Language Items in TEFL

TEFL teachers often talk about Language Items. But what exactly do they mean? Simply put, they are small self-contained pieces of language which you can teach or practice in a lesson. (That’s the most usual definition in TEFL.) Once you have the language item, you can prepare one or more […]


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KET – Key English Test

The Key English Test or KET is an international examination looking at beginners learning English. It is offered by Cambridge Assessment‏‎. There are 3 parts to the exam: Reading & Writing Listening Speaking The total time for the exam is 1hr 50mins and there are 3 passing grades: pass, merit, […]


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Keep the Classroom English

I’ve just been reading a very interesting article about language interference. It recounts the story of a Chinese student in the US who, during a fluent English presentation, happened to glance over to her Chinese professor and accidentally used a simple Mandarin word instead of the corresponding English word. Further […]


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Interrupting Students in Your TEFL Class

Interrupting Students is not a good idea in your TEFL classroom. In everyday speech we interrupt each other, finish each other’s sentences and so on. This should be avoided in the classroom. Students (especially at lower levels) need to have time to gather their thoughts, often to translate from their […]


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Intermediate Level Students in English

Defining a student as intermediate is a very approximate classification of how well they speak English. There is no set definition of what intermediate means, however as a very rough guide students at intermediate level‎ can talk and read about a wide number of subjects using appropriate vocabulary‏‎ and fairly […]


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