The TEFL Blog

For me, teaching grammar to English language learners was always a challenge. In fact, to teach English grammar I had to learn English grammar first. It's truly amazing how native-English speakers can produce a language so well, but not know the grammar rules of English. If someone had come up to me before I started teaching English and asked me to explain the Present Perfect to them, I would have been clueless. What additionally makes teaching grammar so difficult, is that even though your students might not be able to speak or write English well, they may know more about English grammar rules than you do. Combine that with the fact that grammar itself can come off as pretty dry and dull to many students, and you can see where some of the challenges lie. In this blog, I'll give you some of my tips for making grammar exciting and understandable for your students. As mentioned earlier, teaching grammar has never been my strength, but I feel that my classes were mostly succ...

Although most of my entries in the past have focused on teaching English in a foreign country, today's entry will look at teaching English in North America, with a specific focus on Canada. Although many people enroll in TEFL/TESL programs to teach abroad, there are many people who choose to stay right here and begin their teaching careers. Likewise, a great deal of people after returning home from teaching English abroad, also choose to stay in this sector of education. You might not think it initially, but at home in Canada and the United States there is so much demand to learn English; thus there are so many opportunities to teach as well. Also like the job market abroad, not all schools are created equal. In fact, there may be a higher percentage of bad English school in North America, than there are abroad. As someone who is looking to teach English in their home country, how do you avoid working at one of these types of schools? This blog will take a look at some things t...

Hey Everyone, This post has really nothing to do with TEFL, but it's about great new product that my wife has developed that allows you to carefully pack all your jewelry when you travel...no more tangled necklaces!!! If you are interested, you can order one at chrisiljtw.com . My wife, an avid traveler is encouraging everyone who buys one to go to her website and share some of the favorite travel stories on the site.

It's been awhile since my last blog entry, and that's because I was away in China and Japan on a 3 week business trip. Although I wasn't teaching during this trip, I did have the chance to stop into a few universities where people were learning English, and visit the teacher training program my university is running in Deqing China. This trip really reminded me of some of the wonderful things you can experience when you go abroad to teach. In this blog entry I'll be sharing what I think are some possibly forgotten benefits to traveling and teaching abroad. 1. Trying new DELICIOUS food I hadn't really been to China before this trip and I wasn't sure about the food there. Sure I'd had lots of Western Chinese food in Canada, but I knew the food would be different there. After being in China I have a new found love for Chinese food. The food that I had was amazing! Whether it was from a street vendor or at a nice restaurant the food was great. Chinese f...