(Part 2) Top products from r/TEFL

I've fantasized about living on a mountain in China and doing my own thing for a while now. It's possible, but it probably isn't what you expect or really want.

Can't think of a great way to organize this, so:

Don't ignore or downplay the "legal" aspect. I've visited small towns in China. You attract an enormous amount of attention in small towns by the virtue of your being foreign. If you demonstrate a capacity and willingness to do good works, you might be accepted and ignored. It's more likely that you'll be subject to a lot of scrutiny - on your visa, on your income, on your personal life. You might not be blatantly kicked out of a city - though that does happen - but you'd probably have a lot of little nuisances and harassments. Tough to find a place to rent, tough to find a hotel that will take you. Your local friends and love interests may be taken in for questioning or subject to vicious gossip. That sort of thing. Even if you are accepted and ignored by the current officials and your neighbors like you, who knows when a new hard-line administrator will strut into town and want to change things up?

Now, that's a view of the day-to-day assuming income and visas aren't a problem. They are. China doesn't grant a lot of long-term visas and the visas that are out there are usually tied to an employer or a school or a sponsor. Who are you going to find that's willing to stick their neck out for you so that you can roll down mountains of tea and read the classics?

So, yeah. You're probably best off going in with a legit program. Find an organization in your country and in your field that works in China and ask about the opportunities there. Once you're on the ground, you may find some way to make it all work for yourself. Or you may find that you aren't all that enamored with China and are fine with having just stayed a year or two. Who knows?

Bonus: read Oracle Bones if you haven't already. It's vaguely related to anthropology and it's as close as you can get to living in China without being there. If you get a few pages in and nothing makes sense, try River Town by the same author first and then come back to Oracle Bones.

Alternative: If you're American, you know that you can just buy a plot of land up in Nebraska or North Dakota for like $1,000 an acre, right? Set up one of those energy-efficient siding houses or something and you can hermit it up all you want.

Addendum: China is often said to have a pretty materialistic culture. Your telling people that you want to live simply in a rural area won't necessarily impress the locals. Expect a lot of bemused looks, some straight-up bewilderment and dismay at your choices ("You had it all! You're throwing your life away!") and even some derision behind your back.

To be honest, instructor's guides for TEFL books aren't generally that useful (aside from a few gems like Cutting Edge). They usually just lay out which exercises to do in what order and toss in a few boring teacher-centered activities in the middle. Just looked at some of the reviews on Amazon and it looks like this was written for university-level native speakers. If the school isn't going to spring for the teacher's guide, it's not unreasonable for you to pick and choose what materials you use and design the course yourself.

Have you gotten a copy of the book yet, and is there something specific you're struggling with on how to adapt? I doubt that anyone has an entire course planned (materials included) for this book, and even if they did there's a good chance they taught it in a different context than what you're in. You might spend as much time adapting the materials to fit your needs as you would have making them yourself.

If you haven't taught writing before, it's a pretty straightforward process. Start with a model text for the genre you'd like the students to produce. Next pick out key discourse features, grammar points and vocabulary sets, and get them to notice how each is used in the model text. Next, start scaffolding the pre-writing process and get them started on their assignments. Follow that up with feedback, and use their strengths and weaknesses to plan your next cycle of lessons.

I've used the Longman Academic Writing Series before (Upper intermediate book in link) and it follows the outline above pretty well. Beginner/elementary students start with short paragraphs and it gradually builds to full essays in the last book.

Beyond the Sentence by Scott Thornbury is a great book for getting your head around discourse analysis, which is a key concept for teaching writing effectively. It's also one of the more readable TEFL theory & methodology books.

Sorry, that was all a bit off from your initial question, but I hope it was somewhat helpful.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0472032208/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

Keith Folse's Keys to Teaching Grammar to English Language Learners: A Practical Handbook is excellent and will hit almost everything you need to teach about grammar. It's detailed, provides activities, and is really, really good at tenses. The charts in here are amazing and will make sense to both you and your students. Also, there are "Hot Seat" questions in the back that are great for preparing for questions that often stump many ESL teachers.

