The TEFL Blog

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year's!!!!

I attended a workshop a couple weeks and the presenter started his workshop by saying  "If someone who died in 1900 was brought back to life in 2016, the only thing that he / she would recognize were our schools and classrooms." His comment was addressing the fact that the education sector in society is lagging well behind other sectors in it's adaptation of technology. While technology has radically changed every part of our lives in the last couple decades, there is still a lot of resistance to employing new technology in classrooms. There are many reasons for this resistance (lack of training, negative perceptions of technology, lack of motivation to change, etc.), however to teach future generations, technology must be further integrated in education; this of course includes English language education.  In the following blog, I am briefly going to touch upon the benefits of using technology in the ELL / ESL classroom and mention a couple ways that teachers ca...

It's been a little while since my last post, so I wanted to come back with something fun and practical for teachers to use in their English classrooms. Below are 5 of my favorite games that I use in my own classes that can be used with a variety of learners. Two Truths and A Lie    Two Truths and a lie is a great game which is perfect for the beginning of a new class as it is a 'getting to know you' kind of game. This game is also wonderful for practicing speaking and listening skills. Why use it? Ice-breaker; Speaking / Listening skills Who it's best for: Appropriate for all levels and ages How to play: Have students write 3 statements about themselves on a piece of paper, two of which should be lies and one which should be true. Pair the students up and have them ask each other questions about each statement and then guess which one is the truth. If you want to really extend the game and give students even more time to practice their sp...

Hey Everyone, There's a number of blogs that I read on a regular basis to keep up-to-date with the TEFL scene around the world, and I'd like to share " A Journey in TEFL  with you. Written by Eva Simkesyan (an English teacher for over 20 years) she shares great teaching ideas, links and opinions related to Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Check it out when you get a chance. A Journey in TEFL | My adventure in teaching https://continuingstudies.uvic.ca/education-learning-and-development/courses/teaching-english-as-a-foreign-language-tefl https://www.facebook.com/uvictefl/