What Happens During Hanukkah

  What happens once I have applied for my visa in Mexico? Once you have applied for your visa in Mexico, the process typically involves several steps and considerations: Application Submission: After submitting your visa application, you will receive a confirmation receipt or a reference number. Keep this safe as it may be needed for tracking your application. Document Verification: The immigration authorities will review your application and supporting documents. Make sure all required paperwork is accurate and up to date to avoid delays or rejections. Interview: Depending on the type of visa, you may be required to attend an interview. Prepare for this by familiarizing yourself with common questions and ensuring you can communicate effectively in English. Processing Time: The...  [Read more]

Once you have applied for your visa in Mexico, the process typically involves several steps and considerations: To apply for a visa in Mexico, you will typically need to submit the following documents: Valid passport: You will need a passport that is valid for at least six months beyond your intended stay in Mexico. Visa application form: You will need to complete the visa application form accurately and truthfully. Passport-sized photos: Usually, two recent passport-sized photos are required for your visa application. Proof of financial means: You may need to provide evidence of sufficient funds to cover your expenses during your stay in Mexico. Travel itinerary: It is advisable to include your travel itinerary, including flight details and accommodation bookings. Proof of accommodation:...  [Read more]

  What cultural issues should I be aware of during a TEFL job interview? Cultural issues to be aware of during a TEFL job interview: Understanding cultural differences is crucial in a TEFL job interview to ensure effective communication and a successful interview process. Here are some key cultural issues to be mindful of: Non-verbal communication: Different cultures interpret gestures, body language, and eye contact differently. Be aware of cultural norms regarding personal space, handshakes, and eye contact to avoid misunderstandings. Language proficiency: Some cultures value modesty and may downplay their language skills during interviews. Encourage candidates to showcase their language abilities confidently while being respectful of cultural norms. Dress code: Dress standards...  [Read more]

  If you choose an in-class TEFL course you will spend around four weeks at one of our centers where you will receive a high standard of teacher training and benefit from extensive teaching practice in an authentic classroom environment. The type of accommodation you will have during your stay will depend on the course location and your own preferences.  [Read more]

Once you have secured a place on one of our in-class TEFL certification courses you will receive extensive information regarding all aspects of the course, including accommodation. The course fee does not typically cover your accommodation, so you will need to factor the cost of housing for the four weeks of your training into your overall budget. Your options will vary from one location to the next, but you can rest assured that we only recommend accommodation providers that have been thoroughly checked for comfort and value for money. Details of our recommended options can be found on each individual course location page, however, below is a brief overview of the most common options available. One of the more common options is to stay in an apartment that is shared with other trainees on...  [Read more]

Cultural issues to be aware of during a TEFL job interview: Understanding cultural differences is crucial in a TEFL job interview to ensure effective communication and a successful interview process. Here are some key cultural issues to be mindful of: Common cultural differences that may arise during a TEFL job interview: To prepare to address cultural issues during a TEFL job interview, you can follow these steps: Research the Country: Understand the cultural norms, values, and traditions of the country where you are applying for a TEFL position. This will show your potential employer that you are aware of the cultural context in which you will be teaching. Reflect on Personal Experiences: Think about your own experiences with different cultures, whether through travel, living abroad, or...  [Read more]

A TEFL practicum is a crucial component of a TEFL certification program where aspiring teachers gain practical teaching experience under the guidance of experienced instructors. It typically involves teaching real English language learners in a classroom setting. The practicum allows trainees to apply the theories and methodologies learned in the course in a real-world teaching environment. This hands-on experience is invaluable for developing teaching skills and confidence. Participating in a TEFL practicum offers numerous benefits to aspiring English language teachers. Firstly, it provides an opportunity to put theory into practice and gain valuable teaching experience. It allows trainees to receive feedback from experienced instructors and make improvements based on that feedback....  [Read more]

1. Initiating TEFL Workshops 2. Advantages of Participating in TEFL Workshops 3. Anticipated Elements in TEFL Workshops 4. Strategies for Optimizing TEFL Workshop Opportunities TEFL workshops are meticulously crafted to equip prospective educators with the essential competencies required to proficiently teach English as a foreign language. Covering a wide array of subjects like curriculum planning, classroom administration, instructional approaches, and language evaluation, these workshops cater to both novice teachers and individuals seeking to refine their teaching abilities. By enrolling in TEFL workshops, participants gain valuable insights and pragmatic tactics to excel in educational settings. Engaging in TEFL workshops yields a multitude of benefits for aspiring teachers. Primarily,...  [Read more]

  What if accommodation is not included in my TEFL contract? If accommodation is not included in your TEFL contract, you will need to arrange and pay for your own housing during your teaching assignment. Here are some important points to consider in this situation: Budgeting: Make sure to budget for accommodation costs when planning your trip. Research the cost of living in the area where you will be teaching to have a realistic idea of how much you will need to spend on housing. Local Resources: Look for local resources to help you find accommodation, such as rental websites, local real estate agencies, or expat forums. They can provide valuable information on available housing options and neighborhoods. Temporary Housing: Consider booking temporary accommodation, like a hostel...  [Read more]

