The 360 degree approach
A new way to teach TOEFL and IELTS
I only tutor TOEFL and IELTS privately and no longer teach the subjects at private language centres. I will not adhere to rules and regulations that mean students have to repeatedly sit tests. It’s a rip-off.
ESL Printables
A great website you really should know about
ESLprintables is a website where EFL teachers from all over the world upload and share their home-made worksheets. Thousands of spiffy worksheets are available for download, all for free. Now don’t stop reading at this point to visit the site, eagerly expecting to siphon off all those materials, because you won’t be able to. Let me explain.
Those damn textbooks
Why those textbooks were not designed for South east Asia
Conversation classes are popular in Southeast Asia but the staple for this course is “Let’s Talk”. Why? Because it is one of the few conversational books available. By the time you have stripped it down and localised the content, you may just as well have done it all by yourself, which of course you have.
A basic model for teaching kids
Try something that really works
This a very logical and easy-to-use starting point for teachers that are new to working with kids or want to improve their skills in this area.
The root of all evil
A return to the subject of student materials
I think choosing content that encourages students to think in scientific ways facilitates their English language acquisition.
The value of learning groups
How to help students learn better
Think back to when you were a kid or a teen and what your least favourite school subject was. It wasn’t that it was boring because if it had of been then other students wouldn’t have liked it or excelled at it. It was because it wasn’t particularly accessible to you as a learner.
Yes, it's official
Thais can be just as good at English as Khmers, Vietnamese and Laotians but
English is a compulsory subject in Thailand. But class sizes are normally large. This leaves little or no room for one-to-one dialogues.
Terry of the Bangkok Post
What's black and white and read all over?
To promote learning via newspapers, Terry Fredrickson has turned to the technology that many children love most – the Internet.
First lesson memories
Do you remember the moment?
The ink is still wet on your brand new teacher training certificate and you're suddenly faced with the prospect of standing in front of your first ever class and dishing up hearty portions of education and entertainment. We asked for your first lesson in Thailand memories. Were you as cool as a cucumber....or absolutely bricking it?
Full-time teacher, part-time thief
Light-fingered shenanigans in the teachers' room
Don’t start thinking that these highly skilled education professionals resort to stealing luxury cars or become successful pickpockets in busy Bangkok. It’s much simpler and a lot less lucrative than that: some ‘teachers’ seem to think there’s nothing wrong with nicking books and teaching materials from the schools they work at. In a few cases teachers have even run off with computers, but let’s focus on the issue of disappearing books because that’s my main reason for writing this article.