5 Skills to Practice at Home Before Teaching English Abroad

I remember the first time I stood in front of a classroom, met by the bright, eager eyes of over two dozen ten-year-olds waiting for me– the fated, all-knowing adult in the room– to lead them. Gulping and sweating, I felt like my own eyes were going to burst out of my head.

Since I’d completed most of my teaching program and two fellowships online during the pandemic, it wasn’t until my first big girl job post-grad that I actually had the pleasure of being the object of attention in a classroom.

After that brief glitch, I snapped back into reality: I began introducing myself and the curriculum, followed by clear instructions that led into engaging activities for the students. The class went off without a hitch!

In that moment, I felt grateful that I could draw on the skills I had acquired through my studies and fellowships and apply them in real time.

If you’re preparing to teach English abroad without experience– or preparing to teach at all– I highly suggest familiarizing yourself with a few practical skills that you can start practicing long before you step into your first ESL/EFL classroom.

Here are five of those skills.

Skill #1: Practice Giving Clear Classroom Instructions

Clear instructions are the foundation of a safe and productive classroom environment. I mean, imagine telling students to return their scissors to the bin and chaos ensues. Picture a swarm of 5-year-olds jumping out of their seats, running around the classroom looking for a bin, and possibly bumping into each other–or worse.

This is why I highly recommend practicing what are known as “what-to-do” instructions. These are bite-sized, specific, and structured directions that let students know exactly what to do and when in a clear, sequenced order.

At home, stand in front of the mirror (or grab a friend/sibling!) and practice a few examples:

Scissor Safety:

1. Everyone, please be silent and listen closely as we put the scissors away.
2. Please hold your scissors the safe way. And stay silent.
3. Table 1, please walk quietly to the red bin.
4. Place your scissors inside the bin.
5. Please walk quietly back to your seats.
6. Table 2, please walk quietly to the red bin.

(and so on..)

Daily Set-Up:

1. Take out your notebooks and a pencil.
2. Turn to a blank page in your notebook.

3. Write today’s date at the top of the page.

    

Pair Speaking Activity:

1. Please sit with your speaking partners. You have 20 seconds. (Personally, I LOVE a good time limit. It creates a sense of urgency especially with my secondary students who suddenly forget how to move)
2. 5..4..3..2..1. Okay.
3. If you’re the partner sitting closer to the window, you are Partner A. 
4. If you’re the partner sitting closer to the door, you are Partner B.
5. Partner A, you will ask the questions that are on the board.
6. Partner B, you will answer each question. You will have one minute per question. Try your best to speak for the full minute.
7. After five questions, we will switch roles.

8. Okay, here’s the first question. One minute starts now. Go!

    

It might feel silly doing this in the mirror or even in front of family and friends at first, but trust me it will make all the difference on your first day in your ESL/EFL classroom!

Skill #2: Practice Clear and Accessible Speaking

I’m aware that many English speakers tend to equate loud, fast speech with confidence and intelligence. While I understand the sentiment, my first year in a TEFL job quickly showed me that the opposite is true as an English teacher abroad. In fact, the slower and more predictable your speech, the more clear and confident you appear!

In an EFL/ESL classroom, students are likely decoding meaning in real time– often having to translate each individual word in their head while also processing grammar, pronunciation, and context. That’s a lot of work!

To get in the habit of speaking slower, try this:

1. Record yourself giving instructions or leading a lesson.
2. Listen to the recording and note any incomplete pronunciations, connected speech (blended words) or confusing grammar choices (sometimes my AAVE can throw students off!)
3. Re-record, this time pacing and enunciating each word until the grammar, meaning, and intonation are crystal clear.

Practicing pacing and pausing will also help you become comfortable with what many educators call “wait time.” Often, new educators get nervous when students don’t immediately respond to their questions or instructions and sometimes give the answer or overexplain the initial question– neither of which make for a productive cognitive experience for the students.

