Here you will find many articles about how to tutor English including how to teach and the business of tutoring, great activities and games to use when tutoring, and how to use fiction to teach English, as well as book reviews and more.
Tips for Teaching English to Adults (True Beginners)
Photo from Getty Images There are two types of ‘beginners’ in terms of students; false beginners and true beginners. Most students are what are dubbed ‘false beginners’ in the ESL world, which means they have learned some English at some point, perhaps in basic courses at school, but they are not good at English. Most … Read more
Graded Readers: What Are They and What ESL Tutors Need To Know About Them
Snapshot of the covers of some Pearson Graded Readers What Are Graded Readers? Graded Readers are a genre of fiction that few ESL teachers seem to know about, but should. They are fiction stories – English classics and contemporary, popular stories- that have been simplified for English learners of all ages and levels of learning. … Read more
Best Verb Tense Timeline Charts
One of the fastest ways to make quick progress towards near native fluency, in English is to master the use of the 12 verb tenses in English. There are other crucial grammar elements to learn as well (e.g. there is/ there are; the conditional ‘if’; count and non-count nouns, word order; the parts of speech), … Read more
Great Free Website For Generating Crossword Puzzles (Tutorial)
Sometimes making your own worksheet is the perfect solution when you have a student who needs extra drill practise to master a grammar concept. Usually making your own worksheet is a quicker solution than trying to find a suitable exercise in a workbook, or online in Teachers Pay Teachers or Pinterest. It’s also a handy … Read more
Spaced Repetition: Incredibly Effective Way to Help Students Learn and Retain English More Easily
Learn smarter, not longer – this is a technique I have been teaching my students for years, and Spaced Repetition is the main component of my teachings. Spending long hours mindlessly repeating vocabulary or writing it out is not nearly as effective as Space Repeition. If you have ever used the Pimsleur Language Learning method, … Read more
Top 6 Tips for ESL Tutors for Teaching Pronunciation
Most tutors find that when students say they need and want conversation classes, what they really need is help pronouncing the sounds in English like a native speaker, and how to speak with natural sounding intonation and word stress. Usually the students already know a lot of vocabulary. However, they struggle to be understood, and … Read more