Millennials are often thought of as an entitled, hard-to-understand, and difficult-to-please bunch. That’s a really prejudiced and unhelpful impression of this group of people born between 1981 and 1996. In the Philippines alone, they are 35 million strong and make up 53% working age population. That’s more than half of the working professionals in the…
Emotional Intelligence and Its Effects on Teaching
Think of the best and worst teachers you’ve ever had. How did they make you feel? The impact of how you remember feeling about them all comes from the abundance or lack of emotional intelligence in these teachers. Daniel Goleman wrote a phenomenal book published in 1995 called Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More…
Fun from a Distance: Online Games for ESL
COVID may have changed so much about how we teach, but it hasn’t changed how fun and engaging games are for learners and teachers alike. If anything, COVID has inspired new online game platforms and countless new ways to use them for English teaching. Here’s a list of my 4 favorite free no-sign-up-required online game…
Creativity Could Be Your Greatest Gift to Your Students
Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” He also emphasized that “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” What better way to enhance one’s imagination than by enhancing one’s creativity? Many people believe that creativity is strictly related only to the arts. Nothing could be further from…
The CEFR: Why It’s Important for Language Teachers Like You
The CEFR is a standard for measuring language proficiency. It helps language teachers accurately gauge students’ English levels as well as their own.
CELTA Part 2: Choosing your Course Center
Whether you take the CELTA completely in person or as a blended course, you will have to be physically present at a teaching center for your teaching practicals and to receive feedback from your tutors. It’s important to choose the right center to get the most out of your course. CELTA is the same certification…
How Laughter Builds Teacher-Student Camaraderie
There’s magic in laughter. We instantly feel drawn to people who make us laugh. You can see the truth in that when you befriend your classmates in school or your colleagues at work or even when you meet your favorite comedians–when you meet them in real life, you feel like calling out their names in…
Gratitude: The Habit That Will Change Your Life
It has been almost a month since the quarantine season started getting us stuck at home most of the time. The biggest question is this: what have you done with your life lately? Has your life taken on a new meaning amid the COVID-19 crisis? We are in the midst of the most crucial of…
CELTA Part 1: An Overview
Welcome to the maze of ESL teaching certifications! Today, I am giving you an overview of CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) offered by Cambridge English. I earned my own CELTA in 2017 and I have used it every day as an ESL teacher in Europe. This article is the first in a…
The Art of Asking Questions: An Open-Ended Guide to Enhancing Learning
Questions are essential components of a learning environment. The inquiries you present to your students may make or break the environment you have carefully designed and crafted. Due to this fragile nature of questions, it is always important that we, as educators, find ways to ask the right questions that may invite productive discourse among…