How Can You Make English Lessons More Creative? | Spontaneous TEFL Ideas & Teaching Tips - S07E08

How can you make your English lessons more creative, spontaneous and engaging? And what should you actually do in the first five minutes of a class?In this episode of How to English TEFL Podcast with Gav & Em, we share practical TEFL ideas for English teachers and learners, including how we start our lessons, how to avoid classroom monotony, and why teaching English gives us so much freedom to experiment.We also look at what happens when you ditch the lesson plan and improvise! Gav shares a spontaneous business English email lesson where students write, analyse and reply to real emails, while Em explains how a student's upcoming meeting led to an unplanned listening lesson using a Jackie Chan interview.Plus, we discuss some of the websites and online resources we use while teaching English, including YouTube, Wikipedia, news sites, Google Images, Test-English, BBC resources, TED-Ed, Spotify and Google Translate.In this episode:🎓 How do you start the first five minutes of an English lesson?💬 Is asking students “How are you?” every week too repetitive?🎨 How can TEFL teachers be more creative and spontaneous?📧 How can you turn real emails into a Business English activity?🎧 How can authentic videos and different accents build listening confidence?💻 Which websites are useful during English lessons?🌳 And is the grass really greener on the other side?Whether you're an English teacher, TEFL teacher, ESL/EFL teacher, trainee teacher or English learner, join Gav and Em for practical teaching ideas, classroom experiences and plenty of laughs.☕ Support How to English Pod: ko-fi.com/howtoenglishpod#TEFL #EnglishTeaching #TeachEnglish #ESL #EFL #EnglishTeacher #TEFLTeacher #LearnEnglish #EnglishLearning #TeachingEnglish #LessonIdeas #LessonPlanning #BusinessEnglish #EnglishListening #TeacherTips #ELT #EnglishPodcastTimestamps00:00 – Intro & episode overview01:28 – Strengths and weaknesses as TEFL teachers09:04 – Exploring teaching weaknesses (and honesty time)20:21 – How to deal with distracted students24:27 – Starting from scratch with new students27:23 – Recognising student progress & using praise32:10 – Listener shout-out & teaching reflections33:11 – Outro & support the pod