The Ultimate ESL Teaching Manual

Just some of our five-star reviews 

‘What a great book! Andromeda’s knowledge and experience shines through. She gets straight to the point, gives very clear grammar explanations and loads of practical help’ Sheila Longden. 

This book is a great resource for teachers. The book includes ready to use lessons and can be opened to an action item right away, with little or no planning. Cindi Leiter 

Excellent book for Spoken English Schools. This is the only textbook our trainers use to teach Spoken English after purchasing and reviewing many others. Stephen Getchell 

A great resource for TESOL teachers!  Andromeda is a dedicated teacher and anyone teaching English to speakers of another’s language should check out her book. Jack Belg 

How I learnt to teach effective, fun lessons with very little prep

It was in 2012, when I started teaching, that I noticed a problem. My students weren’t learning. We would do the standard book lesson in class –study the grammar point and read a bit, along with some speaking practice.

In class, they would answer my questions correctly – but when they did their gap-fill exercises for homework, many would make simple mistakes, such as not changing the verb to third person. Not once, or twice – but again and again.

Making mistakes is normal, you may say, but making the same ones for years (these students, had been studying for more than 5 years) is not.

Something was wrong. Though they understood the grammar, it was not entering their system. Something was impeding their progress.

At the end of the course I left and joined another academy. My new school was totally different. There were no overhead projectors or TV screens – and most notably of all, no textbooks.

Here, teachers used a method whereby all grammar and vocabulary was taught through oral drills followed by freer speaking activities allowing students to explore each topic themselves.

Students learnt fast. They learnt fast because this method mimicked the way they had learnt their original language, but in a condensed form. And because everything was taught through speaking, they learnt to put more and more complicated sentences together almost without thinking.

For the teacher, discarding the textbooks can be scary at first. But it is also creatively and intellectually simulating. You become a master at analyzing speech, understanding what your students need and creating exercises for them.

Students recognize your skill, and that you can’t be replaced by another teacher who will pick up where you left off in a book. You are also probably one of the best teachers they have encountered in their long learning careers and they will show their appreciation.

This may sound like a lot of work – but it isn’t. This is why I wrote The Manual, to get you started.

It includes lesson plans, drills and speaking activities for every grammar point – yes, every grammar point; even the obscure ones that go way beyond what you would find at an average academy (it’s a big book). It also contains methodology, games, vocabulary sets and a whole host of other stuff to make your classes special.

And by the way, you don’t need a TEFL qualification to teach this method. You just need to be a native or almost native speaker of English with a good understanding of grammar.