Episode Thirty-five

Updates for the New Year and a Few Things I’ve Learned About Online Teaching

Show Notes

Welcome to the first Expand Your Horizons episode of 2021! In this episode, I'm sharing a few personal and professional updates, as well as summarizing a few key takeaway lessons I learned about teaching English online in the last year.

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In this Episode

• 2020: it was quite a ride! A few personal updates

Professional updates

• Lauren’s transition from TEFL Horizons to pursuing an MA

• The launch of the Online English Teacher course - a culmination of everything I’ve learned so far about online teaching and methodology, which I’m extremely excited about. The pilot session is starting in February!

• My own transition from in-person to online teaching and training, and how I’ve adapted

Six things I learned this past year about online teaching

• 1. How to use and adapt resources: lesson frameworks don’t change, but the materials do

• 2. Technology takes practice and patience… why you need a backup plan (or five)

• 3. Communication and connection still matters (and is still possible!) online - why it may be more important now than ever

• 4. Everything takes longer online… and how to plan accordingly

• 5. Overall, the good outweighs the bad: the things I now love about online teaching

• Practice makes (almost) perfect: why good training matters even more for online teachers

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What do you want to hear on the podcast in 2021? Leave a comment below and let me know!

Looking for tips and strategies for your online teaching? Sign up for an invite to the next series of free webinar workshops, coming at the end of January.

Episode Twenty-five

Interview with Jackie Bolen: Teaching in Korea and ESL Games

Show Notes

In this week's episode of Expand Your Horizons, our guest is Jackie Bolen. Jackie taught English in South Korea at private institutes and universities for over ten years. She now lives in Vancouver, Canada where she does some teaching, writing, and various online things, including running her two websites, eslactivity.org and eslspeaking.org. She is both CELTA and DELTA certified and believes in the value of communicative, interactive language learning. She’s particularly interested in using games in the ESL classroom, and she’s published several books of games and resources for ESL teachers. In her spare time, Jackie is usually on the hunt for the most delicious kimchi she can find, which she says isn't that easy in Vancouver! She joins us on the show to discuss teaching in Korea and share tips for finding a job, and she offers some great advice on how to make the ESL classroom more fun.

“I’m all about student-centered teaching. I think anytime I can take two minutes to set up an activity and then students are interacting and talking with each other for 30 minutes, I can think, ‘I’ve done good work here.’ (. . .) So that’s always my goal.” ”

In this Episode

• How Jackie decided she wanted to teach English and got her start

• Why she decided on Korea as her initial teaching destination

• How requirements for teaching in Korea were different in the past than they are now

• Why university jobs in Korea are coveted and what qualifications a teacher needs to apply

• What a “hagwon” is, and the pros and cons of teaching at one

• What to look out for when applying for a job- potential red flags

• Questions you should ask (and where you should look) to make sure the job you’re applying for is legitimate (https://www.waygook.org/)

• The importance of using Facebook groups as a resource for checking out jobs

• Checking out hagwon black lists to avoid scams/ unpleasant working situations

• What daily life is like for a teacher in Korea

• The expat community: activities and clubs

• Saving money in Korea

• Why Jackie decided to get CELTA certified after teaching for five years

• Her experience on the CELTA course

• How her years of teaching contributed to her success on the course

• Her advice for prospective candidates: brush up on grammar!

• Why knowing the grammar terminology makes the CELTA course much less stressful

• Her experience on the DELTA course - how the DELTA exam helped her solidify her confidence in language analysis

• “Pragmatic competence” (the term I couldn’t remember in our discussion of the DELTA exam)

• The benefits of using games in the ESL classroom

• Balancing the use of a textbook in class with time to play games

• How to motivate students by getting them moving around

• Why less teacher talk is an indication of a successful lesson

• The feedback Jackie got on one of her first CELTA lessons and how this changed her teaching philosophy

• One of her favorite interactive classroom activities: a class survey, or “find someone who” (you can download an example of it below!)

• Why activities with a communicative goal are effective

• How Jackie gets inspiration and ideas for her ESL resource books

• Why she started two Facebook groups for ESL teachers: English Teachers Abroad and Resources for ESL/ EFL Teachers

• Her favorite thing about the ELT industry

• Why she spent most of her teaching career in Korea, and why she moved back to the United States

• What she doesn’t love about the ELT industry

• Her favorite travel destinations in Asia: Hong Kong, Laos, and Thailand

• The resources Jackie offers, including her websites: https://www.eslactivity.org/, https://eslspeaking.org/, and her books on Amazon.

