UKLC (UK Language Courses) are currently recruiting for TEFL teachers for our 7 locations around the UK this summer.

Locations: Southampton, Manchester, York, Nantwich, Ellesmere, Denbigh and Barnard Castle, United Kingdom.

We believe in offering our clients a high quality language programme coupled with an exciting and varied sports and activity programme. We know our courses are only as good as the staff we employ and so we make sure all our staff get the support they need to do a good job and have fun doing it! Our centres are small, friendly places where you will feel part of a team, make the most of the lovely town or city you are in and enjoy your summer.

At each centre our staff are led by an experienced and qualified management team and our Course Directors are supported by a highly qualified Academic Manager to help you become the best teacher you can. We believe in a task based learning methodology and we train all our teachers before the courses start in how to use this kind of approach. Then we give you lots of ideas, materials and support throughout your time with us so that your experience at UKLC will help to develop you as a teacher.

Our centres start in early July and we have Teaching + Activities positions at all our sites. Full-Time Teaching positions are available at some of our sites – each centre is different. All positions can be residential or non-residential.

Teachers are required to be native or native equivalent speakers with either RSA CELTA/Trinity Cert. TESOL or PGCE (in MFL or English or recognised equivalent) and to be educated to degree level. Experience is desirable, though not necessary – we believe in having a balance of experiences and abilities.

Please note that we do not accept online TEFL, weekend TEFL or introduction to TEFL courses as an acceptable level of qualification. Applicants who do not have a degree but have a relevant TEFL qualification as listed above and an acceptable amount of experience will be considered.

References are necessary and will be taken, and an appropriate DBS check (formerly known as CRB) will be required prior to confirmation of appointment.

How to Apply

For more information including an application form, job description and salary details, please email your CV to Catherine Grieveson at recruitment@uklc.org

We are looking for outgoing, dynamic and committed staff to work for us in a variety of roles in our programmes based in Edinburgh, Sibford Ferris (Oxfordshire), and Eastbourne. We have the following roles available (please note we cannot offer residential accommodation in our Eastbourne centre);

Please visit our website at www.oscarsinternational.co.uk

Centre Manager (£475-£550 p/w) plus full board and accommodation for residential positions

An OSCARS Centre Manager will be responsible for all operational aspects of an OSCARS residential centre in one of our locations in the UK. This is a key role for OSCARS being the most senior in centre, and it involves the ability to manage many different aspects of an OSCARS programme in order to provide excellent programme delivery & customer service for our international clients. The Centre Manager will be an accomplished communicator with the ability to adapt to different situations in a fast paced summer school environment. They will lead by example as they manage a team of 10-20 individuals. The Centre Manager must attend an OSCARS induction prior to the commencement of the course and familiarise themselves with the day-to-day operations of an OSCARS summer school as well as being the face of OSCARS in Centre. The main duties involve programme delivery, staff management, liaison with colleges and suppliers & student welfare.

The successful candidate will have the following skills and aptitudes;

• Previous management experience within the junior vacation industry or an ELT environment
• Commitment to running a successful junior programme
• Commitment to providing OSCARS clients with high levels of customer service
• Previous experience of working to budgets
• Previous experience of promoting welfare and safeguarding children

It is also desirable that you may hold a relevant ELT/sports/youth work qualification

As part of OSCARS commitment to Safeguarding children you will be asked to complete a DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service) or if based in Scotland you are required to be part of the PVG scheme.

You will be expected to attend an induction in Edinburgh on 13^th-15^th June 2013

Click here for more information on this role.