  To decide whether a job is right for you it is essential to get as much information as possible during the interview. You should be clear on areas such as salary, working hours, class size, student's age, and the resources available to you in the classroom.  [Read more]

  What are the benefits of teaching English abroad in your gap year? Teaching English abroad during your gap year can be a rewarding and enriching experience with several benefits: Cultural Immersion: Living in a different country allows you to immerse yourself in a new culture, learn a new language, and gain a deeper understanding of local customs and traditions. Personal Growth: It can help you develop valuable skills such as communication, adaptability, and intercultural competence, which are highly valued in today's globalized world. Teaching Experience: Teaching English as a foreign language provides an opportunity to gain teaching experience and enhance your resume, especially if you are considering a career in education. Global Networking: You can build a network of...  [Read more]

  In this instalment of Chantelle?s TEFL course video diary she talks about the sixth unit. Unit 6 covers the past tenses; past simple, past continuous, past perfect and past perfect continuous. As with Unit 4, this unit describes the structure and common usages of the tenses as well pointing out common mistakes and providing teaching ideas that can be used in the classroom. Although not her favourite unit, Chantelle thought it was well laid out with good test questions and support. 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...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word "thanatology". This word refers to the description or study of death and of the psychological mechanisms for coping with the phenomena of death. The word derived from Greek mythology where Thanatos was the personification of death. 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. To me, modals, passive voice and relative clauses are easy in detail and hold a fairly rational line of thinking to follow....  [Read more]

  This particular methodology is known as a straight arrow ESA lesson. If every single lesson that we undertook with our students was a straight arrow ESA lesson then it is quite possible that the students would be able to predict what is going to come up next and whilst this is good for the lower level students, then it could potentially become a little bit boring for our higher level students. So what Harmer did in his ideas about ESA, was to generate two other types of ESA lesson that we can use to try and generate a little bit more interest. So, the other two types of ESA lesson that we can follow: The first is known as a boomerang lesson and the second is known as a patchwork lesson and what we're going to do is to have a look at those other types of ESA lesson in a little bit...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word rhadamanthine. This word is used as an adjective and means showing inflexible judgment. 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. This lesson used two video examples of classes in order to show the difference between good teaching techniques and poor teaching techniques. The lesson essentially shows what would happen if you teach a class properly, and how well the students can understand what...  [Read more]

  The idiom "golden opportunity" refers to a chance that is likely to be rewarding and successful, for example: The low price for the house is a golden opportunity we must not waste. The price for the house is very cheap at the moment, so we should buy it before the price increases again. 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. This unit covers conditionals and reported speech. There are five main conditionals; zero, first, second, third and mixed....  [Read more]

  So what we're going to do is to run through a series of methodologies that were created mainly in the 1900s that adopted the idea that language learning should be much more communicative, much more natural. The first one is called audiolingualism and it's also called the army method because of where it was developed. Basically, psychology, during the 1950s and 60s, was building up new theories about behaviorism. Perhaps the most famous experiments that were done in this particular area were by Pavlov, where he was showing that most animals undergo a stimulus response mechanism and he had a series of famous experiments, where by ringing a bell, he could cause a dog to salivate, that would be his response, in the expectation of getting some food. This behaviorist idea of stimulus...  [Read more]

  This diary entry was completed after Chantelle finished unit 15. Unit 15 looks at different ways of evaluating and testing your students and the importance of doing so. Types of test covered include placement tests, progress tests, diagnostic tests, and practice tests. The unit also looks at the different external examinations students are likely to take such as TOEFL and IELTS. 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 is about how to prepare a...  [Read more]

  The next example is going to be that of a boomerang lesson and remember the structure is like this. So, again, we're going to start with an engage phase and for our engage, the students are just going to have a discussion about jobs. What happens at interviews and so on and so forth. So, during that engage phase, what we'd hope to do is to elicit some useful language about jobs and interviews and the types of questions that are being asked. Then, we're going to move immediately into an activate activity and this is going to involve a role-play. So, we'll break the students into pairs. One will be an interviewer, the other will be an interviewee and they'll generate the language that that role-play will produce. What the teacher can do whilst that is taking place is to go around...  [Read more]

  In this video Linda breaks down the difference between "in time" and "on time". Due to the fact that both expressions revolve around time, they can be quite difficult to distinguish. However, this video provides helpful examples and explanations that will help EFL teachers and students alike to grasp the difference. 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. This unit was actually fun because it was different, therefore interesting. I like the idea of...  [Read more]

  What are the hiring seasons for teaching English in Asia? Hiring seasons for teaching English in Asia vary depending on the country and type of institution. Here are some general trends to keep in mind: South Korea: Public schools: Hiring for the main intake typically occurs in February/March for the school year starting in March/April. There may be additional intakes in August. Hagwons (private language institutes): Hagwons hire year-round, but peak hiring times are in February/March and August/September. China: Public schools and universities: Hiring can happen throughout the year, with major intakes in February/March and August/September. Language training centers: These institutions often hire year-round, but peak hiring times are before the start of the academic year in...  [Read more]

