Teaching English is a craft that we all have to learn. We all know that you are not automatically a good English teacher just because you are a native speaker. Having a Bachelor’s or a Master’s degree won’t make you one either except if one of these involved  substantial, observed teaching practice, in which case you’d be off to a great start. Likewise those with a PGCE or equivalent teacher training.

There are also teachers who although unqualified, have made it their business to read, experiment, learn from colleagues,  peer observe, ask for feedback and develop from an ingrained sense of personal and professional pride. These are to be admired.

In any event, what English teachers need, is proper teacher training - hard training in effective classroom techniques and methods. Why does this simple fact not register with so many employers in Korea and especially Korean Universities for whom a Masters (in anything!) is often seen as the badge of competence? Don’t people know that even most TESOL MAs are completely theoretical without any practical teacher training? Also, why do so many foreign teachers in Korea not bother to get trained or train themselves in ESL/EFL teaching methods? The obvious answer is they don’t need it to get a job here and once appointed, there is little real quality control after the fact in all but a few select schools. Read more »

Up and down Korea, in hundreds of English hagwons, the teaching of English vocabulary is perhaps one of the clearest examples of silliness in a business where even in this modern age, in this modern country, the basic principles of effective language teaching have never really been imported. The harsh fact is that Korea has not kept up with developments in language teaching and with few exceptions, follows methods written off by educators in the west decades ago. In these private language institutes, the daily “voca” tests have very little long term or practical value. Read more »

I have found that when a lesson doesn’t work, it is often because one or more of the fundamentals have gone out the window! In my humble opinion, omission of the fundamentals include things like the following: Do you agree? Read more »

Sick of having your well planned lessons interrupted by late arrivals? Students seem wordless and unmotivated? Bring back the warmer! Read more »

Ok. Back to the business of EFL. I’ve been considering lately what are the key ingredients for a good EFL teacher. When I was a DoS for a year, I was able to put my ideas to the test. Here are my results. I can’t really rank them: Read more »

Having written about kids hagwons in Korea, next up are adult only schools. I’m afraid I can’t recommend them. The biggest problem is the split shifts you have to work - as your students are only really available for study at the top and bottom end of the day, and that can often mean 630am starts! For more on split shifts, see my post entitled Day of the Dead… Read more »

To teach kids or not to. That is the question. Actually I taught kids in Japan about 10 years ago for Shane. More on them in another post. All I could remember was rolling around on a tatami mat up on the 4th floor of some nondescript grey building in Chiba prefecture, surrounded by plastic bananas and flash cards. Ah it’s all coming back. Read more »

It would be good to get a discussion going on this blog about split shifts. In my view they are the pits of the earth…. Read more »

Here are some tips for feeding back to a teacher following an observed lesson. I’ve been on both sides of it down the years! < Read more »

Everyone in EFL wings it from time to time. You didn’t have time to prepare or even think about your lesson, so you go in with the textbook and a cassette or a bunch of photocopies and fly by the seat of yer pants. With experience, you’ll even have some lessons so internalised that you can teach them, and maybe only need the whiteboard and a pen. Maybe not even those…

Be careful not to become a career winger though! In my opinion this is when you keep rolling out activity based lessons day after day.< Read more »

I made hay while the sun was shining. Got my boss to buy a good old one-armed bandit paper cutter and a laminator for those supplementary materials you get in the Inside Out /Reward Resource Packs/NEF Teacher’s books etc. Can’t believe they’d survived without these essential pieces of kit!

After I left London and arrived in Daegu, I scoffed at the old one-armed bandit in my first school and demanded a proper rotary paper cutter like we had back home.

Problem was, when I finally got it, it was a small A4 job where you had to lock down every piece of paper with a locking device before you could start swipin’. Read more »

I finally persuaded my Korean boss to invest in an overhead projector which he bought from an online auction. Dunno what you think, but laptop beamers and projectors take a long time to set up and for me, you just can’t beat yer old OHP. Here are the advantages: Read more »

Here’s a little phrase sheet I made to give to your students Read more »

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, and perhaps if only to get new teachers started on thinking about the structure of a lesson, the oft derided PPP method is something that all TEFL teachers should try to master. Read more »