Job Discussion Forums

[sickbag]

Hi

Just wondered if anyone on here has had any experience of this course at Manuel Antonio. Any good/bad experiences. Or any info at all would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[SgtPhilco]

Hi there, sorry I can't give you any advice but I too am thinking of attending Manuel Antonio so would love to here if you have decided to go or not. Just doing some research at the moment so if I find anything out I will be sure to let you know.

Phil...

[Squire22]

Hi there, although I did not do my course in Manuel Antonio and therefore cannot give you any helpful info specifically about it, I did do my TESOL course with TEFL International in Plynouth in England, and would highly recommend it. The teaching was excellent and they did/provided everything they said they would, extremely helpful and a LOT of fun

From what I can gather the courses are pretty much the same in content at all of their centres, the only real variations are the teachers, students, and I would imagine possibly the access to some materials - not to assume that costa rica is backwards or anything like that as it's not, but i couldn't say if you can buy bluetack, sticky back plastic etc out there if you potentially needed it for a class *L*

If you'd like some detailed info about what was involved in the course, type of assessment etc. I'm more than happy to answer any questions via e-mail, just send me a message.

[SgtPhilco]

Thanks for your prompt reply, tempting to go to Plymouth as I was based there in the 90's whilst serving in the Navy. However really feel like I need a break from UK life. Still I would love to here a bit about how u found it was it worth while are you teaching now etc and maybe what lured you into tefl. Also did you det to teach foreign students while in Plymouth? I know they do speak an unsual dialect down there...lol

Well look forward to your reply

Phil.H

P.S email and MSN messenger is [email protected]

[Squire22]

I found the course to be immensely illuminating I suppose the word is! It was a lot of work, but only really time wise and thinking wise, having never been a teacher exactly it took a while (is still taking a while) to think in the right manner. I did indeed get to teach foreign students in plymouth, it was a mixture of polish, italian, spanish, greek, even iranian, and a few others, i was quite suprised - only because it's plymouth, not that there are that many nationalities - so I found it really useful. IT was immense fun as well, i'd forgotten how much fun learning is, and should be, and is very much apparent when you're trying to teach, if it's something that will make the students laugh, smile, do something stupid/silly, then they learn and have fun, and you end up enjoying your job, i felt like a big kid by the end of some of my lessons - not sure that's a good thing though *shrugs*

Lured into TEFL to help me travel and live in other countries for what will hopefully be prolonged periods of time, I've got a degree in international relations (from uni of plymouth) so it also seemed a fairly logical step to take.

After the course I taught in a residential summer school for a few weeks and had immense fun doing that too! That was really good experience teaching everyday and having almost all my afternoons free to plan the following day and weeks lessons - it was a really great intro into it because it gave me plenty of time to find my feet and not feel rushed and panicked by having a million lessons every single day, 3 was a good number, all an hour long. I could not have found the TESOL course any better preparation for the teaching, it really gave me a feel for what was expected from a lesson, what you should try to achieve in it, a good grasp of the sheer practicalities of teaching a group of foreign kids/adults. It was an extremely practical course that focused on the possible and expanded on it by exploring why certain things worked and others didn't, and when you haven't got a clue and simple logistics of running a lesson it's a great relief. And the feedback is immensely helpful too.

Having finished uni I had a huge overdraft to pay off, so after the summer school I had to move home, where I am now, in order to do two things really. Firstly to pay off the overdraft and save some cash, didn't want to go away owing the bank money Secondly because i really want to work in Japan and a) it takes time to sort out work visas etc. and b) the japanese academic year starts in April and i wanted to do an ALT job for a while.

However it appears that I may be getting screwed over an ALT job (long story) and so it looks like i'm heading to a spanish speaking country, i finish work in a little over two weeks, and then i'm going to pick a country, either Spain, Mexico, or Costa Rica! Because I can now afford to head over to any of them and take my time finding work without worrying about cash problems.

So tragically stuck in the UK at the minute, but heading off for good about the end of Feb/beginning of March. Not long to wait now.

Er, quite a long reply, hope that gave you an answer or two, if not, my apologies. Any help at all?