Academic Manager (£400-£450 p/w) plus full board and accommodation for residential positions

An OSCARS Academic Manager will be expected to lead the academic aspects of course within centre, provide support to a team of teachers and ensure the delivery of the OSCARS syllabus and materials to our clients. You will take the lead in ensuring all students are tested upon arrival and placed into the appropriate level according to the Common European Framework of Reference level system.  You will be asked to arrive at the centre 2-3 days before the course starts and you will be expected set-up the Teachers room, as well as arrange a site induction for all Teachers. The teaching programme aims to activate and improve students’ grammar, vocabulary, and to develop their speaking, listening, reading & writing skills. Additionally, you will be expected to ensure that all efforts are made to encourage learner development.  It is the Academic Manager’s responsibility to ensure that all students’ academic needs are being met. This will include regular teachers meetings and where possible giving verbal 1:1 feedback to students, as well as assisting the OSCARS Academic Consultant to set up and run teacher observations and INSETT sessions based on these. You will also, if at all possible, set up a programme of peer observations to encourage the professional development of your team.

The successful candidate will have the following skills and expertise;

• Up to 3 years previous academic management experience within a summer school or similar environment.
• Trinity TESOL/ Cambridge CELTA or equivalent or PGCE in relevant subjects, BEd, QTS or overseas equivalent plus a previous Degree.

(By ‘equivalent’ to the Trinity TESOL or Cambridge CELTA certification we mean that courses must have been externally validated by a reputable and recognized university or examinations board, include  at least six hours of supervised and assessed teaching practice with real EFL students and at least 100 hours of relevant input from suitably qualified tutors. Additionally, online certification is not acceptable at the present time).

• Native or near native competency in English. If English is not your maternal language, you must be able to demonstrate that you have are at C1 level of the CEFR as a minimum requirement
• Eligible to work in the UK
• Commitment to providing an excellent academic programme for OSCARS clients
• Willingness to involve yourself fully within a summer school environment
• Previous experience of promoting welfare and safeguarding children
• The ideal candidate will also hold a RSA DELTA or DIPLOMA in TEFL  or equivalent

As part of OSCARS commitment to Safeguarding children you will be asked to complete a DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service) check or if based in Scotland you are required to be part of the PVG scheme.

You will be expected to attend an induction in Edinburgh on 13^th-15^th June 2013

Click here for more information on this role.

Social Programme Manager (£375 p/w) plus full board and accommodation for residential positions

An OSCARS Social Programme Manager will be responsible for the social programme of an OSCARS residential centre in one of our locations in the UK. This is a key role for OSCARS as the activity and cultural programme provides the links between the educational side and social side of a summer school experience. The role involves taking responsibility for managing OSCARS afternoon, evening and weekend programmes. The Social Programme Manager will be an excellent communicator with the ability to interact with clients and students from overseas as well as managing an Activity Crew. You will be energetic, organised and a team player. You are also expected to lead from the front. As Social Programme Manager you will act as a Welfare Officer and have responsibility for the welfare of students and staff in your house.  The Social Programme Manager must attend an OSCARS induction prior to the commencement of the course and familiarise themselves with the day-to-day operations of an OSCARS summer school.

The successful candidate will have the following skills and expertise;

• Previous experience of working as part of an activity team within a summer school or in an activity camp environment
• Commitment to providing and excellent social programme for OSCARS clients.
• Commitment to providing OSCARS clients with high levels of customer service
• Previous experience of working with clients from overseas
• Previous experience of promoting welfare and safeguarding children

It is also desirable that you may hold a relevant ELT/sports/youth work qualification or be undertaking one.

As part of OSCARS commitment to Safeguarding children you will be asked to complete a DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service) or if based in Scotland you are required to be part of the PVG scheme.

You will be expected to attend an induction in Edinburgh on 13^th-15^th June 2013

Click here for more information on this role.

EFL Teachers/Activity Crew (£330 p/w) plus full board and accommodation for residential positions

An OSCARS Teacher will be expected to teach general English for 15 hours p/w. You will be expected to plan and prepare for all lessons and link these to an OSCARS centre’s social programme. The teaching programme aims to improve students grammar, vocabulary, and develop speaking, listening, reading & writing skills. Teachers are expected to monitor progress by encouraging the completion of the OSCARS diary.  When you are not teaching you will be taking part in evening or afternoon activities and may be expected to supervise and lead a half day or full day excursion this will be up to a maximum of 20 hours per week and could include the weekends.

As a member of the Oscars team, it is all of our responsibility to ensure the safety and welfare of our students. As such you will be dedicated to providing a quality vacation course whether you are administering the academic programme or supervising the fun at one of our many excursion venues.

Successful Applicants must have the following skills and attributes:

Trinity TESOL/ Cambridge CELTA or equivalent or PGCE in relevant subjects, BEd, QTS or overseas equivalent plus a previous Degree.

Previous experience of working with young learners.

You should be willing to participate in a full and varied activity programme for young learners.

As part of OSCARS commitment to Safeguarding children you will be asked to undertake a DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service) check or if based in Scotland you are required to be part of the PVG scheme.

Click here for more information on this role.

Activity Crew (£275 p/w) plus full board and accommodation for residential positions

As a member of OSCARS Activity Crew, you will be expected to lead groups of teenagers from overseas on a variety of afternoon/evening and weekend activities that make for an exciting and rewarding cultural programme. The activities take the form of a variety of local excursions, sports activities, evening entertainment, arts, crafts and dance.  You will also provide leadership on the full day excursions on a Saturday and Sunday. You will be expected prepare in advance for all activities and excursions following guidelines from the centre management. You will play a key part in ensuring the welfare of the students and in conjunction with the Social Programme Manager focus upon the safety aspects of all activities.

Successful Applicants must have the following skills and attributes:

• Willingness to organise and partake in sporting activities/educational visits and evening entertainments
• Be outgoing, organised and have large amounts of energy
• Be able to work as part of a team and show leadership to groups of teenagers
• Previous experience of working in a summer school environment
• Working towards a qualification in sports, arts & crafts or youth work
• Commitment to providing an excellent social programme for OSCARS clients.
• Willingness to involve yourself fully within a summer school environment
• Previous experience of promoting welfare and safeguarding children
• A first aid qualification

As part of OSCARS commitment to Safeguarding children you will be asked to complete a DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service) or if based in Scotland you are required to be part of the PVG scheme.

Click here for more information on this role.

By Kivak (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Teaching English at a UK summer camp? Prepare yourself for a fun-filled environment…and a lot of hard work! The tricky part to any teaching job is getting the balance right between being your student’s teacher but also someone they respect, like and trust. Yet when the main draw for many English learners to a UK summer school is the fun environment, with many summer schools offering music, sport and other extra-curricular activities, how does the teacher stay in control?

In this article I’ll share with you three top tips for every TEFL teacher considering teaching at a summer school.

1. Get to know your students

Depending on the type of summer school, students will come and go meaning that it can be hard work developing a teacher-student relationship in such a short period of time. It’s therefore really important to engage with your students and get to know them using simple methods.

• At the beginning of each new classroom-full of students introduce yourself and have your students sit in a circle and introduce themselves too. Devise an activity that gets students chatting to each other too such as a ‘milling’ activity called ‘find someone who…’ this gets everyone up and talking but also means they learn something about each other.

2. Establish your ground rules

Don’t even think about commencing a high-energetic game of rounders, bringing out the tambourine or the finger-paints before setting some ground rules. Otherwise, you’ll have one recipe for disaster coming your way.

Ahead of your first class come up with a signal to indicate quiet time/everything to stop/return to your desks/JUST STOP! This not only means that you are at least guaranteed some peace and quiet but also that your students respect that you are in charge.

3.Set your students the right example!

There’s no denying that there is a fine art to getting your students to learn but also have fun too.

As the respected teacher your students will mimic your behaviour so make sure you always act accordingly. When it’s time to learn and study –shouting your instructions loudly to your pupils or having blaring music on in the background isn’t exactly going to give the right impression, is it? Although summer camp might sound like a 24/7 barrel of laughs…it isn’t. For some summer schools, students have exams to pass, knuckling down is therefore really important.

