A native speaker of English is a person who has grown up speaking English as their first language or mother tongue. In terms of English teachers this usually means from one of the major English speaking countries: the USA, the United Kingdom, Ireland,...
Teaching English in South Sudan
South Sudan became independent in 2011 from Sudan. The area had English as a state language for many years as a result of British political & military influence in the region. However in 1956 with a policy of "Arabization" this was replaced by Arabic....
Audacity – sound recording software
Audacity is a piece of freeware software which you can use to record audio. This can later be incorporated into a Podcast or used as a simple audio file for playing in class or mixing with other media. This article explains how to get the software, install it on your...
Lesson Snapshot for TEFL Teachers
Lesson Snapshot is a method by which you as a teacher can try to look objectively at the way you teach and check out your style and methods from the point of view of your students. Basically you video a typical lesson to provide a snapshot of your lesson which lets...
What to Take With You when Teaching Abroad
What to Take With You is a checklist of what you should pack when you are heading off to a new job, possibly a new country. It isn't exhaustive, of course, and many of the items below you'll want to leave out, but it's a good start. Medicines, Drugs & Hygiene...
Rosetta Stone (CALL Software)
Rosetta Stone is the name of proprietary piece of software for language learning. The name comes from the Rosetta Stone, a large carved stone from Ancient Egypt with a single text in 3 languages which was used as an aid to translation. The principle of the Rosetta...
Have You Ever? – present perfect simple activity
Have You Ever? is a simple game to practice the Present Perfect Simple verb form using the "have you ever" question construction. It's very easy to set up and run and is ideal for reinforcing when we use and how we construct the verb form. To begin, write up on the...
Lingro
Lingro is a useful online tool allowing language students (and teachers) to read a webpage with immediate access to dictionary definitions of unknown words. For example, this is a screen shot of a TWW page after a number of words have been clicked on using Lingro. In...
Speak as if…
Speak as if... is a great speaking activity which gets the students talking and repeating without realizing it. It is a great as a five minute filler activity or to use anytime you want to practice a certain few phrases with the class. It works with almost any class...
Infinitives in English Grammar
The Infinitive is the base form of the verb: be, have, walk... Often the infinitive is introduced by the particle, to: to be, to have, to walk... Note that when the infinitive is on its own it's sometimes known as the Bare Infinitive; when it's with to then it's...