Pronounce Past Tense

If you have never taught English to complete novices before, the prospect of spending an entire lesson speaking with students who don't comprehend a single word you say may seem frightening. Teaching absolute beginners differs from teaching other courses, as any ESL teacher will tell you. It can be difficult, but it may also be one of the most enjoyable and gratifying language levels to teach. Every new word your students learn is important at this level, and the greatest approach to teaching it is to be as creative and funny as possible. Generally, teaching the letters and numbers should be one of your first priorities. You will lay a solid foundation for everything else your students will learn by teaching them the letters and numbers at the start of the course. Ascertain that your...  [Read more]

English is one of the most commonly used languages in India, especially by the urban Indian. Almost every Indian, even if he/she has had no formal schooling, uses at least a dozen English words in day to day communication. However, this 'In-glish' doesn't suffice in an international scenario, and one can see that language schools here in the UAE have a larger percentage of Indian students than others. Interestingly, an Indian student finds it easier to write English than speak. This may partly be due to cultural reasons. Similarly, an Indian learner has a larger receptive vocabulary than a productive one. As an Indian EFL teacher, I find these aspects intriguing.Problems with grammar:All EFL students find it difficult to understand ' and use -- perfect tenses. They usually...  [Read more]

Like the people of other nations, Thai people face many problems when trying to learn English; some of these problems are cultural and some are more rooted in the many obvious differences between the two languages. Different age groups or students of different levels may not always face the same problems. A class of intermediate children is likely to have different problems to those of an adult class of beginners. One issue that can be quite frustrating as a teacher is rooted in the Thai culture of not wishing to lose face. This often leads to students being shy and unresponsive in class. They are scared of making mistakes in front of their peers as this would cause them to lose face. Another issue that is based on culture and can also be frustrating for a teacher is a tendency...  [Read more]

ESL students whose first language is Italian certainly have many advantages over some students who speak languages less closely related to English. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State, which recently categorized languages into how closely they were related to English and how long it would take speakers of those languages to reach a certain level of proficiency in English, placed Italian in the category of languages most closely related to English. Indeed, Italian speakers have the advantage of familiarity with the Roman alphabet, and the two languages share many similar grammatical structures and even similar-sounding vocabulary items. At the same time, Italian students of English still encounter many difficulties relating to the...  [Read more]