The “skills” in English language teaching are: reading, writing, listening and speaking. These are sometimes broken down into sub-skills.
Each one requires a different approach, different exercises and activities, and different assessment. Some students will have a bias towards one or more skills and in a very general way, some nationalities will also. This depends on how they have been previously taught as well as how their mother-tongue compares to English.
The articles here look at the different skills in TEFL and how you can deal with them as a TEFL teacher.
Writing is often the last of the four major language skills to be learned after listening, speaking and reading. Subject Matter The first question to ask is what kind of writing will your students be doing? Like all language learning, practice needs to be relevant to the students. This means […]
Tongue Twisters are useful ways to practice pronunciation with your class, especially if the sound you are practicing does not exist in the students’ mother tongue. For example, the /ʃ/ sound does not exist in Greek and is often pronounced /s/ by Greek students. This means students there will often […]
Quite a number of Asian students have problems distinguishing between the /r/ sound and the /l/ sound. Essentially this is because the difference in these sounds does not exist in their mother tongues and so they are unable to “hear” the difference. Thus some students will say led – /led/ […]
A Bilabial Plosive in English is either /b/ or /p/ sound used at the beginning of a word as in boy or toy. Or, indeed bilabial and plosive. Some more minimal pairs with b and p include: bat – pat bail – pale bar – par big – pig billow […]
Study Skills are those skills useful for students at university, college, and suchlike to increase their ability to study and pass exams. They range from organizing and retaining information to understanding assessments; from effective reading to concentration techniques; from examination taking techniques to time management. With EFL/ESL students who want […]