Instead, become comfortable with a little silence by practicing the following steps:

1. Ask a question.
2. Pause for 3 to 5 seconds. (This time can be adjusted to your students’ English levels. Some ESL/EFL groups need more time to think.)
3. Repeat the question if there aren’t yet any responses.
4. Do a second round of wait time.
5. If students are still unable to respond, now you can pull on other methods of clarification or scaffolding like re-wording the question or breaking it into smaller mini-questions until students can answer the initial one.

Another tried and true method that I use to boost engagement and clarity when asking questions comes in the form of a sandwich. Give it a try:

1. Ask a question.
2. Wait time.
3. Call on a specific student (can be random or from a show of hands)
4. Repeat the question.
5. Student responds

This is helpful because it gives all students a chance to think of the answer before calling on a specific student, and repeating the question can get the chosen student’s brain churning, especially if they were a little zoned out or confused the first time.

Example:

Teacher: “How do we know that this is a phrase and not a clause?

[3 to 5 second pause]

Teacher: Ciani? How do we know that this is a phrase and not a clause?

Ciani: It’s not a clause because there’s no subject and verb pair.

This may all seem like a lot to think about– and it is. But, once you get comfortable with pausing, pacing, and enunciating, it will become like second nature and greatly benefit the student learning experience!

Skill #3: Practice Structuring Strong Lessons

Whether you’re starting your first teach abroad job without experience or boasting years of classroom experience, it is extremely beneficial to familiarize yourself with the structure of an EFL/ESL lesson!

My best advice to do so is to complete reverse outlines of EFL/ESL lessons from experienced teachers. This way, you’ll see a class in action and take note of each phase of the lesson and the teacher moves that make the lesson successful.

I suggest that you do these things:

1. Watch an ESL/EFL teacher’s class on YouTube or another video platform.

2. As the lesson plays, take note of the following things:

    

   1. Opening: How does the teacher greet the students and signal the beginning of class time?

       

   2. Warm up: What does the teacher do to introduce the topic to the students? Is there a question of the day, a connection to previous or background knowledge, or something else?

       

   3. Direct Instruction: When does the teacher instruct the students on the lesson’s skills and objective, and how do they do so? Do they use slides, note sheets, modeling? Do they engage students in the learning process, or do they do most of the speaking? And how long is this portion of the lesson?

       

   4. Guided Practice: How do the students practice the new skill they learned during direct instruction? Do they complete activities as a class, in small groups, pairs, or individually? How long is this portion of the lesson?

       

   5. Checks for Understanding: How does the teacher monitor student understanding and progress? Do they use a thumbs up/thumbs down method? Go over answers to a worksheet together? Model and correct common mistakes?

       

   6. Closure and Assessment: How does the teacher analyze student proficiency on the lesson’s objectives? Is there a mini quiz, discussion, or game? When does this portion of the lesson begin?

       

   7. Transitions: How does the teacher signal transitions between each phase of the lesson? Do they use call and response, a bell, or timer?

       

   8. Classroom Management: What structures do the class community have in place to keep the environment safe and productive? Are there scissor safety procedures, pre-assigned partners/groups, tiered (and objective!) consequences for actions that fall outside of the agreed-upon norms?

       

3. Once you’ve made note of all the big and little things that make a lesson successful, you should actually practice delivering the same lesson out loud! Be sure to stick to the timestamps, transitions, and activities modeled in the video

    

NOTE on the difference between a lesson and an activity:

An activity should be a smaller part of the overall lesson– not the lesson itself (unless students are already familiar with the skill to be practiced during the activity.) A class period spent doing many different activities without any clear connection to an overall objective or goal may not produce the comprehension and retainment that one that mixes direct instruction and collaborative activities might.

TLDR:

Lessons have a clear skill or goal that students are expected to achieve by the end of the class period and utilize various teaching methods to progress student learning, and activities are just one way to get them toward that goal!