Having said that – the summer camp being a 24/7 thing wasn’t a lie… When students are learning they expect to be entertained and your employer will often expect YOU to get involved in such activities too.

*Top tip: outside the classroom? Leave the ‘teacher’ mode in the classroom and HAVE FUN!

About the Author:
Helen Hargreave is one of the TEFL experts at i-to-i TEFL.

By freestock.ca [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

On the surface, summer school EFL teaching appears more relaxed than other EFL teaching disciplines. But this can be deceptive. The language delivery may be less stringent and high-powered than exam or higher level general English classes, but there other stresses to bear in mind. Below are a few of the stresses you may encounter, and tips on how to deal with them.

Summer schools are a pressurised environment.

Summer schools are a pressurised environment. The summer months from the beginning of June until the end of August give EFL schools their main income for the year. Consequently, student numbers in most language schools double, triple or even quadruple in size during this time. As a result, stress levels can also increase. The staffroom will still probably have the same facilities, despite the fact that there could be twice or three times as many teachers using them compared to the rest of the year. Resources and space are limited, and tempers can occasionally flare around the photocopier. The Director of Studies, Assistant Director of Studies or Academic Manager will usually be more stressed than normal too – their jobs depend on delivering a successful summer programme. They will try to help you, but their time is stretched, teachers go sick, and class numbers can go above the agreed limit. Complaints from students (or with teenagers usually their parents) can be made daily. You have to try to avoid these stresses as much as possible to enjoy the summer programme.

Make sure you prepare well.

Make sure you prepare well. Have your weekly teaching plan ready every Friday for the following week if possible. You have to be very adaptable in a summer school, and you may have to change classes at the last minute through no fault of your own, but you still have to give yourself the best chance to operate smoothly. Do your photocopying in advance and make sure you have a CD player or your laptop for listening exercises. Arrange your classroom before the students arrive. Deal with student queries and complaints as far as you can, but if you feel you can’t handle it, go to the management. It’s their job to deal with these problems. You’re a teacher, not an administrator. As long as you deliver your lessons well and do your teaching paperwork, your responsibilities are fulfilled. There is a cure for the summertime blues.

Grammar is essential for teenagers, as they are still formulating the language, and if they get their structures solid early they will become fluent later. Each student of course has a different level of ability, depending on their learning background, natural aptitude and personality. Your job is to take all your students with you on a learning experience which enriches them, stimulates them and strengthens their English.

Presentation is half the battle

With grammar delivery to teenagers, presentation is half the battle. Use timelines, diagrams and easy to understand processes on the board and supplement this with hand-outs and supplementary activities. Invite questions from the class, inviting each student in turn to answer a question if they have no queries of their own. Build this interaction, and every student will learn from another student’s query, and learning feeds itself. Take a step back, always be there to guide and give the lesson direction, but make sure that you speak less than them – you are fluent in the language, they need the practice. I once observed a very experienced Delta/MA Linguistics EFL teacher when I first started teaching. A Japanese teenage student was using his electronic dictionary, and she pounced on him, shouting ‘I am your dictionary!’ At the time I thought wow, that’s control! But in hindsight, this wasn’t effective. The boy was humiliated – the other students didn’t even laugh – there was just a deathly silence. There was control, but no rapport. Teaching grammar effectively is interactive, especially with teenagers.

Don’t overload your students

Don’t overload teenagers with too much grammar in one class, unless the class is uniformly exceptional. Bite size is best, less is more. Learn a little every day, and learn it well. Check and reinforce, set homework related to the grammar point (no more than twenty minutes a night of homework for a summer school as students usually have evening activities too). Get the students to give their grammar homework answers to the class by eliciting it from them, and then discuss it together. Then you can move on to the next grammar point. Also, utilise your grammar in speaking activities – if you are doing comparatives and superlatives, use the: ‘Is Lady Gaga the most talented singer ever, or is Madonna more talented?’ etc. Make your grammar point culturally relevant to teens. They will respond and appreciate it.

