Episode Eight

Our Top Six Tips for teaching grammar

Show Notes

We’ve been talking a lot about teaching grammar lately. Mainly because it’s the type of lesson that seems to intimidate teachers the most. There’s often so much information out there that teachers feel overwhelmed at the thought of having to break it all down and present it clearly in the classroom. As teacher trainers, not only have we taught countless grammar lessons ourselves, but we’ve also spent years observing and helping other teachers plan and execute effective grammar lessons. So today, we’re bringing you our top six tips for teaching grammar effectively.

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In this Episode

• Tip #1: Set context. Context is not the grammar that you’re teaching! It’s the topic or theme of your lesson, and the situation in which the grammar naturally occurs.

• Tip #2: Use your whiteboard well. Add a clear visual element to your lesson. Make a board plan before your lesson to make sure you use the space effectively. Color-code the “teach” stage of your lesson by using different colored markers to highlight aspects of meaning, form, and pronunciation.

• Tip #3: Use the same examples in the “teach” stage that were in your diagnostic test or text (in a text-based grammar lesson). The sentences you put on the board to clarify during the “teach” stage of the lesson should be the ones students have already looked at and analyzed earlier in the lesson. This gives your lesson a sense of continuity and makes your material work for you.

• Tip #4: Pronunciation is just as important as meaning and form. Avoid the temptation to skip the pronunciation part of your grammar lesson. Repeating the grammatical structure several times helps students cement the structure in their minds. It also helps them be prepared to hear natural English (the way the grammar really sounds) in their daily lives outside of class.

• Tip #5: Do the practice activities yourself and be prepared to justify the answers. If you are giving students a worksheet to practice the grammar in your lesson, make sure you’ve done the worksheet yourself and are confident in the correct answers. Go a step beyond that and ask yourself why each answer is what it is and be prepared to justify each answer using the grammar rules you taught your students earlier in the lesson.

• Tip #6: Make sure your freer (fluency) practice activity is as authentic as possible. Adapt the exercises in the book to mimic real life activities. Try to give the activity a communicative goal: students should have a goal or a purpose in completing the practice activity that’s beyond just using the language itself.

  Resources to check out:

• Our online grammar course: Be Your Own Grammar Guru

• Grammar reference books: Our recommendations

• Upcoming webinars on how to teach grammar

• Podcast Episode 2: Five Misconceptions About Teaching Grammar

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Did you find these tips useful? What are your grammar teaching questions?

Leave us a comment below and let us know! We’d love for you to share this episode, or subscribe here on iTunes and leave us a review. Your support means so much to us!

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Want to build your grammar skills? You can learn to Be Your Own Grammar Guru with our self-paced, online grammar course or join one of our free webinars on how to make grammar teaching easy.

Episode Seven

Interview with Steph Clark: Teaching in Korea, the Czech republic, and spain

Show Notes

Our guest for today’s episode is Stephanie Clark. Steph has taught ESL in Korea, the Czech Republic and Spain, and she has traveled extensively in Europe and Asia. She completed her CELTA certification in 2016, achieving the coveted PASS-A grade. She’s here to talk with us about what it’s like to get started as an ESL teacher after completing a certification, adjusting to life abroad in various countries and cultures, and how she transitioned back into life and a teaching career in the States.

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In this Episode…

• What inspired Steph to start teaching

• How she found a job in South Korea

• Why she decided to get a teaching certification

• How she found a job in the Czech Republic

• What her teaching experience was like in Prague

• The culture in Prague and what she found easy/ difficult to adjust to

• How typical ESL teachers’ salaries compare in South Korea vs. the Czech Republic

• The main differences between working in Prague and working in Granada, Spain

• What kind of hours teachers can expect in Seoul, Prague, and Granada

• The “academy” culture in South Korea and what it was like to teach in after-school courses

• What it’s like to work as an ESL teacher in Korea and why it’s her favorite place to teach

• The stigma some ESL teachers face abroad

• What it’s like to work in a school with other certified teachers vs. working at schools that don’t have rigorous standards for qualification

• Why she left her teaching job in Spain

• How she transitioned into a career in education in the United States

• The advice she’d give anyone thinking about taking a CELTA course

Have you ever wanted to teach abroad?

Leave us a comment below and let us know! We’d love for you to share this episode, or subscribe here on iTunes and leave us a review. Your support means so much to us!

