So your students understand what adjectives, adverbs and nouns are, but struggle to fit them all together…. not anymore! Here are a few activities you can use in your lessons to get your students making sentences confidently. Activity 1 Elicit: The dog ran for the ball. How can you turn this sentence of six words into a longer sentence without changing the meaning? Is it possible to create a sentence of 50 words? Put your...

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The new sights, tastes, smells and sounds that you experience when you start teaching overseas can be incredible, but they can also be a little overwhelming. So it’s only natural to suffer a spot of culture shock. Here’s how to prevent it: 1) Manage your expectations Whilst you may have all your flights booked and are beaming with the anticipation of arriving in your new home away from home, it’s always worth checking out the...

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Job-hungry British graduates are heading overseas in their thousands to escape rising unemployment at home. According to a study by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU), 8.9 per cent of the class of 2009 were out of work six months after graduating – a rise of one per cent since last year. Leigh Salsbury, 23, who graduated from Brunel University, said: “The graduate jobs market at the moment is devastating. I know there are...

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Online learning is great – you get to do everything at your own pace, whenever and wherever you want… but there’s just one downside: when you get stuck! It’s not like in the classroom when you can just ask your tutor. But all is not lost; there are a few steps you can take to get you back on track to that TEFL certificate. 1) Don’t panic! No one expects you to be an instant...

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We’ll let you in on a secret – the majority of i-to-i graduates didn’t decide to teach English abroad because of their overwhelming love of grammar – there are far better reasons than that! Here’s why a handful of i-to-i graduates took the plunge and signed up for their TEFL courses. If you want to join them, take a free TEFL Taster Course to see if it’s for you: http://taster.onlinetefl.com/. 1. A passion for travel...

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You may spend a TEFL lesson teaching your students loads of brand new words but if you don’t mention them in subsequent classes, they’ll soon forget what they mean. Here are five fun activities you can use in your lesson plans while teaching English abroad to make sure all those new words stick in their brains. Activity 1: Fly swatter game First, divide the board into two halves and write the vocabulary in big words...

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TEFL won’t just mean amazing new surroundings and a challenging new job. Sometimes it can totally revolutionize your life, as these i-to-i graduates discovered. Read Chris’s story to see how he found love, escaped the economic downturn in the UK and is now living the TEFL life in South America…recession free! “I had been a professional writer for 20 years when the economic crisis hit publishing very hard. My freelance earnings plummeted as newspapers and...

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What do you want to do when you graduate? It’s the question every student dreads… the weight of expectation that years of university will lead to more than a mountain of debt and a fruitless job hunt. The good news is that while decent jobs at home are rarer than giant pandas, there are thousands of amazing opportunities all over the world for enthusiastic graduates to teach English abroad – it’s a great way to...

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Would you? Should you? Modal verbs like these are something learners can really struggle with. Here are a couple of activities to bring them to life for your elementary and lower intermediate students. Activity 1- Would like to…. Start by drawing a picture on the board of a man at a desk with a thought bubble coming from his head of him with lots of money. Elicit: ‘He would like to be rich’ Prepare 8...

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If you’re like most average workers, you’re probably reading this article at your rather dreary desk, in a snatched break from the daily grind. Having fun? You’re not the only one dreaming of life beyond your office walls – over half of the people who decide to do TEFL courses with i-to-i and start teaching overseas are employed and looking for a change. So, how do you go from mind-numbing monotony to incredible new life...

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