Top Ten Reasons to Become an EFL Teacher – Part 1

Top Ten Reasons to Become an EFL TeacherIf you are thinking about become an EFL teacher or taking a TEFL course, now is a great time! The new school year will be starting soon and all over the world schools are going to be looking for new teaching talent to let loose in the classrooms.

It may sound like a fun idea but being an English language teacher isn’t all about teaching students funny phrasal verbs, playing word games and eating the cakes that the teacher’s pet brings in  – some of it is actual hard graft. Well sort of. Anyway let’s think about the top ten reasons why you should become an EFL teacher and we can think about the graft later… (more…)

Getting Fruity! Fruit and Veg Idioms for TEFL

Fruit and Veg Idioms - orangeFruit and veg idioms are more prevalent in the English language than you might think. If you know your onions, you might even be able to think of a few veggie idioms right now! Food in general is a useful theme in English when you are looking to find that perfect expression to describe a situation in an idiomatic way, in a manner with a bit of flavour.

Read on to explore the world of English fruit and veg idioms – adding in a few fruity phrases to your conversations is as easy as pie and it could even be the icing on the cake of your English language learning.
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Find a Sense of Humour in a Foreign Language

Humour is part of everyday life, especially in the UK, and just because you are learning a new language doesn’t mean you can’t continue to enjoy a giggle or even a guffaw. It just takes a tad more care. Jokes often have a linguistic component and many jokes are funny because of a clever play on words – this is where joshing in a different language can cause EFL learners to get unstuck!

It can take quite an advanced knowledge of a language to create a good, witty, linguistically complex joke. But it is still possible to enjoy humour in a foreign language with only a basic grasp of the grammar and vocabulary. (more…)

False Friends and Borrowed Words: One Big Linguistic Family!

The English language seems to crop up everywhere. Whether you are reading a German newspaper, a Spanish book or watching French TV, English words tend to stick out a mile to our eyes and ears. Weekend, networking, podcast, hot dog, CD, parking, PC, picnic, sandwich, camping – all these words and many more are peppered throughout non-English languages. But is it a good thing that English words are used so widely in other languages? (more…)

British and American Accents – Two Alien Tongues!

For students of English as a foreign language the differences between British and American accents can add an extra hurdle to reaching fluency. There are so many variations in accent within the same country that there really is no one British accent or one American accent – bad news for language students then! Or is it? (more…)

Teaching with Limited Resources? Make your own Visual Aids

Teaching English as foreign language can be a tough task. Teachers don’t always have the necessary tools at their disposal, especially if teaching abroad in countries with fewer resources and at schools with limited materials. Thankfully, there are various methods to improve the experience of TEFL for both teachers and students, even when teaching English with limited resources.

By thinking outside the box and getting creative, you can make the lessons great fun as well as highly effective for learning, even in classrooms with limited resources. Read on for some ideas on making your own visual aids when teaching English with limited resources. (more…)

New site design!

We hope you like our revamped site! We’ve been hard at work behind the scenes creating this smart new design for our EFL lovers to enjoy! We hope the site creates a better browsing experience for our visitors. (more…)