With the start of the 2023 school year right around the corner, it's a good time for veterans to refresh their knowledge and skills and for newly recruited ALTs to learn about their new roles. To support you in your school experience, ALTTO offers course modules that provide insight into the…
Happy New Year 2023! Have you made new year's resolutions? This is the perfect time to look at Commandment 9 - strategies to increase your learner's goal-orientation. Teachers Setting Goals Every year, teachers pore over guidelines, revise syllabi, and schedule units and tests as part of course goal setting. A syllabus…
I hope you're all settling in to the new school year. It is the perfect time to try something new in your classroom! This Commandment comes to us from Alex, an ALT at a high school in Kyoto. He and his co-ALTs and JTEs have been doing some fantastic things to…
I was positively giddy on the first day of my TESOL certificate's Teaching English Grammar class. Although we were all there to learn how to be good language teachers, I was probably the only one who was that thrilled to get into the nitty gritty of English grammar. Most people probably…
I used to hate planning lessons. It was my least favorite part of my TESL certification program. My instructors wanted so much detail. Every single moment of the lesson had to be accounted for and justified. Why are you doing this? Why at this point in the lesson? What is this…
This week we are going to take a look at a very interesting paper written by Zoltán Dörnyei and Kata Csizér. It’s called “Ten Commandments for motivating Language Learners” and while we will be focusing on the contents published on page 215, do take a look at the abstract: The question…
ALT Agorà is the first national professional development event for ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) looking to improve their skills. ALT Agorà is a collective of ALTs coming from different backgrounds gathering together every month to exchange experiences, learn from each other and build a professional network. The Ancient Agorà of Athens…
by David L. Hayter Bio: David L. Hayter worked as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Japan from 2014-2019. Although he primarily taught junior high school, he has taught all the grades from kindergarten through ninth grade. During his time as an ALT, he worked in 11 junior high schools, 2…