ESL Expat Review: Free Games, Idioms & TESOL Tips for Teachers Abroad

ESL Expat (eslexpat.com) is a blog and resource hub aimed at ESL/EFL teachers who already teach abroad or are planning to. The site is run by experienced teachers and bundles five things in one place:

• Free ESL activities — organized by skill (Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Grammar, Vocabulary, Board Games, Idioms)
• Printable idiom worksheets — searchable list with free PDFs
• TESOL jobs board — listings for in-person roles in 10+ regions plus online teaching
• Teacher stories & blog — expat experiences, lesson ideas, travel tips
• ESL Expat store — printed books, vocabulary flashcards, and card games

It is less of a single-purpose tool and more of a starting hub: when you need an activity in a hurry, when you need to find a job, or when you want to read what life as a teacher abroad looks like.

ESL Expat works best for these specific things:

• Quick warm-ups or fillers: the activities are tagged by skill and most are low-prep — useful when you have 5 minutes left at the end of class.
• Idiom practice: search the idioms section by topic or keyword, then print the PDF worksheet for class or homework.
• Job hunting abroad: browse the TESOL jobs board for openings in Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, North/South America, and online.
• Onboarding new teachers abroad: the blog's teacher stories cover cultural adjustment, classroom survival, and country-specific CV tips — useful for first-year teachers.
• Deciding where to teach next: the surveys section lets you compare teacher experiences across countries.

Yes — as a hub, not as a finished curriculum. ESL Expat is the kind of resource you bookmark and pop open when you need an activity, an idiom list, or a job listing. It is not a complete lesson plan library and it does not try to be.

The unique selling point is the combination of free activities + printable idioms + jobs in one site. Most ESL sites do one or two of these; ESL Expat does all three. If you teach abroad, or want to, this is a useful weekly check-in site.

Honest recommendation: use ESL Expat as a discovery hub. For structured, ready-to-teach lesson plans with predictable quality, pair it with a paid resource like ESL Brains or Crystal Clear ESL. For free printable worksheets, Teach-This or BusyTeacher complement it well.