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“Your students won’t always remember what you taught- the content- but they’ll remember the way you made them feel.”

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• Why peer collaboration is so important on a CELTA course

• What it is that makes the CELTA course so intense/ challenging

• What she most benefitted from on her CELTA course

• What she wishes she’d known before teaching abroad

• Reverse culture shock and how to deal with it

• Indulging wanderlust

• How teaching abroad becomes an asset on your resume- even for non-teaching jobs

• “Identity capital” and how teaching/ traveling abroad helps build this

• Her favorite thing about teaching ESL: the students’ motivation and what learning English means to them

• Homesickness: why it’s ok to not love a new city as soon as you arrive

• Her favorite travel destination: the Philippines!

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If you’re thinking about getting CELTA-certified, check out our free email course: Ready, Set, CELTA! It’s everything you need for a thorough overview on the course and how to pass it with flying colors- delivered right to your inbox.

Episode Six

Interview with Richard Grant: Teaching, Training, and the beauty of the ENglish Language

“Typically teaching is not a well-paid profession in terms of monetary value, but in terms of richness of experience, it sure is.

Life takes on more significance just because you’re more connected to people in it.”

Show Notes

In this episode, we're talking to Richard Grant. Richard has extensive experience in the TEFL industry, where he's worked as an ESL teacher, a CELTA trainer and assessor, and the director of the first year writing program at his university. Today we're talking about the key differences he's noticed in how native and non-native speakers approach English, and his experience teaching in Indonesia and at the university level in the United States. Richard also has useful advice for anyone considering teaching abroad or taking a CELTA course. And finally, we spend some time just relishing the intricacies of the English language.

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In this Episode…

• Richard’s discovery of other languages and the significance of that understanding

• How he got into the TEFL field: from tutoring to CELTA training

• Teaching in Indonesia

• Getting into university work

• How his ESL background helps him work with non-native speaking university students

• The big differences between teaching English and teaching ESL

• How he became a CELTA trainer

• What he learned about language and teaching in the process of becoming a CELTA trainer

• Why he wishes he’d gotten better training before his first teaching job abroad

• How CELTA has changed the way he views what goes on in a classroom

• Why the standard approach to teaching doesn’t work

• Shifting the teaching approach from “the sage on the stage” to a more effective, student-centered methodology

• What incoming CELTA candidates should be prepared for before the course

• How his life has been enriched by teaching and traveling

“We do language more than anything else! There’s nothing humans do more than language.

It’s a reflection of who we are as a species.”

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What did you think of this episode?

Leave us a comment below and let us know! We’d love for you to share this episode, or subscribe here on iTunes and leave us a review. Your support means so much to us!

Episode Five

In This Episode…

How Theresa got started

• Why she decided to try teaching

• How she chose a certification program: why she landed on CELTA

• How her four weeks in the CELTA program compared to four years of doing a BA

• What she really got out of her certification

• What she wishes she’d done before doing CELTA

• How grammar for teaching is different than grammar for speaking/ writing

Her first local teaching job in Washington, DC

• What it’s like to teach in a private language school in the US, and what incoming teachers should expect

• How she transitioned from CELTA to teaching in her own classroom

• What affected her students’ motivation

• What she found so helpful about being in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual classroom

• The biggest challenges she faced

• The practical advice that most helped her in planning and teaching successfully

• How she got ideas for lesson content from her students

Da Nang, Vietnam

Her teaching experience in Vietnam

• How she decided on a location

• Why she says teaching in Vietnam was completely different from teaching in DC

• How her expectations compared to reality

• What the teaching schedule was like

• The three big differences between teaching children vs. teaching adults

• What to expect in terms of teaching resources- what you’ll have access to and what you’ll need to seek out

• The meaning of “edu-tainment”

• What kind of teachers different schools attract

• How she went from teacher to school director in a very short time

• Her duties as the Director of Studies

Hoi An

Theresa’s recommendations for traveling

• Da Nang’s white sand beaches and paragliding

• Hoi An’s gorgeous old town

• The Cuchi tunnels in Ho Chi Minh

• The Beer Corner in Hanoi (but watch out for pickpockets!)

