About
The TEFL Tips blog is a collaboration between current and former English language teachers from all over the world. You will find posts with a new take on typical aspects of TEFL and ESL, plus tips related to areas of teaching that rarely get mentioned in training courses and materials. Our target audience is anyone in TEFL of whatever nationality – old hands, newbies, and even those just thinking about getting into TEFL. It is designed to inform, amuse, and spark debate. We embrace variety rather than sticking to a consistent style: some posts are quite academic, others chatty. Posts may even contradict each other, reflecting differences in opinions amongst teachers. The posts can also be used as springboards for discussion in continuous professional development (CPD) workshops. The blog went live in September 2023.Take part
Here’s how to get involved:- Register – so that you can leave comments, ask questions, write your own posts. It’s free. We just need your email.
- Ask a question – regarding an existing post or on a completely new topic. Our team will respond with a post answering your question.
- Leave a comment – if a particular post captures your attention, join the debate and share your opinion.
- Write a post – what areas of TEFL do you have particular expertise in, have strong feelings about, or think have been neglected? Please follow our guidelines and email us your post.
- reflect on the value and importance of what you are doing
- suggest a new direction for the TEFL community, question current methodologies and standards, investigate your role as teachers
- bounce ideas around and get things off your chest among like-minded people
- hone your writing skills
- promote your own blog and teaching materials
- feel part of a huge international community and have fun
Categories and tags
The posts are divided into broad categories, you can see a brief description below. A list of all the categories appears in grey rectangles above the posts. Click on the rectangles to see other posts in the same category. Each category has an associated image, created specifically for this blog.All the posts have tags. There are more than 100 – too many to list here! By clicking on the tag you will see all the posts referring to one specific topic: Beginners, ChatGPT, China, Gender, Phonetics, Taboo, Third conditional, and so on.
Boost your performance in one-to-one and private lessons, both on- and offline
Enter the world of artificial intelligence: chatbots, machine translation, image generators. Learn about the pros and cons of teaching online.
Delve into quirky texts that you might not otherwise have come across.
Discover why you don’t need to be a business expert to teach business
English.
Review a new coursebook, or an EFL book you love from back-in-the-day.
Develop your career within TEFL (teacher training, becoming a DoS, running your
own school), and beyond (consultancy, editing, writing, HE, HR, journalism … even
DJing!)
Learn about teaching experiences in all corners of the world, and
understand different student attitudes and behaviors.
Boost your career by learning what steps to take in your continuous
professional development. Learn about Celta, Delta, Master’s …
Create special lessons for particular days of the year e.g. Easter, April 1,
Juneteenth, Diwali, Independence Day, birthdays.
Master the art of setting up rewarding discussions.
Switch to English for Academic Purposes, where you can learn as much as you teach.
Go behind-the-scenes in the life of an English teacher. Discover what really goes on in and out of the classroom.
Have fun with word games, logic games, lateral thinking.
Correct, resolve, and avoid tricky areas of English.
Raise student awareness of inclusivity and diversity issues; deal with
prejudices, gender issues, and pronouns.
Explore some of the pros and cons of an area of EFL that seems to polarize
teachers.
Uncover what lies beneath some of the world’s languages and hone your
machine translation skills.
Learn new methods and reevaluate your teaching style.
Prepare great lessons, handle your/their nerves, learn names, set ground rules, consider diverging from lesson plan.
Answer questions that we pose to the community. Comment on the posts, and open up new areas of discussion.
Untwist your students tongues and give them listening and pronunciation strategies.
Venture into the world of vocabulary, idioms, and word origins.
Address areas of writing that tend not to receive sufficient attention in coursebooks.
Writing and submitting posts
Aim / Content
Our aim is to provide a high-quality blog that gives our readers something that they haven’t come across
before, or with a fresh take on something familiar. The posts should provoke conversation among
teachers, who we hope will then spread the word organically.
Audience
Anyone in TEFL of whatever nationality – old hands, newbies, and even those just thinking about getting into
TEFL. Our readers may be familiar with TEFL theory and jargon, but they may well not.
Length
300-1000 words.
Category
Please tell us the category that you think most suits your post.
Main header
Bold. Catchy 1-10 word header – but you can leave that to us if you are not feeling inspired!
“Question”
Bold, “double quotes”. Any length. This should be the question to which your post provides the answer.
Style / Content
Feel free to use any style, but not overly academic or jargon-laden.
Subheadings and bullet points
Bold. Within the main text, provide subheadings. These help to orient the reader and also to divide up a long
chunk of text.
Use bullet points to break up what would otherwise be long paragraphs.
Formatting and spelling
Only use bold for the question and subheadings. The only other styling is italics. The font is set by the site. No
colors or indentations please. UK or US spelling, just be consistent.
Biography
To get an idea, look at the bios of at the end of a few posts.
75-125 words.
List your major academic/TEFL qualifications. Keep names of qualifications and where you got them as short as
possible.
Briefly summarize the highlights of your illustrious career.
Mention a few things about your life outside teaching.
Avoid making it sound like an academic bio.
Add links to your blog, website, books (use the ‘Insert > Link’ feature of Word).
Our editing of your post
We may edit your post. If we plan to make any major changes, we will put them past you.
Publication rights
By sending us your post you are implicitly giving us permission to publish it and use it in any didactic materials
we may produce in the future. You can of course use your post for other purposes, and we encourage you to
re-post it on your own blog and onto all your social media.
Please reference www.tefldiscussions.com if you use our content elsewhere.
Email us your post as an attachment. Label the attachment with your name.