Job Discussion Forums

[richs23]

Hi i just joined this cafe! Ok: Im from England and recently got a CELTA in may. I am working on a summer school in England. I have taught english before for 6 months. I am trying to find out what qualification, if any, is best to get for career prospects. I am thinking of opening my own school, becoming a Director of Studies in the future. So far some people have said DELTA and the last person i spoke to said an MA in linguistics was better. She said that a DELTA was too focused on your personal project and that the MA had a much broader scope. I am getting confused as before it seemed a DELTA was the thing to have if you wanted to open a school or something. Please help! Thanks Richard

[isanity]

You're perhaps getting a little ahead of yourself. You'll normally only be considered for the delta with two years of experience post-CELTA; MA programs may not have such formal requirements, but you'll get much more out of an MA once you've got a bit more experience to reflect on.

As for the differences between them, for a start the DELTA is a couple of months' work, while an MA takes a year (full-time). The DELTA is a practical teaching qualification, while MAs are usually more theoretical. They're not really comparable at all. An MA would seem to me to be more useful in running a school- you'll consider issues like planning curricula and assessments more than in-class teaching- but I think the main requirement for starting a school is having a bag of gold spare.

[Pollux]

If you want to teach, you are qualified.

If you want to be a DOS, get a DELTA.

If you want to teach at a university, get a MA.

If you want to own a school, you just need to be a good bullsh*ter and have some business sense. Oh yeah, you will need some money to get started.

I'd suggest that you teach for a few years first before you make any decisions.

Then again, what do I know.

[ktodba]

Where do you want to open the school? Different countries have diffrent requirements for granting schools recognition - check out
http://www.englishuk.com/
for more information on schools in the uk and the qualifications of their staff. Ultimately it depends on what you can offer and wheteher or not you can find studnets who will pay for it - official qualifications do not always help but there is no substituite for knowledge and talent with or without a piece of paper.

Best advice I can give - decide where you want to be, see what competition you've got, see what visa / work requirements there are and then use this to decide what pieces of paper you need. Don't confuse having certificates / qualifications with having knowledge or skills - decide what work you need to do on these seperately.

[tedkarma]

I agree with Pollux - DELTA for DOS, MA/M.Ed. for university jobs.

Except for Asia - where DELTA is not well known with the exception maybe of Thailand. Then go MA/M.Ed.

[richs23]

Thanks for your advice. I am just looking ahead- not getting ahead of myself;) Would be interesting to talk to any of you more experienced TEFL teachers and pick your brains more!

[brownieleslie]

Hi, first-time posting here...
I have a generic 4-week certificate and am wondering if this would be an acceptable substitute for the CELTA for the DELTA requirements, with two years or more of teaching experience? Thank you.
Leslie

[Chris Westergaard]

Leslie,


Yes, as long as your TEFL was a certain length, Cambridge will have no problem with it at all.

[Jizzo T. Clown]

It seems to me that an MA in lingusitics is really best if you want to follow through and get your Doctorate. An MA TESOL would probably be more practical if you want to teach ESL/EFL.

But then, most unis will accept either one, so I guess it's just personal preference--studying linguistics, you'll get a lot of theory, terminology, history, etc, which is nice if that's your thing (and dreadful if it's not).

[Atassi]

[wildchild]

Well, since we are on the topic... and the conversation seems to have gone this way...I'll just be quiet now.

Non, I can't resist, but it's no fault of mine. Seriously, who could let such statements pass without objection?

Atassi said:

[Atassi]

LOL funny....were my words chosen wrong?

I was talking about the present use of the term "linguistics". This does not refer to the fields of Applied linguistics, Sociolinguistics, nor Education. Chomsky never concerned himself with Applied Linguistics. In fact, he was very clear that he didn't want his research affecting or justifying any teaching methodology. It is my impression that most linguistics researchers never concern their work with SLA. They research various things that have little to do with language education. There are other fields to study if you want to stay within TESOL.

There are various different branches and sub-branches within our field, and it's wise to research them before pursuing something as important as a PhD.

Wildchild, if you wish to challenge what I have said, feel free to do so. Just be a bit more serious

[Henry_Cowell]

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

I think this is getting a little off-track. I think the OP probably meant an MA in Applied Linguistics, but just wrote lingusitcs.

To get a master's degree in linguistics, one normally needs a bachelor's degree in linguistics first, non? A masters degree in Applied Lingustics often doesn't have this requirement (although where I'm from you need a one-year university certificate in teaching ESL first- sort of like a PGCE in TESL as opposed to a one month or 40hour certificate from a private training company).

OP- think of it this way: you've just started. You have a minimum of two years of teaching time to get under your belt before you can do a DELTA, and you really should have at least that much before you do an MA in Applied Linguistics (you will get more from it, sure. But you will also have a better idea if this is what you want out of your career- MAs are expensive!)

So start keeping a diary or notebook full of positives and negatives for each and if you find it- teaching EFL/ESL- hard going sometimes (we all do) then think of branching out areas. If you want to run your own business (like running a school) then think of other businesses you may be interested in running (small, private language schools tend to come and go IME. People who run franchises of Blockbuster or McDonalds make more money). Keep in mind that for running a business, you may want to think about an MBA for graduate work. DOS's often don't actually own the school. If you are more interested in teaching then think about what it is in teaching that really, really appeals to you - written discourse, the students, the age group of the students, the lifestyle of being oveseas- if you are, etc. and think of ways to branch out from that (usually that will mean either an MA in Applied Linguistics or a PGCE).

I have one of these notebooks. It's now pretty much full of different branching out areas, lists of every course I've ever taken at uni and college, a couple of sample cover pages and resumes, information about graduate programmes, information about other careers that may be good for me, if I decide to live in Canada again and don't get into an MA and can't live off what I earn teaching ESL in Canada (What colour is your parachute helped me, so did doing a tonne of Myers-Brigg type personality tests to come up with not only what may be a good career for me, but by taking the opposite set of letters, what may be a very bad career area for me) etc.

[Atassi]

Thanks GambateBingBangBOOM for the good post.


Henry Cowell wrote: