I’ve just been reading a very interesting article about language interference. It recounts the story of a Chinese student in the US who, during a fluent English presentation, happened to glance over to her Chinese professor and accidentally used a simple Mandarin word instead of the corresponding English word. Further […]
Continue ReadingInterrupting Students in Your TEFL Class
Interrupting Students is not a good idea in your TEFL classroom. In everyday speech we interrupt each other, finish each other’s sentences and so on. This should be avoided in the classroom. Students (especially at lower levels) need to have time to gather their thoughts, often to translate from their […]
Continue ReadingIntermediate Level Students in English
Defining a student as intermediate is a very approximate classification of how well they speak English. There is no set definition of what intermediate means, however as a very rough guide students at intermediate level can talk and read about a wide number of subjects using appropriate vocabulary and fairly […]
Continue ReadingInductive vs Deductive Methods in TEFL
In the TEFL classroom, inductive and deductive teaching methods are two different approaches used in teaching grammar. Inductive teaching (sometimes known as inquiry or discovery teaching) involves giving the students examples of language and working with them to come up with grammatical rules. It is a more student centered approach […]
Continue ReadingIELTS – International English Language Testing System
IELTS stands for the International English Language Testing System and it is a test designed to assess how well a learner speaks English. In 2008 over 1.2 million people took the tests in 120 different countries. It is held regularly throughout the year, several times each month. The test is […]
Continue Reading