Top advice for living/ working in Vietnam

• Why you’ll want to know the differences between options for working environments: whether you’ll be around partiers/ backpackers or more serious teachers

• Decide whether you want to be in a big language center vs. a smaller private school vs. a public school

• Just go! Get to Vietnam and find a job once you’re there, not before

• How to rent an apartment

• How to make sure you get to stay in the city where you want to be

• Choosing between Vietnam and Taiwan depending on your personality

Interview with Theresa Troyer: Teaching Locally and in Vietnam

Show Notes

Have you ever dreamed of changing careers and running off to Vietnam to teach English? Theresa Troyer did just that. In this episode, we’re talking with Theresa about how she decided to teach and what it was like to dive into the field of TEFL. She gives us the lowdown on why she chose to get a CELTA and how intense it really was, and then tells us all about what it was like to teach locally before transitioning overseas to teach in Vietnam. If you’ve ever thought about Vietnam as a work or travel destination and you’re looking for some advice (or just a good breakdown of expectations vs. reality), then you won’t want to miss this episode!

Theresa in Da Nang

Daily life in Vietnam

• Living in Bắc Ninh for three months

• Living in Hanoi

• How English teachers live lavishly

• Saving money while still going out/ traveling often

• The dangers of driving

• What the food is like

• Healthcare

• Whether you need to learn Vietnamese

• Finding a community: expat groups vs. locals

“...You can live very lavishly for not a lot of money (. . .) Also, you’re in Vietnam, and in Southeast Asia it’s so easy to travel to anywhere else in Southeast Asia. ”

At the beach in Phu Quoc

The best things about living in Vietnam

• Her favorite food: bun cha

• The cost of living- affordable!

• How easy it is to travel around Asia

The less ideal aspects of living in Vietnam

• Food-related health risks

• Driving risks

• That time a live cockroach crawled out of her dinner

with a very young learner group in Hanoi: “edutainment!”

“Be really honest with yourself about who you are and what you value. If you are someone that likes a lot of structure and order, things being on time, a lot of organization (. . .) Vietnam is not necessarily going to be the place for you. But if you are very ‘go with the flow,’ if you don’t mind rapid changes at the last minute, if you aren’t particularly bothered by doing what’s required (. . .) then Vietnam might be the place for you. ”

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What other destinations do you want to hear about?

Leave us a comment or question below and let us know what you think! If you’re enjoying Expand Your Horizons, we’d love for you to share this episode, or subscribe here on iTunes and leave us a review. Your support means everything to us.

Episode Four

So you want to want to get certified…

Show Notes

You’ve decided to get a certification like CELTA. Great! Where do you start? What’s involved? Do you really have to interview? Why does it seem like such a process- can’t you just pay your money and start? In our last episode, we (hopefully!) convinced you that getting some solid training before you start teaching is the way to go. Now we’re looking at exactly what to do once you make that decision- from choosing the right training program and getting accepted to showing up on day 1 ready to succeed.

In this Episode…

How to vet a certification program

·       what the price range really means

·       criteria for choosing the right one for you

·       whether university certifications are CELTA-equivalents

·       whether you need a bachelor’s degree to teach abroad

·       the red flags to look out for

The application process

·       why it’s even a “process” in the first place

·       what certification providers are looking for on your application

·       what the “pre-interview task” is and how to do well on it

·       what happens when you’re not good at grammar

The interview

·       why interviews are required

·       what the interviewer is looking for

·       the main parts of the interview

·       how to prepare for it

·       whether you should ask questions

What happens when you’re accepted

·       what happens next

·       when it’s time to put money down

·       how to start preparing for your course once you’ve been accepted

·       the resources the certification provider should send you

We’d love to hear from you! Leave us a comment below and tell us what you think of the episode, or head over to iTunes and leave us a review. Thanks for listening!

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Why you might not be accepted

·       reasons for rejection

·       the level of English required

·       what the rejection really means

·       how to go about applying again- and how to get accepted the next time around!

The start of your course

·       what you need to know on day 1 of your training program

·       why you’ll want to show up with an open mind

·       professionalism- is this a training course or a job?

