Yesterday, Michael Griffin shared on LinkedIn some of his favourite posts from his blog / website, ELT Rants, Reviews, and Reflections, and one particular post caught my attention which was about his attendance policy as explained to his students. Despite this post being written and published in 2014, it still struck a chord with me now in 2026 as I am now teaching at an International Business School here in South Korea and one of the struggles that I encounter each semester is attendance.

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Yesterday, I was in my office getting things organised for my lesson when some students came to get their case study printed out as their printer was unavailable. Once I printed out their case study, I asked the four Korean students if they had pens to make notes on the printed worksheet and one student said that they did not.

It is the start of the autumn semester - also known as the fall semester for those people from across the pond - here in South Korea. And this always leads me to think of different ways to get to know students in those crucial first lessons. In this post, I am sharing five of my favourite first lesson activities to help develop that rapport and for learners to get to know you too.

Five years ago, during the height of the pandemic, I decided to activate my Preply profile and start dabbling in the world of freelance online teaching, while also working full-time, with the aid of the Preply platform. Five years later, I am still continuing to teach to students from around the world and I recently achieved having taught over 2,000 students on the Preply platform.

Last Monday, I returned back to the classroom for an intensive English course that I was to teach for four days with Japanese high school students from Okinawa. Their aim was to improve their English academic skills but what did they want to do? Well, it was pretty clear immediately - they only wanted to have fun. This is essentially a personal reflection of what went well and what I would do differently next time with a closed group of Japanese high school students.

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Back in 2011, I was in the process of completing my dissertation: 'An investigation into teacher and student attitudes of the key tenets of Dogme ELT'. The was first introduced to to the publication 'Teaching Unplugged', authored by Luke Meddings and Scott Thornbury, in 2010 when I wrote a review of this new book. Returning back to my original dissertation and action research, around 15 years later, I thought it would be best to share personal experiences and reflections post-dissertation (albeit 15 years too late). Nonetheless, if you are interested in reading my dissertation, you are more than welcome to download.

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I was incredibly fortunate to be invited to Seoul last weekend to act as publicity for Korea TESOL their International Conference in Seoul. If you are unaware, KOTESOL organises an International Conference every year around Spring, usually April or May, and they have many speakers and guests from around world. However, it was the first time that I had been to an international conference for many years, and also it being my first in South Korea. In this post, I will be sharing some key takeaways from the weekend and reflecting upon the KOTESOL International Conference, while also acting as their official photographer from the event.

Preply is possibly one of the most popular online tutoring sites available for many around the world. I had previously shared some of the thoughts about teaching or relying too heavily on the platform. Nonetheless, there are thousands of language tutors using the site each and every day, but there are also some important updates that Preply have shared recently. These particular updates are important as they directly impact anyone using Preply to either teach or learn a language. My response to the new updates with Preply For those that use Preply to tutor online, whether full-time or part-time, language teachers can be discovered by potential students based upon a variety of filters: language(s) taught, location of the tutor, cost, as well as a range of factors.

With previous semesters, I had some challenges with students clearly submitting AI-generated work. At first, I wanted to put a stop to this by incorporating weekly in-class handwritten assignments, but I soon discovered that it would take a large amount of time to provide suitable feedback on time. This semester, I decided to embrace AI and to develop my Writing and Presentation Skills…

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Last Friday, I was fortunate to have the chance to visit Seoul. It’s always nice to get away from the habits of one’s place, to explore elsewhere. Yet, it was more than just a weekend to visit Seoul, I attended the KOTESOL Connections last Saturday as well as to discuss the upcoming KOTESOL International Conference for 2026. It was also the perfect opportunity to use my new camera, in the field, and to capture some pictures while attending.

One of my previous posts I shared was more a current review about Preply as a platform and the growing concerns that I had regarding the reduced number of bookings that I had over the past number of months. However, since that honest and candid review, I received quite a lot of feedback from other tutors on the platform sharing their experiences which were rather similar in this regard.

One of the biggest struggles facing online tutors and teachers is knowing how much you should charge potential online students. Tutors will first need to establish what services they are offering online students before deciding how much their hourly rate is to be. In this blog post, I will share some key points that you need to consider when charging students and how best to get paid for the online lessons that you are offering potential online learners.

For the past 5 years, I have been teaching on Preply and they market themselves as the leading market place which connect online language learners with potential online language tutors. However, I would like to share my experiences and offer an honest review of Preply for current and prospective tutors. In this post, I will draw upon personal experiences and provide some more information about why I consider Preply is now placing profit above their tutors and students as well as the worrying trend that there are not as many paying students that has been claimed.

I have just finished a two-week intensive English course with Korean high school students that were to help them prepare for their academic studies at university. It was so nice to teach pre-intermediate to intermediate English learners as most of my students are high level. However, what I have noticed with young adult learners is the over reliance of technology and to have everything automatically translated or generated by Artificial Intelligence.

I first purchased the Sony ZV-1, along with the Sony Handgrip, in July 2020 during the height of the pandemic with the aim of creating more dedicated video content for English teachers. This camera has helped me create around 120 videos on YouTube and I have also taken quite a lot of photos, yet I reach a stumbling block with the…

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In my previous post, I looked at what I had achieved over 2025. It was a rather long read, but in this post I am sharing five personal aims for the New Year. Obviously, most people tend to share the usual resolutions: stop smoking, improve their health, change their career. However, I am keeping my resolutions more grounded, but let's start now.

As it edges towards the end of another year here in South Korea, it is always a good opportunity to review 2025. As with everybody I suppose, much has happened this year personally and I have really n...

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