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 don’ts 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!
Drama is the most under rated genre in today's English curriculum. With so much time and effort spent on critical analysis and evaluations of selections, drama has been put in the back burner. Dra ...
Class discussion can often evoke groans from students.
It is often rife with pitfalls: difficulties getting along with peers, students feeling they have little in common with their classmates, is ...
Some topics invite more discussion than others and even conflict.
This is actually good for discussion, that students have strong opinions on the topic and that they are willing to engage in defe ...
Discussion groups and group work in general has become important and gained an increasingly dominant position in education over the past thirty years, especially in language classes.
In ESL class ...
Often class discussion stalls not because of the group dynamics and that the students don’t like their peers, but more because they simply don’t know what to say to each other in an ac ...
The ideas “online” and “discussion” seems an oxymoron to many, that engagement in discussion can occur with participants removed in time and place.
How to facilitate such ...
For new online ESL teachers, there are basically two choices when it comes to deciding how you’ll work: you can join an online school and work for them, or you can market yourself and teach ...
Every Intermediate Grammar class is the same, right?
Not by a long shot. Even classes who have the same title and the same supposed skill level can be as different as night and day. So why is it ...
While most ESL classes tend to be on the smaller side, it isn’t always the case.
Whether it’s because your school is large or there are just a particularly high number of students at ...
If you’re an online ESL teacher, you’re living in a golden age.
Never before have there been so many methods for meeting students, marketing yourself, gathering resources, eliciting o ...
I noticed something very interesting while browsing around the huge range of new online ESL school websites: the majority (some 75%) offer a free, initial, diagnostic class, with no obligation for ...
Teaching English online, either through a school and as an independent freelancer, has become one of the fastest growing sectors of the ESL marketplace.
There is tremendous, global demand f ...
Are your students movie junkies?
Lots of ESL students like to watch films when they have the chance. It’s an entertaining way for them to practice their receptive language skills. And if mo ...
When your students are reading, they are going to turn a page or two.
But turning pages, no matter how many, doesn’t take much movement. And we all know the more your students move, the mor ...
I remember taking my first multiple choice exam in Kindergarten.
It was for standardized testing, and I took similar exams many times between that day and the day I finished twelfth grade. And th ...
Whether you have a curriculum you follow for the semester or you make class up as you go along, you need to know what to teach.
Sometimes including the right content in class is tough. How do you ...
It can be awkward to interrupt your students as they are speaking, whether it’s to give them good or bad feedback on their spoken language.
Here are six more subtle ways to offer feedback o ...
Text book activities are an easy go to in class.
They target the specific skills students are learning, and they are right there ready to go, just open to the right page. But sometimes doing exer ...
For your ESL students, friendships are essential.
Many of them have travelled from home, friends, and family to study the English language in a completely different country, away from all they kn ...
Don’t lead your ESL students into page-one panic.
Help them get ready to read that long or longer passage with one of these nine pre-reading strategies. They won’t take a lot of effor ...
I’ve never really been able to determine my own class size, and I think that’s pretty typical among ESL teachers.
Some classes have been larger, and others smaller, but all of them ha ...
We all know how important it is to get our students ready to read.
If we don’t prepare them for what they will find between the pages, their comprehension will decrease and their stress wil ...
When it comes to worksheets, opinions run the gamut.
Some teachers love them and use them in class and for homework every day. Other teachers are not so keen on copies, and they prefer to use mor ...
Vocabulary is one of the most useful parts of the English language.
Even if someone knows all the rules of pronunciation and grammar, without knowing what individual words mean, they will not be ...
Are we there yet?
Have you already finished? Yet and already are words that can be confusing to ESL students, and it’s worth spending some class time practicing them. Already refers to even ...
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