In this section there are 2,124 articles that cover essential ESL topics such as how to teach grammar, use realia, and teach young learners. There are also a lot of lesson ideas and fun activities included in the articles. This ESL article, for example, is about teaching grammar and describes five great activities. It has been given five stars by other busy teachers so it obviously has useful content. Check it out for yourself or take a look at other articles that relate better to your questions or teaching situation.
There are a lot of dos and donts and tips and tricks that many teachers learn through teaching.
Our ESL Essentials section will help you master the basics of teaching English and will help you start teaching like a 'pro'. Every ESL Essentials article provides clear, to-the-point instructions that can be used with the students right away.
At the moment we have 2,124 ESL Essentials.
Sometimes that is the best way to learn but the experiences of others can also help you develop your teaching skills without having to make the same mistakes. If you have a great story or activity, feel free to submit your own article so that you can share your knowledge with others. We would love to hear from you!
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ESL Articles
View our latest knowledgebase articles that will help you become a better English teacher. Learn from
professional teachers and put a bit of your own creativity into it!
An in-depth foreign policy class for Advanced ESL learners
John Lennon begins one of his 1967 masterpieces with, “I read the news today, oh boy…” If you have a TV, or internet ...
I knew it was a bit risky, but I did it anyway.
After greeting my class one Friday morning, I wrote on the board, in large letters: What are you angry about?
My current class is a young, advance ...
Everybody knows people in China don’t wear shoes in the house, don’t they?
I knew it before I went overseas to teach, so it wasn’t a surprise to me when I saw it in person. Gran ...
Every teacher has a situation where they have nothing prepared to teach.
You may have been asked to cover a lesson at short notice, there may be an emergency, your new born baby kept you awake al ...
Homework doesn’t always have to be something that a teacher has to mark or that students hate doing.
Used correctly, it’s the springboard to a great class with students doing most of ...
Have you heard the term “canned essay?”
I remember learning about them in my foreign language testing methods class back in grad school. We were talking about standardized testing. My ...
I had it all planned out.
Every month a new theme, and with every new theme a new bulletin board. Not only would my students be fluent in English in no time, but our classroom would be a happy, w ...
What do window washers, construction workers, and teachers have in common?
They all use scaffolding. I’ve talked about how scaffolding in ESL class is like scaffolding in construction class ...
Back in the dim and distant past, I used to be a performer with the English Teaching Theatre, a company that did stage shows for learners of English all over the world.
I learned a lot from worki ...
Have you ever been stressed as a teacher?
No, not you! Stress?
Well, if you’re like me you may have had one or two isolated instances of stress in your teaching career.
Here was one of my ...
When I taught overseas, the expectation was that each of my elementary ESL students would be mainstreamed after one school year.
Depending on where you teach, your administration may have differe ...
I’ll never forget Paul.
He was one of the most charming kids in my elementary ESL class and also one of the most challenging. He was a third grader at the time, and I was an inexperienced t ...
Practical, “how-to” tutorials are everywhere on the Internet.
YouTube, as well as websites such as wikihow.com, instructables.com, and soyouwanna.com, have an incredible assortment of ...
There’s something very familiar, and very scary, about the tone of the news at the moment.
It took me a while to pin it down, but then I remembered where I’d first heard these worries ...
I walked straight into the classroom and announced, “I’m thinking of a country. Ask me questions, and figure out which country I’m thinking of.”
We quite often begin class ...
Halloween is not exactly around the corner.
But you don’t have to put spooky language learning on the backburner and wait to embrace this holiday. Here are six great speaking activities you ...
The old adage reminds us that, “You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
Well, that sounds true enough, but I’ve always thought we were selling oursel ...
How often do you put your pedagogical beliefs to the test?
A few weeks ago, I found myself dragged into an online discussion related to an article which claimed that a teacher’s responsibil ...
I guess I’m one of the luckiest teachers I know.
My academic director is an enlightened pedagogical superstar, my students are bright, curious young people from all over the world, and I&rs ...
I’m going to guess there’s hardly an ESL teacher in the world who has never played the game ‘Taboo’.
It’s fast-paced fun, and more importantly from the teacher&rsquo ...
One of the most beautiful places in the world is a little island group you may never have heard of.
Kiribati is a group of 34 islands and reefs, populated by around 100,000 people. It islands are ...
Like a lot of people, I’m concerned that our media isn’t depicting complex issues carefully enough.
The coverage often seems to rush along as though concerned that we’ll lose in ...
Watching our students become passionate about a subject, and work hard to research and learn about it, is one of the real pleasures of teaching.
As an ESL specialist, I often require my students ...
Have you ever had a student who just wants to know everything there is to know about English all at once?
Or how about students who feel that because they can’t speak as fluently as they wo ...
Consult several books about teaching listening and you will come across some of the same types of listening: top-down, bottom-up, listening for gist, listening for main idea, and listening for inf ...
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