Skill #4: Refresh Your English Grammar Basics

As native English speakers, we naturally pick up grammar skills and use complex grammar patterns without even thinking about it. On the other hand, EFL/ESL students learn English grammar from a much more technical viewpoint– and you’d be surprised by the questions they ask! Think: gerund clauses, appositive phrases, and perfect continuous infinitives. 

Sounds like a foreign language? Exactly. And, depending on the grade level, you’ll need to explain these terms in fun and sticky ways to students who speak a different language than you.

To get yourself in the flow of things, at bare minimum I suggest you review:

• The 8 Parts of speech
• Subject–verb agreement
• Phrase vs Clause
• Punctuation (including semicolons and em dashes!)
• Verb forms (the perfect and continuous tenses at minimum)
• Comparatives and Superlatives

For secondary and upper intermediate+ EFL/ESL teachers, I suggest preparing these more advanced grammar points:

• Sentence types (Simple, Compound, Complex)
• Noun/Adjective/Adverb Phrases and Clauses
• Verb Moods
• Conditionals

• Infinitives

   

Lastly, as you brush up on these grammar concepts, take note of common student mistakes.

For example, in preparation for one of my own grammar lessons, I watched several videos on the topic, taking diligent notes. In my notes, I kept a list of all of my burning questions and their respective answers. These burning questions and points of confusion became the headings of the slides that I used during instruction. In doing so, I was able to anticipate student error and correct it before it could even occur. At the end of the lesson on a topic that I personally found extremely difficult and confusing, my students used the grammar point with ease. It was a win!

Skill #5: Start Building a Teacher Toolkit of EFL/ESL Activities and Resources

Now that you see how much preparation goes into teaching before you even speak your first word in your new ESL/EFL classroom abroad, I’m sure you’ll naturally see the benefit in having a reservoir of activities and resources at your disposal, ready to be whipped out at a moment’s notice. Work smarter, not harder, I always say!

To gather these resources and activities, I suggest:

1. Searching Dave’s ESL Cafe’s resources page– it’s full of lessons, games, and activities uploaded by real TEFL and ESL teachers.

    

2. Busy Teacher is another great website– this one even comes with slides and pre-made worksheets! The site can be a bit challenging to navigate, so I suggest searching a topic and viewing the results that way rather than navigating their directory itself.

    

3. WordWall is my absolute best friend! It’s full of virtual games on a seemingly endless variety of topics– even available in a host of different languages. This site does require you to log in in order to use the full functionality of its search engine. I’m lazy, so I google the topic I’m teaching + wordwall, and view the results that way (lol)

    

4. Teachers Pay Teachers is a tried-and-true resource for games, lessons, projects, icebreakers, you name it! You can also filter for free materials if you’re not yet ready to pay– but I’ve paid for a few project-based lessons and it was definitely worth the price! It came with slides, instructions, materials, etc. I just basically had to plug-and-play!

    

5. Create a playlist on Youtube featuring fun brain breaks (think: the tiktok speed challenge, try not to say the same word as me challenge, would you rather, truth or dare). I also save ideas for EFL/ESL class discussion formats and lessons here.

    

6. Search through Canva’s pre-made lesson plans– though this does typically require a premium subscription.

    

7. Talk to other teachers! You can attend professional development conferences and seminars (there are virtual ones, as well!), create a group chat with your teacher friends, or read blogs written by other teachers (hey, you’re actually doing that right now!)

Once you find activities that you like, practice facilitating them at home until they become second nature to you. I also suggest printing worksheets ahead of time and/or prioritizing activities that don’t require a bunch of materials for when you’re really in a pinch.

Work smarter, not harder!

------

Okay, so that’s all for now. I sincerely hope you find this advice helpful and that you’re able to build a solid foundational skillset that you can fall back on like I did in my first classroom job. Teaching is all about preparation, delivery, and reflection– and you’re already nailing the first part!

Now, go deliver! :)