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Want to try out a version of the “Find Someone Who” activity Jackie referenced in this episode? Download it by filling out the form below.

Episode Twenty-four

How to Teach Speaking

Show Notes

We know that helping students develop their speaking fluency is important, but are students really getting better at speaking EVERY time they're talking in a lesson? How can we measure whether students’ speaking skills have actually improved during class? In this week's episode, we look at how to devote an entire lesson to speaking fluency. We’ll walk you through the stages of an effective speaking lesson, break down exactly what to do and why, and give you practical advice for helping students experience a boost in their fluency— even from a single lesson.

In this Episode

• Why teaching English isn’t just teaching grammar and vocabulary: it’s about skills, too!

• The productive skills: speaking and writing

• How teaching a skills lesson is different from teaching a systems (grammar or vocabulary) lesson

• How students speaking in the classroom is different from practicing speaking outside the classroom

• How you can make sure your speaking lesson is more than just “speaking and leaving”

• The suggested structure for a speaking lesson

• Why starting with a lead-in still matters (because it always matters!)

• Why ANY speaking activity isn’t THE speaking activity in a speaking lesson

• How to set the speaking task with intention (and how this differs from students actually doing the task)

• Why a speaking task needs a communicative goal

• How to design a speaking task that will motivate students to speak

• Why a demo of the speaking task is important and how to set this up

• Why it’s helpful to give students “useful language” for the task and what kind of language that might be

• How to plant this “useful language” in your speaking task demo

• Why you should think of this language input stage as “language light”

• How to let students prepare for the speaking task (brainstorming time!)

• Why there’s a lot that goes into a speaking lesson before students even get to the speaking task! (But also why you don’t want to make your speaking lesson too “top-heavy”)

• How to pair or group your students for the speaking activity (why it’s helpful to be deliberate here)

• Why you’ll want to stay out of the way while students are actually doing the speaking task

• What to do while the students are speaking/ engaged in the task: monitor (but stay aloof!)

• What to listen for as you monitor

• How to prepare for a delayed error correction stage (why you don’t want to correct errors on the spot in a speaking fluency task)

• What to do immediately after the speaking task and before delayed error correction: content feedback

• How the communicative goal (that you set up for the task) contributes to content feedback

• How to maximize content feedback and ensure everyone is engaged

• How to get the most out of delayed error correction

• A summary: the three keys to a speaking lesson that make it truly effective

• The ideal way to extend a speaking lesson: have students repeat the task after error correction

• A variation of how to structure the speaking task(s) if you have a longer lesson

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Want to teach this speaking lesson? Enter your email address and we’ll send you the party planning speaking task we referenced in this episode, so you can try it out in your classroom!

Episode Twenty-three

Interview with Jessie Ebersole: The Benefits of Volunteer Teaching

Show Notes

In this week's episode of Expand Your Horizons, our guest is Jessie Ebersole. Jessie is the Director of Academic Programs at Washington English Center, a non-profit English language school for adult immigrants in Washington, D.C., which relies on all volunteer teachers to teach 14 levels of classes. Jessie started out in the TESOL field as a volunteer, and later went on to complete a master’s degree in TESOL at American University. She previously taught at American University’s English Language Training Academy, and was a draft writer for parts of Intercambio’s textbook series Confidence and Connections. Jessie is the WATESOL Adult ED Special Interest Group Chair, and she always enjoys opportunities to connect with the broader TESOL community. In our conversation, we discuss how starting as a volunteer teacher kicked off her career in the field of English language teaching, and we dive into the benefits of being a volunteer teacher in general.

