Job Discussion Forums

[ls650]

[jonniboy]

[Glenski]

You get out of a course either what you put into it, or what you pay for it.

Online courses don't give you the opportunity to have practice lessons, so what good are they?

A weekend course is not going to offer as much as a course 4 weeks long, or one that is several months long (mine).

Sit down and read an EFL book, and you might learn something, but how many people are actually capable of self-teaching themselves like that? How many EFL books cater to that? Get a good course with practical experience in it and a good teacher(s), and you'll be better off.

To say that one should get a job with a conversation school for a few months in order to gain experience teaching is farcical, too. It won't prepare you for teaching in other environments, and if the school has its own teaching format, it surely won't give you what's needed to teach a different format in another conversation school.

Will a TEFL certification program make you a teacher? No, and neither will a PhD in linguistics, but it's better than trying to self-teach yourself unless you are a savant.

[ls650]

[tedkarma]

I'll go along with most of Guy's comments.

As a former TEFL-trainer over about ten plus years, I'd say that such courses do offer some real benefits.

The greatest problems my trainees faced, which the course helped solve were:

Lack of confidence when faced with a group of people

Lack of knowledge of grammar and how to teach it

Lack of any idea about how learning works - and thus lack of knowledge about how to build a lesson that students can learn, retain, and use.

I did teacher training in Korea - with Koreans, Saudi Arabia with Saudis, and in Thailand with (mostly) Westerners.

For the Westerners, there was a real benefit in terms of gaining the combined knowledge of their teacher-trainers about schools and the teaching situation in that country. There was often several experienced teachers in the classroom who also could add to the knowledge that was shared.

Also, most newbie teachers don't have any idea about how to parlay their previous job and life experience into better paying jobs and where those jobs might be - and how to market themselves for those jobs. The teacher trainer can usually help with that.

I'm all for learning by doing - but when the local people pay, what for them is, a lot money to sit in your class - I do feel you have an obligation to provide some quality instruction. And, generally, I don't think that "seat of the pants" instruction does that.

TEFL has had enough of the people who just sing and dance and show photos of back home and think they are teaching. The more the occupation professionalizes and offers quality services - the more quickly we will see decent wages and benefits.

[rusmeister]

I taught for years with only the BA/MA before getting the state school certificate. I can say that that certificate was absolutely useless and that the people and the methods used to purportedly teach ESL taught nothing, and I could see that from my prior experience, so in that sense, I can sympathize with EverReady.

However, the truth probably lies more in the professionalism of the courses, which while in the US is abysmal, is probably hit-or-miss to varying degrees elsewhere, and I'll bet a lot depends on who's teaching the teachers.

I don't think we should make a blanket assumption that all courses are useful across the board (world), although it's equally obvious that some people are bound to learn something at some of them.

[jonniboy]

[Justin Trullinger]

[naturegirl321]