Job Discussion Forums

[bulgogiboy]

[spiral78]

It certainly isn't about just turning up on time and being polite, you have to be an active participant and put in a lot of effort. There's no such thing as a perfect teacher training course, but I think it's very worthwhile nonetheless


I didn't mean to imply that a course is substantially about turning up on time and being polite, and I hope my post didn't come across that way. Team-working and general professional skills, and the ability to create a positive atmosphere in a classroom ARE legit goals of a newbie level training course, and can't easily be measured in distance mode - this is why I brought these aspects up.

Of course there are (and should be) a significant focus on approaches and methods, lesson planning practicalities, and all the other myriad of things needed to actually do the basic job.

Anyway, those of us who have taken and worked on such courses, and have been in hiring and training teachers - I think the general consensus is that the courses are highly worthwhile. Not perfect, but very useful from both the perspective of the newbie teacher and his/her potential employers.

[bulgogiboy]

[spiral78]

I feel better.

[fluffyhamster]

I imagine it's more than the language that gets picked up in go-go bars, Bulgogiboi!

I've done the CELTA (actually the CTEFLA, as it used to be called), by the way. I found the training I received to be a bit disappointing and hardly the most thorough (challenging?!) I'd ever done (I mean, I've set myself far more exhaustive projects!), but obviously training centres vary in their quality and thoroughness.

Basically I'd like to see a lot more quality lecture-based input in the first week or two of these certs, rather than the usual pre-course reading and more or less random selection of tasks both pre- and in-course. (That is, there is a lot more that should be mentioned at least in passing, regardless of how exactly it might, or even if it ought to, be conveyed in that exact same manner to foreign learners as opposed to native teachers (and I assume that most teachers will realize or soon work out the difference between this more bookish knowledge versus what sudents really need to know or rather develop ability-wise)). Otherwise it is very easy for a trainee to e.g. complete a course and not really know all the phonemes of their particular standard of English, or to not be able to realize quite what is wrong with 'I would of' as written. (These were both things that I witnessed on my particular CTEFLA). They do however still graduate "successfully" and with quite a "bag of tricks" e.g. they may have certainly learnt to associate a particular form with a particularly "memorable" way of teaching it due to some model lesson as demonstrated by the trainers...with the risk that that lesson is what the new teachers continue to fall back on for potentially years afterwards when teaching that particular form, meaning their development has been retarded in some sense in that they have mistaken one exemplar as being the "way to go". (For example, I was surprised to hear that some trainees who'd done the same CTEFLA as me were then years later flogging, as part of a one-week "cert/refresher" they'd cobbled together with which to rival UCLES LOL, a skills demo lesson that was identical to the one our CTEFLA trainers had used all those years before. But that's "progress" for you in business if not LT, eh!). The temptation then is often for the teacher to just do mainly "skills" lessons and neglect the form-focussed stuff (that, or teach it badly or inappropriately - for example, how many teachers use a genuine conversation-based methodology even when they are supposed to be teaching "Conversational English"? Not many probably - the closest most get to establishing and reflecting genuine discourse patterns is likely the IRF cycle typical of formal educational settings).

Anyway, unfocussed waffling over for now!

[Bella Clava]

BTW, thanks to all who took the time to join the discussion.

Some interesting and valid points came to light, a few contradictions, and
a bit of straying off topic... albeit interesting strays.