Learning grammar is like building a house. With teenagers you have the chance to give them very strong foundations or at least strengthen them. You are setting them up for a lifetime of English. Go to it!

By Shawn Lipowski (Shawnlipowski) (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Immerse yourself in films

If your target language happens to be French then you are onto a winner here. Block off the weekend, take the Time Out Guide to the 100 best French films as your guide, switch off the subtitles and immerse yourself in the world of French cinema and language.

Immerse yourself in food

An equally pleasant method of immersion is French cooking. Just reading through a French cookery book will get the juices flowing and teach you something about the culture of the country. This kind of immersion is essential for enjoyment and motivation. Taking a short French language course in France would also give you the opportunity to sample authentic cuisine. The same applies to any country and language.

Immerse yourself at home

One of the reasons why some people want to learn another language is because their partner is from another country or speaks another language. Immersing yourself at home can work very well in this situation. The two of you can agree that the target language is the one that will be spoken at home, and all conversations will take place in this language. This is can be very effective when it works, though a downside is that for the first week or so you are going to be very limited in what you can say, apart from what your name is and where you come from. But we must all start with the basics!

Immerse yourself at work

Once you have exhausted the patience of whoever is at home, or if you don’t have a partner or other person to practice with at home then consider teaming up with someone at work. If you work for a global company then check the intranet and find yourself a language buddy in another country with whom to immerse yourself in business speak.

Immerse yourself with study abroad

With some excellent language schools around, such as http://www.esl-schools.org/ you can immerse yourself in a rich combination of classrooms and cafés, getting the best of both worlds.

Immerse yourself teaching abroad

If you want a real shortcut to learning the life and language of a country then immerse yourself in teaching abroad. The satisfaction of teaching your native language while learning another cannot be overestimated!

By D. Sharon Pruitt from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, USA (Sunset Party Dancing Girl Silhouette) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Teenagers need stimulation as they live in their own world, as we once did. Your job as a summer school EFL teacher is to enter their world, but also to invite them into your well-prepared teaching world. This is a difficult balance, and doesn’t always happen automatically, but it’s essential to work at it if you want to get the most out of a teen group and they the best learning experience you can offer.

Focus on key points

Focus on a key grammar point and vocabulary subject area every day, keeping in mind that most schools will give you a framework to follow anyway. Extend this to a debate or focused group work speaking activity, monitor closely. Teens love talking and usually have strong opinions. Intersperse grammar, vocabulary, reading and listening with games, but try to make those games connect to language content you have just covered, or reinforce yesterday’s learning points. Get your students to come up to the board one by one and offer input, put a chair facing the board and get a student to sit there and guess what other students have decided. Or have the chair facing the class with something on the board behind, and the student in the chair guessing with the help of hints from the rest of the class. These are basic activities but create interaction and give some control to your class.

They are there to learn

But remember they are there to learn. Summer schools are more relaxed than normal EFL programmes, but remember that you still get feedback, and you will be surprised at how much some students want to learn. A relaxed learning atmosphere is not a no-learning atmosphere, and both should be aimed for. Present the target language points to be covered that day in the corner of the board – signposting is very important to students, and this itinerary should be ready when the students arrive. After a warm-up, briefly outline what you’ll be covering and invite questions for five minutes. Tell them that there will be a game or fun activity at the end of each language point segment, and this will focus and encourage them. Monitor and praise, point out mistakes gently.

Remember that many teenagers want a cultural experience as well as learning, and try to make your classes culturally interesting and relevant. Try to take your students out on one or two outings a week, to a museum, market or bustling area. Prepare hand-outs with an activity for each outing (gap fills and focused questions work well), reinforcing what they learnt in class.

The biggest compliment you can get from a teacher is that they learnt and had fun.

By Tgyeltshen (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Most TEFL summer schools involve teaching groups of teenagers, and it can be a very rewarding experience. Younger students often show quick progress and the enthusiasm and energy in the classroom can be infectious. But class management and maintaining control can be tricky and the following are a few tips about what to do and not do to have a successful summer school EFL teaching experience.

