Welcome to TEFL Articles, where you’ll find articles, essays, ideas and tips of special interest to teachers of English. If you have any articles that you would like to see on TEFL.net, please feel free to submit them using the button on the right.
In my role as the editor of TEFL.net Reviews, I have helped many people write their first ever reviews and I’ve had many nervous types who thought they couldn’t do it but no one who actually found they weren’t able to or that it wasn’t worthwhile. In fact, most people volunteer to do more. Here are 15 reasons why you (more…)
1. Makes teachers’ lives easier tomorrow
As much as we might know going to workshops is a good idea and have examples of ones we have left energised and inspired by, if they mean giving up time off when we are run down for any reason the resulting tiredness could mean that our lessons on Monday morning are worse than usual and (more…)
1. You can’t individually ask them their names and ages
If this is a problem because you actually want to know their names for purposes of classroom control etc (and it is great for that), the best solution is to ask someone to prepare name badges, preferably in roman script as well if it isn’t used in their (more…)
These tips are designed to be useful for people who are trying to choose whether a book is suitable for a future class, are trying to evaluate a book they are using in order to compare it with others, or who are writing a review of a TEFL book for sites such as Amazon.com or TEFL.net Book Reviews. Such evaluations can be (more…)
1. Use of movement
Using movement not only matches how children learn best, it also makes the meaning of what you are teaching clear, makes it easy to spot if they are paying attention and burns up any excess energy that they might have so they can sit down and concentrate during later bookwork or worksheet stages. The simplest way to get them (more…)
Anyone who has ever taught using the technique of presenting the language, practising it in a controlled way and then giving students the chance to use it in a free communication production activity will know that it is far from (more…)
1. Needs analysis means asking students what they need
You will rarely get a good answer to the question “Why do you need English?” -because students have never thought about it before, because they expect the teacher to make all the decisions, or because they don’t have the language to explain. Ways round this include (more…)
1. Interrupting
In Japanese it is normal to wait until people have completely finished speaking before you start your turn. This can leave Japanese at a disadvantage when speaking to people from countries where it is normal to speak over each other, such as the Spain, in class, in EFL exams such as (more…)
Many teachers find the cultural differences involved in teaching Japanese students quite a challenge and something they are still discovering years after they first teach a class with Japanese people (more…)
A good EFL lesson with a cross-cultural training element:
1. Includes techniques
An area of cross-cultural training that is often neglected (more…)
