Job Discussion Forums

[dlarcheuk]

My wife and I are both certified English teachers, with lots of graduate hours, a couple of advanced degrees, and both of us have taught ESL classes at the American university level. But because we want to teach internationally, we're trying to find a short ESL Certificate course in August that is reputable. We've found a few that are four weekends of eight-hours a day on Saturday and Sunday; some that are two residential weeks; and some that claim to do it in a two- day 17-hour blast (i-to-i); Are any on these legit? Any to be particularly wary of? Any that you really recommend (we're in the Midwest). Thanks so much.

[spiral78]

A lot depends on where you want to go. Basic newbie qualifications in most parts of the world are on-site courses of 100+ hours including supervised teaching practice with feedback from experienced teacher trainers. I realize that you have related degrees and some experience already, and depending on where you want to go, that might offset a 'sub-standard' certification, though I think the real thing is always better.

Have you been supervised as ESL teachers? It's a valuable experience!

Ideally, newbies take an on-site cert course in the country where they want to start teaching. Benefits include the fact that your practice teaching students will be representative of those you'll be working with. Teaching immigrants or international students can be a very different experience than teaching EFL.
Further, in an on-site course, you get a chance to experience a country a bit while you still have a support system, and you can make contacts that will be useful when it's time to sort out contracts and housing. Finally, you can be sure your cert will be recognized locally/regionally.

[mdk]

[miski]

To be quite honest, if you have a degree , in the Middle East anyway, you don't need EFL.

[naturegirl321]

If you're both certified teachers, I don't see why you would have to take an intensive course seeing as though you studied three or four years in uni.
If you really want to do a course, make sure that it has 100 hours plus 6 hours of teaching.
You'd probably make better money teaching at an international school than a language school. Which countries are you interested in?

[J.]

You don't need the TESL certificate. If you have teaching degrees and have been teaching ESL, you are already qualified. Only a few places insist on them and they probably would recognize what you have as higher qualifications.

Looking at International schools which pay more and are professionally run makes sense for you, as well as universities if you have at least a Masters, and if you don't mind short one-year contracts.

[tedkarma]

Depending on what your "advanced degrees" are in - I would agree that you probably don't need a TEFL certificate.

However, if they are not in TEFL or EFL or English or something quite related - a certificate will help you develop the skills needed overseas (which are a bit different than in the US).

The international school circuit is highly competitive - but another good option is to look at university or college work overseas. This is what I have done since 1993.

Korea, in particular, has a good variety of universities looking for people with graduate degrees - but tend to prefer a TEFL certificate too if your degree is not in something related to TEFL.

[Teacher in Rome]

Teaching English as a foreign language is different from teaching English as a first language. If nothing else, the 1-1 course should help you with things like lesson planning where you have to take into consideration the need to pre-teach grammar or vocabulary items. It should also give you a good feel for different levels and the abilities and difficulties in each.

One thing I've found with teachers of subjects (rather than EFL) is they tend to approach learning in a linear way. For example, students learn how to use office word, then they learn excel and so on. But in second-language learning, students learn in more of a cyclical pattern: students are exposed to something, it gets reviewed in the next lesson, and at regular intervals after that. I'm sure the linguistics experts on this forum can give you better advice on this, but my point is to be sure to include an element of review in your lessons - especially at lower levels of ability.

[dlarcheuk]

Thanks to all. To answer some of your questions and to fill you in a bit-

Suzie has a BA in English Education plus 33 hours in English and Education; taught in mainstreamed classrooms for almost 30 years (and mentored English teachers), is now completing seven years teaching ESL to university students from all over the world; and taught private students in Ukraine.

My degrees are: BA in Education with certificates in Speech, American and World History, English, Journalism, Physical Education; M.Ed. in Secondary Education and Speech Education; Ph.D. in Oral English (Speech Communication) with a minor in Seondary Education; MFA in Playwriting and Dramaturgy; post-docs in Creative Writing, Theatre and Screen Writing, Directing and Dramaturgy. I taught seven ESL classes in Philology, Oral Interp, American English, American Studies, Theatre, etc. for a year in Ukraine (during my 2003-2004 year as a Fulbright Scholar there), have had mainstreamed ESL students in almost every class in American colleges and university teaching for about 30 years, and have taught graduate Pedagogy for two other universities in Energy Conservation Education and Arts Education, for goodness sake.

We both think we still have a lot to learn, (especially in ESL, since neither has been trained in it!) and work hard to do that all the time. But the reason for the thread, very frankly, was that we found a couple of very short courses from "i-i", which claims to have 20,000 graduates and acceptance around the world. We frankly don't know how much they can impart in 17-34 hours, but we're more than willing to take the trek to Toronto or Chicago in August to do it, if the "credential" can help, even a little (plus we would assuredly learn some important things too!). "i-i" doesn't sound like CELTA, Oxford or TESL, and we just want to make sure it's for real, and that it might be recognizable to some international folks.

We're pretty serious about making this transition, and hope to find university placement in Latin America, the CIS, or Asia - but we can't just throw over our tenured positions here and move to a country to take a certificate course there and just begin looking (if only we were younger without so many responsibilities, it sounds wonderful, though!).

So that's why I asked, and thanks so much for the responses.

P.S. I spent a few months trying the "academic" route of sending letters to Ministries of Education and HR people in universities without success, until finding Dave's about two weeks ago. Wow!! You folks are amazingly helpful, forthright and way too cool! I'm actually beginning to indentify and make contact with real live people who are decision makers.

My wildest dreams say next month in another country...but even if I wake up to reality, at least I feel like we've got a headstart for the next hiring season(s)!

We're glad to finally join you.

Doug

[fluffyhamster]

Perhaps do a search on the Teacher forums for the couple of posts that I wrote (i.e. author 'fluffyhamster') where I mention 'i-to-i'.

Even if you were to do a more "recognized" month-long FT residential course with a fair bit of observed TP with genuine learners, I wonder if there'd be a whole lot that you couldn't learn from simply reading a book or two instead. (Incidentally, there's quite an entertaining thread on the "standards" repuired of wannabe CELTA trainees on the Newbie thread entitled 'CELTA-Now they've changed their minds!', something like that, by Aussie Chick (sp?)).

Oh, and for some reading suggestions, try a search here on the Job forums for 'Trask'.