The age range is likely to between 13 and 18, but I have taught students in summer school as young as nine. Most schools will try to keep classes within an age range spread of perhaps two years, for example aged 13-15 in one class. However, I have worked in one school where classes were defined by language ability and not age – and this led to 9 and 10 year olds learning with 16 and 17 year olds. This can sometimes work, but is not ideal: the students may have comparable language ability, but their emotional and intellectual development is of course at very different stages, and this makes planning activities and delivery of the target language more challenging. But summer schools are always hectic, and whilst you can approach your boss to have your class made more even in regards to age, this is not always possible due to numbers! Flexibility is necessary in TEFL, and never more so than in a summer school setting…

Focused learning environment

Create a relaxed yet focused learning environment. You need to be attentive and approachable to young learners, and this is why teaching teenagers isn’t easy for some teachers. If you have a very teacher-centred approach, it is more difficult, as teen students require a very collaborative and immersive technique. Close monitoring is vital and a tight rein must be kept on this. Teenagers also get through much more material than older learners – they work fast (sometimes too fast!) and they have a shorter attention span. Fifteen to thirty minute activity segments are ideal, with a five minute game at the start and end of sessions. Grammar and vocabulary should be offered in a simple, visual style, board work and hand-outs are very important. Use your personality and most teens will respond.

Keep control of the class

But you also have to take and keep control of the class. It only takes a student with a strong character and a difficult attitude to derail your class and take half the class with them. Start firm, and gradually loosen up as you get to know them – they must know their boundaries and that you can mean business if pushed. Don’t shout as this only alienates you from the class more: building rapport is always the aim: if they don’t follow instructions, take their game segments away from them, and make sure you signpost this clearly. Control is imperative, and power is nothing without control. The majority of students will respond well to a calm and kind teacher who can be firm when needed. Don’t let late arrivals and overlong breaks become normal – you will soon have a harder job to cover your prepared material.

Good luck!

Tilmann at the German language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], from Wikimedia Commons

After stumbling my way through a Trinity qualification in Prague during which I’d had to face and start to overcome The Grammar Fear, my first teaching job turned out to be back in a UK summer school. There’s nothing quite like a summer school for that all-immersive, chuck you in at the deep end type of teaching experience and that first season provided what felt like an Everest steepness of learning curves for me.

I was still very much at the stage of staying up until the small hours planning lessons and preparing for every possible spontaneous question my students might throw at me. I became adept at stuffing multiple activities up my sleeves just in case the class arrived comatose after exhausting themselves at the disco the night before and I then had to completely change what I’d planned in order to accommodate their reluctance to move around in the energetic running dictation I might have prepared for them. As the summer went on, this all accumulated into the kind of exhaustion that I still associate with that first residential position.

Summer school fun

Yet there is no denying that summer school is also a lot of fun. The late-night chats with other EFL teachers, sharing experiences, talking of the exotic places they’ve taught during the rest of the year, listening to each other’s escapades and comparing amusing anecdotes. I even swear that it was sunny for that entire first summer, even though I have clear memories of getting completely drenched on a variety of trips and activities. But then maybe that was a later year, when I reacquainted myself with a smell I hadn’t come across since catching the school bus in my teens: the Scent of Fuggy Coach, eau de sweaty, rain-soaked teenagers jumping on seats and generally ignoring requests to sit down and put their seat belts on.

Yes, that first year encapsulated all the elements of summer school for me, good and bad. It also led to the discovery of a condition I’ve encountered at every summer school since: Hot Potato Syndrome. After the residential summer school, I switched to non-res, delighted to find a message on my voicemail offering me another month’s work with a different language school, closer to home. Off I trotted, with my ever-growing folder of materials and worked right through to mid-September, vaguely wondering what I would do next but assuming the language school would come up with something. I got lulled into a nice false sense of job security. This was a mistake.

