Protecting your mental health throughout Summer School Teaching

It’s that time of year, a heady June, in which summer contracts start to arrive and EFL teachers get ready for their annual summer school across the UK, and beyond. With English summer schools being an extremely popular and busy time of year, and for many, the most prosperous annual work assignment for EFL Teachers, it can also be extremely demanding both mentally and physically...

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How to Balance a Writing Career with TEFL

The stereotype of the aspiring writer trying to survive by teaching English on the side is nothing new. James Joyce, JK Rowling and Nick Hornby are just a few of the novelists who taught EFL in order to fund their works in progress. All these writers had to pave their own way to literary success with jobs that barely earned them a basic living with limited opportunities to focus on their art. And it's not just novelists who juggle their creative endeavours with TEFL, but journalists, copywriters, travel writers, scriptwriters, playwrights and bloggers too. Yet we all know that neither teaching nor writing are the best paid jobs to begin with, so what exactly is the allure? And is there a way to ensure simultaneous success in both of these professions?

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Working as a Summer School Director of Studies

I’d already been an English teacher in Poland and China for some time when I decided to try my luck teaching English in the UK at summer camps. I got the job and I spent my first summer in the UK teaching. Having enjoyed it, I applied for a teaching job the following year with a different company. But when I went to a summer English camp the second time I thought that it might actually be my last as an...

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Summer TEFL: Tips and Strategies for success

Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) has become a popular career choice for many individuals seeking to teach at home and abroad. With the demand for English language proficiency continually on the increase, TEFL teachers are in high demand and Summer TEFL programmes offer a range of opportunities...

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Teaching Opportunities with LSI Cambridge this Summer

Are you a qualified English language teacher looking for an exciting opportunity to teach abroad this summer? Look no further than LSI Cambridge, one of the leading language schools in the UK. 

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ChatGPT and English Teaching: Should we be scared of Artificial Intelligence?

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last six months or making a sustained effort to avoid news media altogether, you have probably heard about ChatGPT, the recently-released and Microsoft-backed Artificial Intelligence program. Produced by the non-profit OpenAI. ChatGPT and its rival Bard, produced by Google, have been making headlines this year due to their groundbreaking use of AI to perform a variety of functions in response to requests made by...

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Adults with Autism in EFL.

Estimates for the number of people with autism range from 1 to 2 percent of the population worldwide. The rate of diagnosis has been rising, which doesn’t mean that it’s becoming more prevalent necessarily, but that more and more people are seeking a diagnosis for themselves or their children. Late diagnosis in adults in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond is also becoming more widespread as new research has lead to a better understanding of the condition. In recent years, high profile personalities in the UK such as TV presenter Chris Packham have gone public with their diagnosis in order to raise awareness...

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Power, Politics and Cultural Stereotypes in the EFL Classroom

Keeping politics out of the EFL classroom is not as straightforward as it may seem. Even the most politically correct of EFL teachers can unwittingly reinforce or challenge stereotypes and power structures in subtle ways. This can be done through their choice of course materials, language exercises, role-play activities, seating arrangements or just in the way they communicate with their students. In some cases, these factors will be determined largely by their employer and will have different implications depending on the teaching context...

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Why every school should become paper-free and how to do it

The big issue of the day is Climate Change. From rising sea levels to emission of fossil fuels, from desertification to water and air quality, there are many issues currently being discussed at the highest levels of government, nationally and internationally. The COP26 summit in Glasgow was one of the major political events of the year. What relation has all of this got to do with the humble TEFL school? What possible relation can Climate Change have to English teaching? I believe there is great waste in the TEFL sector, particularly concerning paper, and I have also discovered that when a teacher becomes more eco-friendly...

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Teaching the Smartphone Generation

Who remembers the Nokia 3310? I got my first phone when I was 12 and it had the Snake game on it, which at the time seemed very cool. Today’s children get their first phone much younger of course, and have the entire internet and app stores at their fingertips, as well as the world of social media. Sadly, for every individual utilising free educational apps, tracking their daily footsteps or jogging route, or looking up vocabulary on translator apps, there are many more watching YouTube and TikTok videos, engaged in mind-numbing and attention-span-crippling...

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