“On a deeper level, you learn about different people’s cultures and perspectives and backgrounds and experiences. In general, I think most teachers, and I also, am just amazed at how often these classroom communities form where everyone is very supportive of each other and you see people bonding across cultures and across language barriers. Even at the beginning level, you see students forming connections with people who they don’t have a lot of ways to communicate with based on their language level… but they still manage to connect. And I think that’s something that’s very rewarding to see. ”

In this Episode

• How Jessie got started in the ELT industry

• What inspired her to start teaching

• Why she moved to Washington, DC

• How she got started at Washington English Center

• How volunteering launched her career

• Her experience as a TESOL grad student

• How she got experience in materials development

• How volunteering let her “test the waters” to determine that she wanted to continue on in her training and development as a teacher

• Why it can be helpful to have a little bit of teaching experience before starting a teaching degree or certification

• What her job is like at Washington English Center

• How she supports the teachers at WEC

• How Washington English Center works

• What it’s like to volunteer at WEC

• The flexibility for students and teachers in WEC’s program

• Why WEC uses a co-teaching model

• The challenges that some volunteers face

• Why it’s important to move away from the classroom model of “teacher as lecturer” and instead make lessons more like workshops

• Where the students at WEC come from and what their expectations are

• Why plenty of speaking practice is important in the classroom

• Why someone might want to volunteer as a teacher at WEC

• What volunteer teachers can expect

• The benefits of volunteer teaching

• Why the students at WEC are so motivated

• How classroom communities form

• The reward of seeing students’ abilities with language progress

• Differences in teaching beginning students and more advanced students

• Professional development opportunities offered to volunteers at WEC

• Why it’s important to refresh your teaching skills regularly, no matter how much experience you have

• Advice for teachers who are thinking about volunteer teaching, whether at WEC or elsewhere

• Why volunteering can work as pre- or post-certification experience

• Why volunteering is a great way to figure out if teaching is really for you

• Why volunteering counts as “real teaching” when it comes to experience on resumes or in job interviews

• What Jessie wishes she had known before she first started teaching

• Her favorite thing about her work

• Why there are so many different paths to take in the English language teaching industry- how to build it into a career

• How to get in touch with Washington English Center: by emailing Jessie at jebersole@washingtonenglish.org or by calling 240-289-2101

• Washington English Center’s website: https://www.washingtonenglish.org/ 

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Thinking about volunteering as an English teacher? Sign up for free teacher training in one of our upcoming webinars or brush up on your grammar knowledge and become a Grammar Guru.

Episode Twenty-two

How to Teach Listening 2: Different Sub-Skills and WHy They Matter

Show Notes

In this episode, we're going into even more depth on how to teach effective listening lessons. First, we talk about different ways we listen in real life and how we can apply this to our listening lessons in the classroom. Then we go over the different listening "sub-skills," why the distinction between them matters, and examples of how you can help students practice each one. Finally, we offer some suggestions for taking listening tasks to the next level, and answer some common questions (should you give students the transcript?) along the way.

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In this Episode

• Listening as a skill- just any listening doesn’t necessarily count as true listening comprehension practice!

• Why it’s important to practice listening in the classroom

• Creating a bridge between the classroom and real life listening

• Why we listen to different types of audio in different ways, and how this applies to listening lessons

• Three different listening “sub-skills” and how these compare to the reading sub-skills we discussed in this episode

• How to choose which types of listening comprehension or sub-skills to have students practice- why the audio text itself determines this

  Listening for gist

• How to set up a listening for gist task when you can’t make students “skim” listen

• How to set a task that helps students practice listening for the main idea

• Examples of listening for gist tasks

  Listening for specific information

• How to identify what “specific information” is in a text

• What listening for specific information requires of students - how it’s different from listening for gist

• Examples of specific information tasks

  Listening for detail

• How this is different from listening for specific information and how to tell the two sub-skills apart

• Why it’s helpful to let students listen for gist before asking them to listen for detail

• Why practicing this sub-skill usually requires playing the audio multiple times

• Why it’s ok if students don’t get all the answers right the first time around

• A good strategy for going over the answers to listening for detail tasks

• Examples of listening for detail tasks

  More advice for teaching listening

• Why it’s not important for students to understand every single word in a text - it’s about the process, not the final result!

