Quick answer: Successful TEFL lessons come down to five habits: engage students in English from the first minute, set one clear and measurable objective, plan around a presentation–study–practice structure, build in plenty of pair and group work so students (not you) do the talking, and review honestly after every lesson. Personality helps, but preparation is what sustains success.
It’s a great feeling when you know you have just aced a lesson – when you have just heard the ‘ker-ching’ that means that the penny has dropped and your students have finally got it! After all, you’ve been trying to teach them that word or grammatical structure for ages now!
But how do you really know what makes a good TEFL lesson? Are rows of smiley happy students definitive of a great lesson? Or can we measure TEFL classroom success in a different way?
While your personality may help your popularity with a class, this alone won’t sustain you for long. The bottom line is that preparation is key if you want to have continued success with your TEFL students.
So let’s look at our top 5 sure-fire ways to create successful lessons.
1. Get your students engaged and involved straight away
A TEFL lesson is like a blog – if it doesn’t get you involved straight away you switch off. So get all your students involved and communicating from the start and set a strong context for the rest of your lesson. This gets them over any inhibitions about speaking English in class and makes communication later in the lesson much easier.
For example, if you’re planning to practice question forms in English, then find out what they can do by having them guess the famous person in your picture by asking ‘yes/no’ questions. See this in action here.
If you need a bank of openers that work with almost any class, keep these 5 TEFL warmers to hand – a good warmer buys you an engaged class for the rest of the hour.
2. Have a clear objective for your lesson
‘Improve students speaking skills’ is too vague and it is also impossible to measure. However, ‘Learn 4 new ways to ask for something in a restaurant and practice using them verbally in a natural context’ doesn’t sound as pretty, but is quantifiable and will focus your activities around this task.
Often it is better to practice one thing in several different ways than keep introducing new elements through the course of a lesson. So keep your objective measurable and realistic to your students’ abilities.
3. Plan your lessons!
You may be able to wing it on the odd occasion but planning is essential if you are to be successful. There is no substitute for a well-prepared lesson plan built around your key objective. Get into the planning habit early and the process will get quicker with time.
Attached is a lesson plan template we encourage all our students to use in our TESOL training courses. Have a look. As you will see, the plan is split into 3 stages. There is presentation stage where you engage students into the theme and present the target language, the study phase which may include reading, writing, listening or speaking tasks with related activities and then a final practice session. This will generally be less controlled and allow the students to practice the target language in a more natural context. A solid objective (see 2) will really help you to plan suitable tasks within each of the 3 sections.
| Stage | What happens | Teacher's role |
|---|---|---|
| Presentation | Engage students in the theme and present the target language | Set context, elicit, model the language |
| Study | Reading, writing, listening or speaking tasks with related activities | Guide tasks, check understanding, correct |
| Practice | Freer use of the target language in a more natural context | Step back, monitor, note errors for feedback |
4. Prepare plenty of pair and group work activities
This ensures students get plenty of communication practice and it probably means you as the teacher are not talking too much. As a new teacher, a common mistake is to ‘tell’ everything and to dominate with too much Teacher Talking Time (TTT). Cut it down! You rarely need to say as much as you think.
Remember that good course books have pre-prepared material graded for level and there are a wealth of free TEFL resources and ideas on the internet. You can select and adapt these according to your class. The free activity books at American English are a good starting point, our tips for TEFL discussion classes show how to structure communicative speaking practice, and if you want lessons you can simply print and teach, our ready-to-print instant TEFL lessons are built around pair and group tasks.
5. Review your lessons
Back to the beginning now – do you remember we asked how we can we measure TEFL classroom success? At the end of each the lesson plan in our courses you will see some great questions for review after the lesson:
a. Have you got the focus of the lesson right? For example, if it’s a reading/writing/grammar based lesson, have you made this skill or element the central part of the lesson? Is this reflected in the timings? Have you mentioned the relevant skill in your aim?
b. Are there any points where the students might lose interest or where they have worked quicker than you expected? If so, where and do you have a back-up or extra activity? What would you have them do?
c. How could the lesson have been improved? Hard to know before you teach it, but is there somewhere you can see room for potential improvement?
Answer these questions as soon as possible after giving the lesson and be honest with yourself. If this is tricky, ask yourself, ‘If I had to give this lesson again tomorrow, what would I change?’
The bottom line is ‘Did I meet my objective? If not, why?'
What do these five tips look like in practice?
Put together, a successful lesson follows a rhythm you can feel: a warmer that gets everyone speaking inside five minutes, a clearly stated aim the students understand, a staged plan that moves from teacher input to student output, most of the hour filled with students talking to each other, and five honest minutes of your own reflection afterwards. Teachers who build this rhythm early find that classes almost run themselves – and that confidence shows. If your grammar knowledge is the wobbliest part of your planning, a short course like our 20-hour Essential English Grammar removes that worry before it reaches the classroom.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a TEFL lesson successful?
A successful TEFL lesson has one clear, measurable objective, engages students in English from the first minutes, follows a staged plan (presentation, study, practice) and gives students most of the talking time through pair and group work. Success is measured against the objective – did students leave able to do something they couldn't do before?
How can I adapt these tips for beginners?
Keep the same five habits but shrink the language load: one very small objective (four or five phrases), a picture-based warmer that needs minimal English, heavily modelled examples before any pair work, and shorter task cycles. Beginners also benefit from routine, so reuse the same lesson shape week after week.
Do these tips work in online lessons?
Yes – all five transfer directly. Warmers work in the chat box or with a shared image, objectives and staging matter even more when time is short, and breakout rooms replace pair work in group classes. In 1-to-1 video lessons, cutting teacher talking time is the single most important habit.
How much time should I spend planning each lesson?
New teachers should expect up to an hour per lesson at first. That falls quickly as you build a store of plans, warmers and reusable activities. The habit matters more than the hours: even ten minutes spent fixing your objective and staging will noticeably lift a lesson.
Over to you
While we believe the key to TEFL success is mostly about preparation and planning, there is still so much to say about what makes a successful TEFL lesson and we’re sure you have your own ideas. So, over to you; what are your do’s and don’ts for the TEFL classroom? What should you avoid?
We’d like to invite you to share your advice for lesson success.
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