If you’ve done a great job prompting your students to talk about themselves in class, chances are, you know a lot about them. You may know what they do for work, what their hobbies are and how they spend their free time. You might also know about their family, favourite foods, music, TV shows, and e...

Imagine this - you’ve just finished giving instructions to an activity or teaching the meaning of a word or phrase and then it happens, your students do or say something you weren’t expecting, and you’re confused. They’ve completed the activity incorrectly or they’ve just tried to use the new word o...

If you’ve been working with The TEFL Lab’s ready-to-teach lessons for any amount of time, you’ve probably seen a series of PDFs that are included in each module. What are they there for?

We’ve included these handy PDF support materials as a way for you to have a deliverable to the learner that help...

While it’s true that group class dynamics can require some special attention from a teacher, it’s equally true that a 1-on-1 class requires a strategic approach from the teacher.

How are 1-on-1 classes different from group classes?

Most group classes have a range of abilities, personalities, needs...

There’s a common misconception that teaching conversation classes or conducting speaking activities with intermediate to advanced level learners requires less effort than teaching, say, grammar to a beginner student. While we’d agree that working with a student who has a strong foundation of English...

Adult learners often have very specific ideas about how they’ll use English as their foreign language and why they need it. That, in turn, leads to sometimes specific requests. Sometimes they’re REALLY specific– intellectual property legal terms? Salmon farming vocabulary? Digital marketing terminol...

A lot can happen in a group class, and they can be a lot to manage at times– even if you’re teaching adults. While the rich interactions, questions, insights, and challenges that arise in group classes can be amazing, they still require some management strategies here and there.
Let’s look at some di...

If you’re anything like us, you’re hyped to hear that the B1 curriculum is ready to go straight into the classroom with you (right after you’ve checked the teacher notes, of course)! But if you’ve already taught with our A1 and A2 level materials, you’ll notice some differences in the B1 content. He...

Language learning as an adult is a huge challenge to undertake. It doesn’t help that there is tons of marketing out there, from institutes to apps and everything in between, that says there is a proven, painless method. For those of us that work in language education, and especially those who are mu...

How was your weekend? Ah, that old tried and true question you ask at the beginning of class. It doesn’t matter if it’s Monday morning or Wednesday afternoon, if you’re meeting with your student for the first time since the weekend, it’s a natural question to ask. But week after week of the same int...

If you’ve been in the classroom for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard from other teachers, your own teacher training, or other places that authentic material is a must for English language classes. But what actually counts as authentic material, and how can you use it effectively in the clas...

When you’re preparing to teach a new student, it’s important to consider the learner’s intended use of the language. If a learner is studying a foreign language for fun or travel, they’ll likely be looking for vocabulary within the context of meeting new people, entertainment, locations and establis...