• What else you can do with an audio text, after you’ve already gone through tasks to practice listening for gist, specific information and detail

• How to help students understand connected speech

• A situation in which you can use the transcript

• A specific example of a complete listening lesson - including an exercise in which students practice listening to connected speech

• Why students need to be comfortable with the content of the audio before you give them an exercise on connected speech

• What to do if students continue to have trouble with the detailed listening task

• How to help students use logic and knowledge of context to help them understand what they might have missed in their comprehension

• Our shameless plea to review us on Apple Podcasts

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Episode Twenty-one

Interview with Orlando Delgado Mata: Teaching and Training at IH Mexico, and Being a Non-Native Speaker in the ELT Industry

Show Notes

Welcome to Episode 21 of Expand Your Horizons! This week, our guest is Orlando Delgado. Orlando has been working as the Director of Teacher Training & Development Operations for IH Mexico for 7 years now, leading the 15 IH TT Department branches in the country, and he is also a member of the executive board of directors. He has worked as a teacher trainer for over 10 years, in Mexico, the US, the UK, Ukraine, Italy, Canada, Tunisia and Argentina, and as a freelance course book writer for the University of Dayton. Additionally, he is a very active CELTA, ICELT and Delta Assessor, traveling in Europe, and North, Central and South America assessing other CELTA centers. He remains actively involved in professional development and reflective practice and holds an MA in Teacher Education from The University of Manchester. He is currently working on his MBA through Warwick University Business School. As Director of Operations, Orlando leads and implements projects to make teacher training at IH Mexico as effective as it can be, and he also gets to work with the sales and marketing team to develop innovative new products and courses.

In our interview today, we’ll be talking about his career path and how he got to where he is now, as well as what it’s like to be a non-native English speaker in the ELT (English language teaching) field, and what it’s like to teach or get certified to teach in Mexico.

“If you think about it, as a non-native speaker, you are the students’ role model. You are the non-native speaking teacher, and if the learners in your classroom are aspiring to be like anybody, it should be you. ”

In this Episode

• What Orlando does in his work at IH Mexico

• The role of an “assessor” on a CELTA course

• How CELTA courses are held to the same standards around the world and how trainers exchange ideas and stay motivated

• How Orlando got started teaching English

• What it was about teaching that held his interest

• A brief description the DELTA course

• Why someone would pursue a DELTA certification

• What makes a good CELTA candidate and English teacher, in Orlando’s opinion

• Why it’s important for teachers to take on constructive feedback

• The system of giving and receiving peer feedback on the CELTA course

• Why Orlando feels a candidate’s attitude coming in to the CELTA course is more important than their knowledge of planning and methodology

• How being a non-native English speaker affects CELTA candidates

• The advantages of being a non-native speaker on a CELTA course

• Why native speakers don’t know their own grammar

• How being a non-native English speaking teacher affects someone’s experience in the English language teaching industry

• Advice on finding a job abroad as a non-native speaker

• Factors that affect the job search for both native and non-native English speakers

• Why reputable employers don’t have prejudice against non-native teachers

• What International House is like as an organization

• What it’s like to get a CELTA certification at IH Mexico

• Why candidates often find CELTA stressful and what IH Mexico does to try to mitigate candidates’ stress

• Teaching opportunities at IH Mexico

• What Orlando wishes he’d known before he started teaching

• Being intentional about your career path in teaching English

• Orlando’s favorite things about working in the ELT industry

• Why professional development means to much to him

• What makes us so lucky as English teachers and ELT professionals

• What we need to keep in mind as English teachers and trainers: why we have to keep up to date with new trends and methods

• His two favorite travel destinations and why he loves them

Interested in IH Mexico?

You can apply for a CELTA at IH Mexico or find out more information here.

Or email: orlando@ihmexico.com or visit https://www.ihmexico.com/

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Episode Twenty

How to Teach Listening: Tips for Effective Listening Lessons

Show Notes

In this week's episode, we're continuing our series on helping students develop their receptive skills, but today we're shifting our focus to listening! We discuss why listening comprehension needs its own targeted focus and why reading out the transcript isn't as helpful as playing an audio file. Then we walk through specific, practical tips on how to make sure your listening lessons are successful, including how to manage timing, how to deal with tech malfunctions, how to coach students through particularly challenging audio texts, and how to get the most out of feedback.

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In this Episode

On Teaching Listening in General

• Listening is a skill that needs to be developed through practice

• Any listening isn’t necessarily developing students’ listening comprehension- just listening to you give instructions, for example, doesn’t count

• Why students need specific, targeted focus on developing their listening comprehension

• Why playing an audio recording is preferable to the teacher reading out a transcript

• How to avoid audio trouble- make sure you set up and check your tech in advance!

Tips for Listening Lessons

• Why it’s especially important to set context in a listening lesson, and how to do this. Check out our blog post on lead-ins if you need a refresher on setting context!