Beware the hot potato!

In my naivety, I had failed to consider what would happen once the hordes of summer school students exited the UK at the beginning of the academic year. Being dropped by the language school like a hot potato came as a very undignified shock. Suddenly bosses who’d seemed so overjoyed to give me work despite my comparative lack of experience, became very evasive, mentioning tenuous dates when more work might come in until consecutive weeks petered down to the odd day of cover for the handful of permanent staff, to nothing at all and then silence. At which point I really wished I’d got myself organised a bit earlier.

From that season on, I realised I needed to be prepared for Hot Potato Syndrome. I learnt that it is absolutely necessary for teachers to work out in advance what they are going to do in September once summer school is over and language schools start shedding all the teachers they’ve taken on. Start thinking early, start planning the next move, maybe even get sorted before getting sucked into the intensity of summer school madness when it can become very difficult to find the time to look for jobs. Don’t optimistically leave it for things to just ‘fall into place’.

In my case, I ended up leaving it so late to get organised that I had a fretful month of unemployment, worrying about my finances drying up and pondering what I’d do if no work turned up at all, before landing a job in Italy in early November. Since then, I’ve made sure that I’m prepared for Hot Potato Syndrome which leaves me free to enjoy the fun of summer school, adding my own experiences to the melting pot of that particular brand of banter that only seems to pop up within the diversity of an EFL staff room.

Clara Harland is the author of ‘Escape From The Big Green Button’, a novel inspired by her experiences in TEFL.

By user:sj (Happy_face_ball.jpg) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Teaching teenagers can be a challenge, however they will be only too aware that learning the English language is the gateway to many opportunities for them in the future and they should therefore be keen to engage.

Keeping the average teenager stimulated and interested is not an easy task at any time, so getting your subject matter right and researching your options is essential.  The following will hopefully give you some useful ideas that you can use or adapt to suit your own methods of teaching.

1. Subject Matter

What do teenagers like to read about?  Thinking like a teenager will most definitely set you on the right track.  Starting lessons with simple, but popular subject matter will ensure that you are thought of as a likeable and down to earth kind of tutor, exactly the type of tutor teenagers are more likely to engage with.  Think along the lines of movies, celebrities, sports, relationships, fashion and television and you are on the right track.  You can up your game to the more important things later.

2. Future Career Choices

Discuss career choices with your students.  This will undoubtedly be tricky as you will be dealing with a lot of students who want to take up a lot of different careers, so keep it general.  Perhaps suggest good career options they can take up if they choose to work in their own country and have a good grasp of the English language. Also suggest some great jobs within the UK that may be of interest to them.  Use example type careers, e.g. policeman, nurse, shop assistant, etc.

3. Trips

Wherever in the UK you are tutoring, there will no doubt be various outdoor places of interest nearby that you can take your students.  This type of learning is incredibly popular, as students get to see, identify and discuss things first hand.  Depending on your location, you may be able to find some beautiful countryside, lakes, hills or villages nearby, or if you are based within a city, there should be some great parks and landmarks nearby.

4. Educational Visits

Museums, art galleries, scientific centres, etc. will be an invaluable treat for your students.  Most of these places should be able to provide extremely cheap (or sometimes free) rates for groups of foreign students, so if you have a little funding available, this is a great learning experience for them and something they will remember forever.

5. Back to the Classroom

Trips and treats are wonderful and will naturally motivate your students in their learning; however this can’t be an everyday occurrence.  This is where a little research and some good advice will help you greatly.

English literature is among the best in the world, and so finding a wonderful piece of writing that is interesting, current, stimulating, educational and exciting shouldn’t be too difficult.  Find out what kind of books the modern colleges and universities are reading, at the same time bearing in mind that English is not the first language of these students.  Speaking to the right educational authorities should give you many great options for these students.

About The Author:
Amy Harris writes for Law Training – which helps British and international students find the right legal courses in the UK. She is an American expat who enjoys helping people with their education and career search.