Azar's Understanding and Using English Grammar

I've used it with many intermediate and advanced learners from many language backgrounds. It gives very good examples, has great exercises, and explains the usage of the tricky grammar well, but it doesn't always supply the rules behind the usage, so the teacher needs to figure out how to best do that.

I've heard this before that there are no accrediting bodies for online TEFL certificates. I began one through ITTT and was disappointed by my experience, but I had a lot more knowledge going into it and ultimately went for a master's degree, so I wouldn't count my experience as typical. However, your abilities aren't going to improve from just doing a TEFL certificate. You gotta get into a classroom and pay your dues like all teachers. The things that become instinctual do so over time. There's no shortcut for it, but you can supplement your training with the wealth of materials out there for teachers. Two pretty decent texts on how people learn language (theory) and how you can apply that theory (instruction) are Theories on Second Language Acquisition and Communicative Language Teaching in Action. VanPatten also came out with an updated book called While We're on the Topic. I would also suggest the Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. If you read through all these, you'll be more prepared for instructing in a classroom than any TEFL certificate will prepare you for. Indeed, you'll also figure out that a lot of certification content excludes relevant research from the field.

I'd recommend getting [Tips for Teaching with CALL.] (http://www.amazon.com/Tips-Teaching-CALL-Carol-Chapelle/dp/0132404281/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417799581&sr=8-1&keywords=Tips+for+teaching+with+call) It's full of programs and Apps and it looks like it's going for $5.

Not covered so far:

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Using-English-Grammar-Azar/dp/0139436146

That's the cheap option. There are more expensive later editions with better color pictures inside, but the grammar is what's important, not pictures.

Calls you out on your CMC language usage? You might want to buy a copy of this for her to red sometime then: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Txtng-Gr8-Db8-David-Crystal/dp/0199571333

If you want to do it yourself:

https://www.amazon.com/Syllabus-Language-Teaching-Teacher-Education/dp/0194371395

Oxford Picture Dictionary. I can work from this book forever.

Ah found a book of his! http://www.amazon.com/Music-Oxford-English-Resource-Teachers/dp/0194370550

Amazon's got it: https://www.amazon.com/Reluctant-Communist-Court-Martial-Forty-Year-Imprisonment/dp/0520259998

http://www.amazon.com/English-Composition-Grammar-Complete-Course/dp/0153117362

The one I use is out of print.

How to Teach Grammar

Teaching English Grammar: What to Teach and How to Teach it

Explaining English Grammar: A guide to explaining grammar for teachers of English as a second or foreign language. (Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers)

Teaching Tenses: Ideas for Presenting and Practising Tenses in English

Grammar for English Language Teachers

Concept Questions and Time Lines

Grammar Practice Activities Paperback with CD-ROM: A Practical Guide for Teachers (Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers)

Grammar Games: Cognitive, Affective And Drama Activities For Efl Students

Teaching and Learning Grammar

Oxford Basics: Teaching Grammar

Oxford Practice Grammar

Oxford Learner's Grammar:: Grammar Builder

Natural Grammar

Just Grammar (2 levels)

Grammar and Vocabulary for Advanced Book with Answers and Audio: Self-Study Grammar Reference and Practice

Grammar and Vocabulary for First and First for Schools Book with Answers and Audio

Cambridge Grammar for IELTS

Cambridge Grammar for PET

Longman English Grammar Practice

Collins COBUILD English Grammar

A Practical English Grammar

Practical English Usage

Grammar Practice for Elementary/Pre-intermediate/Intermediate Students

Expressways. Unfortunately, it's quite outdated. For example, there's one lesson on how to leave a voice message and what to say if you phone the wrong number. However, it introduces grammar in a functional way, if not a modern one.