We use Exclamations to express surprise, anger, joy and so on: What an idiot! Unbelievable! How fantastic! As you can see, in writing an exclamation is shown using an Exclamation Mark (or Exclamation Point) which is a vertical line over a dot. See Exclamation Mark for...
Teaching English in France
France is without doubt a beautiful country; laid back and vibrant at the same time. It attracts many visitors from abroad, a lot of whom fall in love and decide to stay there forever and the country is home to expats of all nationalities. Having said this there is...
DOs and DON’Ts for TEFL Teachers
This is a common sense list of DOs and DON'Ts for Teachers. It is especially relevant to teachers working overseas. DO be punctual, consistent and fair dress well - most countries put far more store in this than the UK and USA; conservative is good (see the links...
Teaching English in the European Union
The European Union or EU is a collection of European countries which have formed a social and economic union. This has had important consequences for teachers there. Essentially citizens of any EU country have the right to live and work in any other EU country and...
Correcting Work in TEFL
The best way to correct a student's written work is not necessarily the most obvious. If you've been to a traditional school then you will have probably had your homework corrected in full by your teachers - all the mistakes pointed out and the corrections put in. And...
Apostrophes in English
The Apostrophe is a diacritic mark in punctuation. It is used in 2 different ways in English: to show possessive nouns to show omitted letters Possession Generally we add an apostrophe s to the end of a noun to make it possessive: the girl's bike Maggie's farm If...
Red Card Yellow Card
This is an interesting way to keep order in a classroom. Basically you find out from your Director of Studies what the usual punishment in the school is be it detention, lines, expulsion from the class, calling parents, etc. Next, prepare a couple of cards: one yellow...
The ESL Art Activity
The ESL Art Activity is a simple classroom game for practicing prepositions, vocabulary, and speaking at all different levels and for all different classes. Essentially what you are doing is describing a picture to your class and having them reproduce it. The key here...
Words in English
A word is a unit of language that has a phonetic value (i.e. a sound) and has a meaning. It can also be written down in which case it will have a certain spelling. They are - as you might well imagine - the building blocks in English language learning and teaching...
Quantifiers in English Grammar
When we want to talk about HOW MUCH of something there is, we use a Quantifier. Common quantifiers include: manymuch(a) few(a) littlelessfewermoresomeany Grammatically speaking, quantifiers are a sub-group of determiners and we use them with nouns to describe the...