·       what your trainers are looking for

Want the best possible preparation for the CELTA course? Enroll in our free CELTA prep course: Ready, Set, CELTA

Episode Three

Is a certification worth it? 8 reasons to get trained up before you teach

In this Episode…

• Common acronym confusion: the difference between TEFL, TESOL and CELTA

• How the CELTA course compares to a “TEFL certificate”

• Exactly how training helps you rock interviews and demo lessons

• Shannon’s first TEFL job interview (and how it could have gone horribly)

• Why using industry jargon matters- it’s so much more than street cred

• Why you don’t need to start from scratch- how methodology gives you structure

• Why so many prospective teachers don’t even realize how much they don’t know

• The essential resources you get when you invest in training

• Learning through example as opposed to explanation

• Teaching beyond the course book

• Why having a “development mentality” matters

• Why the best aspect of training is also the least comfortable

• Observing other lessons and understanding what you’re seeing

• How the benefits of training translate even outside the classroom

• The giant, unexpected presentation Lauren had to give, and how her training saved her

“You don’t have to make it up! There is no ‘from zero.’ There are ways to teach lessons and you can learn those ways, so you don’t have to make it up as you go. Getting a certification gives you structure. And it gives you knowledge to go into that first year of teaching.”

Show notes

You speak English fluently. That’s enough of a qualification to teach ESL, isn’t it? What more do you need? Is a course like CELTA really worth the investment?

While being proficient in English is definitely the place to start, there’s a lot more to being a good ESL teacher. In this episode, we discuss eight different reasons you’ll want to get some quality training before you step into the classroom.

“There is something so powerful and so helpful about making mistakes.
(. . .) There is nothing as memorable as a room full of people staring at you with blank looks on their faces and knowing ‘ok, that did not work’ and then being able to talk about it with your peers on the course and your trainer afterwards and why it didn’t work and what you can do next time to make it work better.
”

Episode Two

Five Misconceptions About Teaching Grammar

In this Episode…

• Why most native speaking English teachers start out extremely unprepared to teach grammar

• Some of the big mistakes we made in our first grammar lessons

• Why grammar books don’t always help with grammar lessons

• The difference between meaning and form

• What you need to know to teach a successful grammar lesson

• How to make sure a grammar lesson is engaging instead of boring

• How to make the grammar you’re teaching relevant to your students’ experience

• Why the way teachers often study grammar is the opposite of how it should be presented to students in class

• Why time for students to practice grammar in a lesson is essential

• How to set up effective grammar practice activities

• An easier way to learn grammar: our grammar course

Show Notes

If you’re an ESL teacher, you might have some strong feelings about teaching grammar. Most native speakers think they know grammar…. until they start trying to teach it and realize that being able to use grammar correctly is not at all the same as knowing terminology and being able to explain and teach grammar effectively. In this episode, we’re talking about five common misconceptions that native speakers often have about teaching grammar when they first become teachers… and how to deal with each of them. We also recommend helpful grammar resources to make teaching those dreaded grammar lessons a breeze.

Resources mentioned in this episode…

• Teaching Tenses by Rosemary Aitken

• Understanding and Using English Grammar by Betty S. Azar

• Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy

• About Language by Scott Thornbury

• Be Your Own Grammar Guru: complete online grammar course

“A lot of times teachers in training will go into it thinking that they know enough about the grammar, because they’re native speakers (. . .) and they think, ‘Oh, I’ve got this…’ but what we’ve seen over the years is that thinking that you know grammar doesn’t necessarily translate into being able to teach it. ”

Episode One

our story and our first big teaching takeaways

Show Notes

We’re very excited (and even a little audibly nervous at first!) to kick off our initial podcast episode. We share the story of how we started out as teachers, evolved into trainers, and got to where we are now. We discuss what we thought teaching would be like going in… and how we quickly realized it was actually much different. And we share the major “aha!” moments we each experienced early on in our careers.

In this Episode…

• Our backgrounds- graduating from college “unemployable”

• Why we decided to start teaching

• Our initial training (or lack thereof!)

• How Lauren started teaching in Romania

• How Shannon started teaching in Hungary

• The coincidence(s) surrounding how we met

• What inspired us to create TEFL Horizons

• Our teaching expectations vs. reality

• The things we found most surprising when we first started teaching

• The biggest lessons we learned about how to be effective teachers

“You can’t anticipate everything that’s going to come up in a lesson...and you shouldn’t be able to! That’s real language. And at the end of the day there are real humans sitting in front of you, and their needs are individual (...) and I love that so much about teaching... it’s teaching to the individual.”