Tom Garside
Modal auxiliaries and auxiliary verbs… What’s the difference?
Auxiliaries are a major part of English grammar constructions. They appear in tenses, questions, negative forms and other functional
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Tom Garside
Apr 23, 20233 min read
Time and tense - what’s the difference?
When we talk about English grammar in general terms, it is common to hear people talking about ‘the past tense’. However, when we are
Tom Garside
Apr 16, 20233 min read
Possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives - what’s the difference?
At school, I remember being taught about possessive pronouns showing ownership of a thing, for example ‘that’s my bag’ or ‘it’s his car’.
Tom Garside
Apr 8, 20233 min read
Past simple and Past participle verbs - What’s the difference?
When we work with tenses and verb forms, students can easily get confused between the different uses of verbs ending with -ed. The -ed
Tom Garside
Apr 2, 20232 min read
Verb phrases and phrasal verbs - what’s the difference?
The verb system in English (as in many languages) is quite complex, and one point which is often misunderstood surrounds phrasal verbs (or
Tom Garside
Mar 15, 20234 min read
He said, she said… How to teach reported speech effectively
The structure and meaning of reported speech in English is notoriously difficult to teach. Teacher training courses such as the Trinity Cert
Tom Garside
Mar 6, 20233 min read
Pronunciation, Phonology, Phonics? What’s the difference?
Pronunciation is a fundamental part of speaking for second-language learners of English. A learner can have accurate spoken grammar, a wide
Tom Garside
Feb 28, 20237 min read
One teaching question, 3 Chat GPT responses
With the buzz around ‘scary good’ ChatGPT and its benefits for teachers and students, I thought I’d give it a quick test and see what it
Tom Garside
Feb 16, 20234 min read
TESOL Teaching mistakes to Avoid 7: Explaining language aids understanding
Ask many English language teachers what they find challenging about the job, and they will tell you that a lot of English grammar and vocab
Tom Garside
Feb 8, 20234 min read
TESOL Teaching mistakes to Avoid 6: ‘Correct’ answers are enough
In most school subjects, performance can be assessed by how much information has been retained by a student, as demonstrated in a test
Tom Garside
Feb 5, 20235 min read
TESOL Teaching mistakes to Avoid 5: ‘Now listen to the recording’ is a listening task
There are many reasons for using audio recordings and reading texts in the language classroom. Listening and reading are major language
Tom Garside
Jan 30, 20233 min read
TESOL Teaching mistakes to Avoid 4: The more you teach, the more students learn
In this series of articles, we are looking at some common teaching actions which more often than not simply don’t work. If you find yourself
Tom Garside
Jan 23, 20233 min read
TESOL teaching mistakes to avoid 3: Drilling to teach meaning
In this series of articles, we are looking at some common teaching actions which more often than not simply don’t work. If you find yourself
Tom Garside
Jan 15, 20234 min read
TESOL teaching mistakes to avoid 2: Asking students to read texts out loud.
In this series of articles, we are looking at some common teaching actions which more often than not simply don’t work. If you find yourself
Tom Garside
Jan 13, 20235 min read
TESOL teaching mistakes to avoid 1: Asking 'what does this word mean?'
In this series of articles, we look at some common teaching actions which more often than not simply don’t work. If you find yourself doing
Tom Garside
Jan 12, 20233 min read
Trinity CertPT graduate Julie Chen interview
We're proud of all our graduates, each one is a success story of their own. We know how hard you all worked, so we were delighted when our
Tom Garside
Dec 21, 20221 min read
Another year of global connections - countries we have connected in 2022
In the 18 months since we last looked back at the trainers, teachers, trainees and students that we worked with in 2021, from 60 countries
Tom Garside
Dec 13, 20223 min read
Word by word: An adaptable activity to teach word order and sentence grammar
So much of a teacher’s time is spent either correcting errors or working on the smallest parts of English grammar: prepositions, articles
Tom Garside
Dec 2, 20224 min read
3 activities to help learners use the passive voice correctly
The passive voice is an important structure for intermediate learners of English to get to grips with. Being a voice (rather than a tense),
Luke MacGregor
Nov 25, 20221 min read
From the UK to Hong Kong - What the Language Point Trinity CertTESOL has done for me
When my work as a photographer dried up during the pandemic, in 2021, I took the opportunity to complete the Trinity CertTESOL with Language
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