TEFL vs TESL vs TESOL - The pros and cons

If you are a qualified English teacher looking to start a career you might be facing a dilemma: whether to look for work abroad and kill two birds with one stone (see the world and make some money on the way) or to stay in your English-speaking country and teach foreigners coming to study, work or live there. Let’s have a look at your options in detail and by the end of this article you will have a fair idea of which...

Read more

Rethinking ELT's Environmental Impact

Globalisation has resulted in many good things. To list just a few examples, it has eradicated diseases that used to be endemic, with most of the world’s human population enjoying rising standards of living and longer life expectancy than any generation before. Globalisation has also resulted in wonderful technological developments, giving us instant access to vast amounts of information. We can communicate in real time with people on the other side of the world, and can travel around it faster and more comfortably than our ancestors could ever have imagined. The spread of English and English language teaching (ELT) has gone hand in hand with these processes, and like globalisation...

Read more

The LGBTQIA+ teacher abroad: Back to School, open your closet?

The faint sound of Christmas songs are around the corner, pumpkin spice lattes are in the shops, and the sound of children laughing in the streets is fading away. It can only mean one thing. The new academic year is here, in the northern hemisphere at least. This prompts teachers all around to ask themselves certain questions: where did the summer go? What reward system should I try this year? Which computer game DO I prefer fortnite or minecraft? How strict is too strict to start the year off? All equally important and valuable questions, but for the LGBTQIA+ teacher there are other questions you may be asking yourself. Questions such as, should I tell my colleagues straight away? Should I wait for them to ask me? Should I bring the topic up...

Read more

Marketing yourself as an Online Teacher

Once you’ve made the leap from the physical to the online classroom, you will play a greater role in attracting new students for yourself. The competition online is stiff, so you will have to put lots of effort upfront to ensure that you are a credible, and a serious teacher. Many people are still skeptical of the quality of the online classroom, so be sure to bring legitimacy to what you are...

Read more