CCELT Blog

Days Off When Teaching Abroad

Picture this: you’ve got a teaching job overseas, and you’re happily settled in. You’ve taken care of the details of day-to-day life: bank account, mailing address, cell phone… You’re comfortable in your neighbourhood, your apartment feels like home, you’re becoming a “regular” at your local grocery store… Life is good!

You might be wondering, what do you do with your days off? Besides traveling over long weekends or getting your laundry done, consider the following 7 ways to make the most of your time in your new locale!

1. Learn a Language
Consider learning another language while you are teaching abroad! Learn Mandarin while you teach in China or Spanish while you teach in Chile – immerse yourself in your surroundings!

2. Cook Up a Storm
Learn how to cook whichever local delicacy has struck your fancy. What better place to learn how to cook Japanese food than in Japan? You’ll be dishing out okonomiyaki in no time.

3. Play a Sport
If you are living in a location where other foreign English teachers abound, consider joining a recreational sports league. Playing basketball on your day off is a good way to meet people, stay fit, and have fun!

4. Keep in Touch Via Snail Mail
Write postcards and letters to friends and family at home and abroad. Send them a postcard to show them where you’re living, tell them about your teaching job – you’re sure to make their day.

5. Take Plenty of Photos
Go on a walk around your neighbourhood and take photos. The sights you see on a daily basis might not seem exciting, but once you move on to your next adventure, having something to look back on will mean a lot. Make a habit of taking your camera with you on your daily outings!

6. Start a Club
Interested in meeting other people, be they locals or other expatriates? Consider starting a club or group that pertains to one of your interests. Are there a lot of other English teachers in your city? Advertise on local websites to start a book club, knitting circle, or board game meetup group!

7. Enjoy Local Festivals and Events
Find out the best local event listings website or newspaper for your new city and make a habit to check back often. Attend a green tea festival in rural South Korea, a jazz festival in Abu Dhabi, or theater festival in Turkey. What a way to soak up some culture!

Reinforcing Learning for ESL Students

One thing all TESL certified teachers wonder about is how to ensure their students are actively engaged in class, and how to reinforce learning. While methods for reinforcing learning is a topic big enough to analyze for a Master’s thesis, we have come up with a summary of the 4 best ways to ensure your students are learning.

Step One: Assessing Ability Levels

When you first start teaching a class, assessing students’ current ability levels is absolutely vital. In order to decide how to start planning lessons, you will need to determine what your students already know. Your school may offer assessment or placement tests to students when they enroll for courses, or you may have information on students’ prior classes or grades. Use this information to decide how you will start teaching your class. Are your students on par with their grade level/age? Are some students more advanced than others? This leads us to…

Step Two: Planning Accordingly

There are simple tests you can have your students complete which will give you an idea of how your students learn best. These need not be in-depth assessments, but even getting a sense of whether the majority of your students are auditory, visual or tactile learners will be a great help when planning your lessons. Once you have determined students’ ability levels and their preferred learning style, plan your lessons accordingly. Make sure you are incorporating what you know about your students when you decide how you will teach a particular topic. This could mean switching from direct instruction (e.g. standing in front of the class, teaching from the chalkboard) to student-centered learning (e.g. inquiry-based learning models).

Step Three: Review, Review, Review

One of the most effective ways to reinforce learning is to review information with students on a regular basis. Whether you create your own review game, end each class with a 5-minute “wrap up” period, or have a review session at the end of each week, reviewing information is a great way to reinforce student learning. The more often students draw on information and past learning experiences, the more likely they are to retain what they have learned. Just like you are studying for final exams: Review, review, review!

Step Four: Mix It Up

Students are less likely to pay attention in class if the activities and tasks become routine or monotonous. Planning lessons to incorporate different tasks, games, groupings, and assignments keeps things interesting, refreshing, and engaging. In addition to keep students engaged and on-task, mixing things up in the classroom also encourages positive student interaction, and makes planning more fun for you too!

TESL Certification – Hidden Benefits

If you’ve taught abroad before, or if you’re looking into TEFL/TESL course options, you likely have an idea of why TESL certification is a huge advantage for teachers. Knowing what to do when you’re faced with a class of students who don’t speak any English is a good thing, and knowing how to make your lessons fun and interactive so the students want to return to English class the next day is even better. But TESL certification and experience teaching English abroad have benefits that extend beyond the classroom – you will pick up skills that are useful in so many different scenarios.

Thinking on Your Feet

Learning how to teach English language learners will teach you flexibility and adaptability, as both of these skills are absolute necessities in any classroom. Being able to think on your feet and roll with the punches will benefit you not only on other career paths, but in everyday life as well. Going with the flow is a desirable trait!

Know Your Audience

Becoming TESL certified will give you some experience with figuring out how to address your class, and this is a skill that is useful in other parts of your life too. Knowing how to approach an audience – whether it’s asking a boss for a promotion, or telling your roommate you can’t deal with the dirty dishes
anymore – is an excellent skill to have! Becoming a better communicator is useful in and out of the classroom.

Patience, Patience, Patience

Something that a lot of teachers build up throughout their career is that much-revered virtue: patience.
Working with language learners is challenging at times, but becoming a qualified ESL instructor will give you a sound understanding of how people acquire language capabilities, and you will start to build up patience as you work through the challenges and help your students learn. That patience and understanding translates into other avenues – there’s no situation where those traits won’t be useful!

Preparedness

Being an effective teacher requires a level of preparedness and organization. Yes, there will be times when you wing it and things will go smoothly, but for the most part you will have to plan ahead. Because teaching requires you to be one step ahead and on top of things, being organized and having a plan in place will become second nature. Feeling prepared helps you to feel confident, and confidence is key for getting wherever it is you want to go in life!

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