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.