CV and cover letter for an EFL exam class teacher

The perfect CV and cover letter for a TEFL young learners teacher

The perfect CV and cover letter for an EFL manager

The perfect CV and cover letter for a teacher trainer

And last and (possibly) least:

The perfect CV and cover letter for a Business English teacher

In answer to my own question, I’m actually quite happy being a TEFL pleb again after trying teacher training and what have you, which is perhaps why I am the only person who will give advice to others on how to get into it as I’m not competing with you for the jobs…

“A professional is one who emphasizes public service, has high standards of performance, has a broad knowledge of his or her field, and participates in professional conferences and associations.”

Quote from The Japanese Police System Today (pg 33), not the most typical source of quotes for a TEFL blog I’m guessing, but as someone who has contributed a fair amount to English Teaching Professional (ETP) magazine over the years but always had a slight doubt about what the title of the mag was supposed to mean, seeing a definition of “professional” really caught my eye. So I decided to give myself a English teaching professional ranking, a quest you can join me on if you fancy:

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Despite the attempts of some textbooks to use more stimulating listening activities like jigsaw listenings, stories in episodes that end at suspenseful moments, comic dialogues etc, turning on a tape is still the most likely action to make some of your students either sleepy or panicky. As well as adapting drier listening texts to incorporate more fun textbook activities like those just mentioned, there are plenty of things you can do to make a listening text less boring and less difficult for your students. These can be divided into things they do:
1. Before listening
2. Before class
3. While listening
4. After listening

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 I’m not sure I have, but now you can- with my foolproof guide to putting your TEFL resume above the hoi polloi:

Getting an English teaching job abroad is becoming easier all the time, even if you don’t have the university degree and 4 week certificate in TEFL that have long been the minimum requirements. At the same time, though, getting a good teaching job in a good school is becoming increasingly difficult as the number of TEFL teachers with 10, 20 or even 30 years experience is increasing. As someone who in a previous job had to sift through hundreds of CVs in the first week of September every year to choose the 8 or 9 people we would give an interview to, I’ve gained a very good idea of what makes an English teaching CV stand out- experience that I’ve managed to use to make my own CV noticed for several jobs I was theoretically underqualified for. Some of the tips below are just things you can make sure you don’t miss out of your CV, while others are things you will need to think about throughout your career to make sure you build up the experience and qualifications you will need to make your CV really stand out. (more…)