ReePhrase: English with Ease

Daree A.

I have been a professional writer for 25 years in technology, digital, healthcare, and marketing industries.

I got TEFL-certified to teach ESL in 2023. I've also been a group fitness teacher for 3 years, and mentor college students on how to write their research papers.

For my TEFL practicum, I taught adults online whose native languages are Russian and Spanish. I met most of these people while traveling South America. The students’ levels were low beginner, high beginner and low intermediate.

I created lesson plans and taught about various topics like English as a language (how it was created), money, neighborhoods, grocery shopping, restaurants, cars and healthcare. Each lesson incorporated grammar in speaking, reading, writing and listening activities.

It was fun to observe and to teach! I like conversing with students about how life differs in their country, based on different topics. It was helpful to internalize their challenges with learning English and empathize since I am learning a new language with a tutor as well. I also liked researching different activities using online searches and my local library.

For each tutoring student, I:

- Conducted a Needs Analysis and assessed their English language skills
- Created PPP lesson plans that incorporated all 4 language skills with activities such as games, gap fills and other worksheets, and answering questions from videos and listening audios.

Some of these lesson plans included materials from the internet, and some I created on my own (mainly worksheets) to address topics of interest to my students. I adapted these materials to make them appropriate to my students’ various levels.