• An example of how you might set context in a listening lesson

• “Task before text”- why you want to set a clear task or give the students a structured activity before you push play

• Why the first listening comprehension activity should be very general to help students warm up

• How knowing what they’re listening for helps students feel less intimidated and more motivated to tackle difficult audio texts

• How to deal with difficult accents/ fast speakers in recordings - it’s ok to warn students, but don’t freak them out!

• Why it’s better to play the audio track all the way through rather than pausing after each section

• Why you should be playing the audio track at least twice in the lesson- if not more!

• Why it’s ok if students don’t get all the answers right away

• Why you shouldn’t give the students the audio transcript to read along with as they listen

• How to effectively monitor in a listening lesson- strategies for doing it without being distracting

• What you should be listening for as students check answers to the listening tasks in pairs

• How to get the most out of feedback sessions- what to do if the students aren’t sure about an answer or couldn’t understand everything

• How to manage timing if you need to replay the audio several more times

• Why you shouldn’t give students the transcript until you’ve played the recording multiple times without it

Listening Lesson Troubleshooting

• What to do if your audio tech malfunctions

• When it IS ok to use the transcript

• What to do if students still don’t understand the audio, even after you’ve played it multiple times

• What do if your audio track is unusually long or especially challenging

• How to manage timing to ensure you have enough time to achieve your listening aims

• Why you want to keep your lead-in short

• Specific strategies for what to do if you have too much time or too little time as you go through your listening lesson

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Got a question or something you’d like us to discuss on Expand Your Horizons? Leave us a comment below and let us know!

Episode Nineteen

How to Deal with Vocabulary in a Reading Lesson

Show Notes

We're continuing on in our series of how to teach reading, and this week we're talking through a common issue: how do you deal with vocabulary in a reading lesson? Yes, we know the main aim of any reading lesson should be reading comprehension, but what if students start to ask questions about the vocabulary in the text? Should you offer to define unknown words for the students as you go along? How much vocab do the students really need to know in order to comprehend what they’re reading? We’ve got the answers for you in this episode.

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In this Episode

Why you SHOULDN’T ask the question, “Were there any words in the text you didn’t understand?”

“[Instead of trying to teach both reading and vocabulary in the same lesson], just do a really good reading lesson one day, and a really good vocab lesson the next day. THAT’S actually useful. It’s more manageable for you, it’s more beneficial to the students, and everything just feels more streamlined. It just makes you a better teacher.”

• Why this question sends the message that students need to know all the vocabulary in the text- when actually they don’t!

• Why thinking that you have to understand every word in a text slows students down when reading

• How this question encourages teacher dependence- and how to encourage independent learning strategies instead

• How asking this question hinders students’ reading skills outside the classroom

• How this can really mess up your timing

• The pressure you’re putting on yourself to be a human dictionary when you ask this question

• How to keep your main aim in mind when teaching a reading lesson

• What to do if a students asks you a vocabulary question you aren’t prepared to answer

• How to validate students’ vocabulary questions

Better ways to deal with vocabulary in a reading lesson

• What “blocking” words are and how to identify them

• How to plan in advance to deal with vocabulary - why you should answer the reading comprehension questions yourself first

• The maximum number of words you should choose to focus on

• How to know when you DON’T need to define a word from the text

• Why you shouldn’t just put vocabulary words on the board and start going through them

• The benefits of creating a student-centered matching task to help students understand “blocking” vocabulary

• Why you don’t need to go over the words before students do the vocabulary matching task

• How to follow up the vocabulary matching task by asking clarifying questions (concept checking questions) and focusing briefly on form and pronunciation

• Why you want to leave the vocabulary information on the board while students are reading

• Why it’s important to manage time and keep this stage efficient

• Why you need to have your vocabulary focus stage thoroughly planned

• Why you often don’t even need a vocabulary pre-teach stage

• Whether it’s appropriate to deal with vocabulary after the reading activities (a “post-teach”)

• Why the “pre-teach” needs to occur before the main reading task

• What to do if there are vocabulary words you want to focus on or think would be useful (separate from the blocking words) - and why this needs to be its own separate lesson or section of a longer lesson

• How focusing on a lot about a little rather than a little about a lot makes your lessons more streamlined and effective

• The fact that, the majority of the time, students won’t even make vocabulary an issue… as long as you don’t!

And a huge thank you for following, listening, and supporting us- our Apple Podcast rating list is growing, and we’re excited about it!

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