Practical guides on teaching English, AI in the classroom, IELTS prep and building a career abroad.
Curipod has repositioned from interactive slides to writing practice built around US assessments. What it does now, what it costs and who it actually suits.
Twee is an AI materials platform built for language teachers. Verified pricing, real strengths, honest limits and how it compares with the alternatives.
Adoption of AI among English teachers is already high and the time savings are real, but only about a fifth feel properly trained. The evidence says the next five years will be decided by training and assessment governance rather than by replacement.
Teacher talking time is the proportion of a lesson the teacher spends speaking; student talking time is the proportion the learners do. The pair describes the balance of a lesson rather than setting a target, and the useful question is what the teacher’s talk is doing, not simply how much of it there is.
How to build ESL listening activities with AI: graded scripts, synthetic audio, comprehension tasks and transcripts, plus the places where generated listening quietly fails.
Needs analysis is the systematic gathering of information about what learners must be able to do in English, used to set the objectives of a course. It separates target needs, meaning the language a learner’s real situation demands, from learning needs, meaning how that particular group learns best.
An honest look at Brisk Teaching for English language teachers: what the free plan covers, where the levelling breaks for ESL classes, and who it actually suits.
Presentation, practice, production (PPP) is a three stage lesson framework for teaching a single language item. The teacher presents the target form in context, learners practise it in controlled exercises, then use it more freely in a communicative task. It remains the default shape of the trainee TEFL lesson plan and the structure most course books are built around.
Who funds tefl.ai, why the tools are free, and what The TEFL Institute Group is building around the qualification, with an honest note on what is not yet proven.
Detection software cannot prove who wrote an essay, and it misfires on second language writers. Here is what actually works for English teachers instead.
A practical guide to AI in English language teaching: what it does well, where it fails, how to build a workflow you trust, and which decisions stay with you.
Washback is the influence a test exerts on the teaching and learning that comes before it. It is positive when preparing for the exam drives genuinely useful language work, and negative when it narrows a course to test technique.
Task-based learning is an approach in which a lesson is built around a task with a real outcome rather than around a language item chosen in advance. Learners attempt the task with whatever English they have, then study the language they needed.