  Now here's a teaching idea for the present perfect continuous tense. If you remember we use this tense to talk about actions that had been continuing up until the present moment or very recently. In this activity, you'll be giving a student a card. That card will include the past activity as well as some results. This card says 'You've been driving in the rain on your motorbike. You're all wet and your clothes are too.' The results are 'you're all wet and your clothes are too.' You'll present that information to the rest of the class and, therefore, it's up to the class to guess the action that was occurring up until the certain point in time. What will happen in this activity is, the student at the front of the room will express the present results 'clothes being wet; I'm all...  [Read more]

  Hello. This presentation is going to cover this section on lesson planning and what we're going to do is to have a look as to why we go about planning a lesson, what do we actually put in it? We'll create an empty lesson plan pro-forma and then having done that what we'll do is to fill in that lesson plan for a particular teaching point. So, our starting position is going to be: "Why do we plan lessons at all?" There are a number of reasons why we need to plan a lesson. The first and foremost perhaps is that it's going to create a logical sequence for our lessons. If we didn't have a lesson plan, it is quite possible that we could go all over the place and it would become confusing for the students. By having this plan, what we've created is a structure that we can work from. So,...  [Read more]

  This presentation is going to focus on the theories, methods and techniques of teaching and we're going to start with a quote. This is an interesting quotation because it contains within it a philosophical argument and it's a philosophical argument in the way in which we learn. Basically, this one is saying that the intelligence of their own children comes about due to a natural process. So this one could be said to be due to nature. This is exactly the opposite of this one, which is saying that they're teaching the environment that we create, creates that intelligence. So this one can be said to be due to nurture and this argument 'nature versus nurture' has been going on for thousands of years. These two viewpoints are two ends of a scale, or a continuum if you like, and every...  [Read more]

  It also helps us form our tenses. Many of the tenses will use these auxiliary verbs; particularly we have our continuous tense and our perfect tense. There are additional tenses that use auxiliary verbs. We'll get into that when we talk about our individual tenses. Another important aspect of our verbs is that they generally tell us what tense the sentence has been formed in. Take for instance the verb "to live." We could use it as live, lives, living or lived. "I live" or "she lives in Bangkok," meaning the present. "I am living in Bangkok," still the present or "I lived in Bangkok," meaning the past. Another difference with our verbs has to do with whether or not the verb is regular or irregular. With the regular verbs, in order to conjugate the verb into the past, we simply...  [Read more]

Thailand is known as the Land of Smiles. The culture is warm, friendly and genuine. There is a big expat community out there, so you’re in a new and exciting culture but also engaging with many different cultures through the expat network as well. The travel opportunities are wonderful, either around Thailand itself or to neighboring countries. AND the food is delicious and fresh! Hua Hin is a beautiful city on the beach in central Thailand, approximately two and a half hours away from Bangkok. The area has some amazing beaches, mountains, viewpoints, temples, night markets, water parks, and dining experiences for you to choose from and enjoy at any time of the year. Hua Hin itself features a beautiful, powdery sand beach, plenty of waterside seafood restaurants, a lively night market...  [Read more]

  Now, let's move on to our adverbs. Rather than describing nouns, our adverbs describe our verbs. There are four types of adverbs when describing verbs. They are manner. These describe how things are done. Two examples are: quickly, cleverly. We have adverbs of place, describing where the action happened. Two examples are: here or there. We also have adverbs of time, describing when the action happened, two examples being now or recently. Finally, we have our adverbs of frequency telling us how often the action happens, two examples being often or never. There's also another type of adverb but here, we're going to describe adjectives or other adverbs instead of verbs themselves. These are called adverbs of degree. If we were to take the adjective "intelligent", we could easily say...  [Read more]

  In this TESOL review video two TEFL students talk about their experiences during their four week course in Corinth, Greece. Don't be worried if you have forgotten the rules of grammar. ITTT does not require prospective trainees to have an in depth knowledge of the terminology and structures of the English language. We will teach you this during the course thus providing you with the knowledge and skills needed to be a successful teacher. 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...  [Read more]

  This video covers the difference between 'figuratively' and 'literally'. Even native speakers commonly confuse these two words. The word 'figuratively' is used when talking about something metaphorically. 'Literally', on the other hand is used for things that are real or really happen. Watch the video for detailed examples on the two words. 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. In this unit I learned about each specific type of the parts of speech....  [Read more]

Among the tens of thousands of ESL teachers working overseas, it is relatively common to find friends or couples who set off to teach English abroad together. Although it is common practice, there are still a few things to think about before you both pack your bags and head to the airport. If you plan to set off abroad with a friend or partner, it is vital that you choose a destination where you both have a good chance of finding employment. Although you might dream of working in a tropical beach resort with swaying palm trees and a laidback lifestyle, this may not be realistic as the limited number of jobs and a high level of competition could make things difficult. In contrast, most major cities across Europe, Asia and Latin America have a high demand for teachers, making employment...  [Read more]