Private English Language Schools

Are private English schools good places for ESL teachers? Hmmm. Well, in my personal experience, they are a good place to start out. If your main qualification is that you have a TESOL or CELTA certificate, many private language schools will hire you with little to no experience. You can start to get experience to put on your resume and you’ll be able to start putting all the stuff you learned in your certification course into practice. Those are the good sides.

For me, the downsides outweigh the advantages, especially if you work in a metropolitan area where there are a lot of language schools. And note that where there are a lot of language schools, there are also usually a lot of teacher certification schools. Sometimes they will be the same school. However, working in an area where there are a lot of teacher training programs means that private English language schools will always have a steady supply of new teachers. This means that they don’t have to offer decent pay, benefits, or even preparation pay.

The working conditions are also not always ideal. For example, the director may not tell you what class you are teaching until the night before, or worse, the morning of the class. (This is because they often don't know how many students they'll have and what the levels are until the last minute.) This give you very little time to prepare. If you've done it for a while, then it won't be as big a problem, because you can just use a lesson plan you've already developed. For new teachers, this usually isn't possible.

So if you have little or no experience or if you have other forms of financial support and are just looking for a little supplemental income, then a position at a private English language school might work for you. But it probably won't be easy.

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English for Medical Professionals

Some of my advanced ESL students have been doctors or nurses. Most have been visiting the U.S. for the purpose of improving their general English speaking skills. However, I have had nurses who live in the U.S. and needed to improve their English language skills for their jobs.

Medical English is a real specific field of English. It’s obviously English for a specific purpose. While I have had many different experiences in business and other areas, my closest contact to the medical profession has been infrequent visits to the doctor. I needed additional ESL resources to prepare lesson plans for these students.

That’s why it was wonderful to come across a great website with medical English. HospitalEnglish.com is a useful site for ESL teachers and medical professionals who are not native-English speakers.

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Best Writing Guide for ESL Students

I currently have an advanced ESL student who wants to improve his writing skills. He has also asked for recommendations for books to buy before he returns to his home country. English grammar books and English books, in general are obviously easier to buy here in the U.S. than in non-English speaking countries.

Among the other books that I recommend to ESL teachers and advanced ESL students, I also recommended the classic Strunk & White’s, The Elements of Style.

Most of you are probably familiar with this little gem of a book. For those of you who aren’t, it’s a great little book of English writing rules. It’s short and small and pretty complete. I don’t know if this is a typically recommended ESL book, but I think it’s very useful for advanced English language learners.

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Using “Though” at the End of a Sentence

I’ve had more than one advanced ESL student (and a beginner or two) ask about the use of the word “though” during our tutoring sessions. Usually, it’s based on something I’ve just said during our class. They sort of get if from the context of what’s being said, but it’s very difficult for me to explain how to use this adverb.

My favorite Longman’s Dictionarydefines “though” as “used at the end of a sentence to add a fact or opinion that makes what you have just said seem less important, or to add a very different fact or opinion.” Well, yeah, that’s true. But I haven’t been able to figure out how to effectively teach ESL students how to add this use to their conversation skills. The best I’m able to do is to point out when they could use “though” when they are speaking with me.

Here are some examples:

He’s a rotten husband. He’s good to his children, though.

She drives too fact. She’s never gotten a speeding ticket, though.

The examples may seem a little strange in writing. “Though” at the end of a sentence is really something that belongs more in spoken English.
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Teaching the Future Perfect Continuous

The Future Perfect Continuous (also called the Future Perfect Progressive), like the rest of the progressive tenses, is used to emphasize the duration of an activity. In this case, the Future Perfect Continuous is used to emphasize the duration of an activity that will be in progress before another time or event in the future. For example, “By 2010, they will have been dating each other for nine years.” “She will have been teaching English as a Second Language for thirty years when she retires.”

This is how it’s constructed:

subject + will have been + -ing.
The Future Perfect Progressive can often be used interchangeably with the Future Perfect with no difference in meaning. This is the confusing part for ESL students. When teaching English language learners this tense, reinforce the fact that it is used when you want to emphasize the duration of the activity that is or will be in progress until a future time or event.

More information on ESL Future Perfect Continuous.
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Teaching the Present Perfect Continuous

The Present Perfect Continuous (also called the Present Perfect Progressive) is used to talk about something that began in the past and continues until now. You may notice that this is also one of the three functions of the Present Perfect tense. This can be a little confusing for ESL or EFL students.

The thing to point out to English language learners is that the Present Perfect Continuous is used when you want to emphasize the duration of the activity that began in the past.

The structure of the Present Perfect Continuous is this:

subject + have/has been + -ing.

More information on the Present Perfect Continuous.

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Past Perfect Progressive Tense Basics

The Past Perfect Progressive is formed this way:

subject + had been + ing.

The difference between the Past Perfect Progressive (also called the Past Perfect Continuous) and the Past Perfect is that the Past Perfect Progressive emphasizes the duration of an activity in the past before another activity or time in the past happened. It’s also used to talk about something that was going on in the past close in time to another activity.

Here are some examples of the Past Perfect Continuous:

I had been sleeping for an hour before they woke me up.

They had been studying English grammar for one year before they felt comfortable speaking English.

She had been teaching ESL for seven years when they asked her to lead the English Department.

She had been jogging in the rain. That’s why she was all wet.

More info on the Past Perfect Continuous tense.