25 June 2014 / by Radmila Gurkova

Eleven great years teaching English. And counting...



OxbridgeTEFL | www.oxbridgetefl.com

It's been eleven years since we first started teaching English in Spain and abroad. On Saint John's night, a big festivity in Barcelona, we were only a few hours of launching Oxbridge.

Sant Joan's night, as the locals call it is one of the most cheerful celebrations with fireworks and bonfires and one of the most beautiful nights of the year in Barcelona. It is also the OxbridgeTEFL's birthday's eve. Recalling Sant Joan's night eleven years ago, I remember ourselves exhausted, nervous, expectant… But also extremely excited, shining with the idea of a new start, touched by the spirit of the festivity. Old demons gone, a new era begins. Ours.

Inspired by Cat Stevens' You can do (Whatever), chosen as soundtrack for Job, the movie about Steve Jobs, we can proudly say that we have done what we dreamt of doing. We made our dream come true with love, dedication and bold decisions.

Today, eleven years later, we still feel the same passion about teaching English in Spain and now also beyond Spanish borders, as the very first day. Or even more, adding the reward of having brought English to so many people in Spain and abroad.

A big thank you to all our teachers that made it possible and to answer, day after day, the question about the best way to teaching English. Many thanks to our administrative staff, who takes good care of all of us and our clients. Many thanks to all those who trusted us and chose us to train them in English or as English teachers!

We hope to keep improving and growing with the same philosophy and good care for our product. The question we first asked: "What is the best way to teach English" still remains the engine of our research and preparation. We hope you enjoy the journey as much as we have!

We can do whatever we want to do! Happy birthday, Oxbridge!

10

April 2015
Be brainy: Multiple intelligences theory
by Vincent Chieppa
...

07

April 2015
It's never too late to learn how to teach
by Elena Riches
As we grow older it’s all very easy to sit and wonder why we didn't do certain things before it became ‘too late’.  And whenever I hear people say, ‘I wish I’d done this’ my response is always, “What’s stopping you from doing it now?”, a question that usually stops a person in their tracks and makes them think. ...

03

April 2015
How to... set up audio-visual discussion topics
by Vincent Chieppa
...

30

March 2015
What is intonation and why teach it?
by Elena Riches
What is intonation? The term 'intonation' refers to the linguistic use of pitch to convey meaning of a sentence and/or word and during your life as a TEFL teacher you will come across students who will have difficulty using intonation and stress in the correct manner - this means they may not...

27

March 2015
Task-based language teaching: 6 tools for task force teachers
by Vincent Chieppa
...

24

March 2015
'Schwa' - unstressed syllables
by Elena Riches
Before I was taught how to teach English, by Oxbridge TEFL, I had no idea that the word "schwa" existed. Today, I'm writing about the 'schwa', which isn't (incidentally) about the pronunciation of words such as 'Schwartz' and 'Schwarzkopf'...it's about ...

20

March 2015
New teaching techniques: Sparking inspiration
by Vincent Chieppa
The era of “chalk and talk” is over.  We as teachers know that we need to incorporate new teaching techniques seeing that nowadays simply presenting information to our students is just not enough.  Students have to engross themselves in what they are being taught, they need to discover the worth of what we teach them and it is our job to igni...

17

March 2015
ESL - Common Mistakes Students Make
by Elena Riches
In my last blog post I listed a few 'false friends' - English words that students confuse with words from their own language - in this one, I'm going to talk about common mistakes. Every single day, at least one student ...

12

March 2015
Games people play: No-prep ESL games for all ages
by Vincent Chieppa
...

10

March 2015
False Friend
by Elena Riches
For anyone who's never taught English or taken an advanced English course, you could be forgiven for assuming that a 'false friend' is someone who pretends to like you when they don't. However, a false friend is in fact a word or phrase in two languages or dialects (or letters in two alphabets) that look...