Job Discussion Forums

sr12856cmc · Joined: 05 May 2011 Posts: 1 Location: Pennsylvania

Hi... I have a Bachelor�s Degree in Psychology from a PA university, and I received Teaching Certification in Secondary Education, Social Studies. Although my certification is currently expired, I do have classroom experience. I have been interested in teaching ESL for a long time but was unable to pursue it due to family obligations. My children are grown, so I now have the opportunity to explore other options.

I spent two months in Turkey last summer living with a Turkish family and tutoring their 10-year old daughter. A wonderful experience! I am currently volunteering to tutor adult students in ESL at the Mid-State Literacy Council in central PA. My preference is in working with older children, young adults, or adult students.

I do not have the time or the resources to obtain an ESL degree, nor even to attend one of the 4-week in-class TESL/TESOL courses. Therefore, I am looking for recommendations regarding online TESL/TESOL courses. On one online course review site, the following three courses were highly rated: Ontesol, ICAL, and the American TESOL Institute. However, none of these courses started with more than a 100-hour program. In other research, I found that it was recommended not to take any online course that is less than 120 hours. Two online TESL/TESOL courses that are 120-140 hours and that are accredited by different agencies are ITTO and ITTT. (TEFL International is highly rated, but their online course is marketed by the same agency as ITTT, and their programs are identical.) In addition, I am particularly interested in Teaching Business English, a 50-hour course which both ITTO and ITTT offer in addition to the initial 120-140 hour online course.

I understand the limitations of taking an online TESL/TESOL course, including limited job opportunities; however, I am open to all possibilities, and I�m at an age where my Teaching career will be limited to no more than 6-10 years. I believe that an online TESL/TESOL course would best suit my needs at this time. If anyone has any knowledge of or experience with these or any other online TESL/TESOL courses or knows someone else who does, I would greatly appreciate any recommendations.

Sincerely,
Suzanne Rich

naturegirl321 · Joined: 04 May 2003 Posts: 9041 Location: home sweet home

online courses are ok IF coupled with actual classroom teaching. Some courses offer that. I know CELTA will, but doesn't at the moment.

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Quite a lot depends on where you want to teach.
Regions where teachers are in demand (some of Asia, for example) accept online certs. Regions where the job market is tighter often don't.

If you give us some idea of where you want to work, someone will be able to tell you what (if any) online course will be viable in that job market.

MarkM · Joined: 28 Apr 2011 Posts: 55 Location: Lianyungang, China

You need to work out a strategy that will work for you, based on your situation. Like you, I am mature and I have lots of business experience. My strategy, which I think is working, may be of interest.

I did the ITTT TEFL certificate and the Business English certificate. The TEFL certificate was good in that it covered a lot of grammar. Stuff I had never even thought about as a "native speaker", but which one has to be very aware of when teaching English to speakers of other languages. The business English certificate also provided useful insights.

I realised that not having a practical component limits the value of these qualifications, but this changes after you have got some experience. So I got an entry level 12 month contract before doing the qualification, and I expect that I will be able to be a bit more fussy when applying for the next one. My contract finishes in 5 months. My next step will be to consolidate my experience in the area that interests me (teaching business English) and I will look for an opportunity to do the DELTA at the same time.

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Isla Guapa · Posted: Sun May 08, 2011 5:04 pm Post subject:

What about the poor students who get a teacher whose only qualification is an online certificate, which didn't include any supervised teaching practice with real students? They're certainly not getting any value for their money. I would be ashamed to take a job which I had little idea how to do well, but that's just me. Rolling Eyes

MarkM · Joined: 28 Apr 2011 Posts: 55 Location: Lianyungang, China

mozzar · Joined: 16 May 2009 Posts: 339 Location: France

naturegirl321 · Joined: 04 May 2003 Posts: 9041 Location: home sweet home

MarkM · Joined: 28 Apr 2011 Posts: 55 Location: Lianyungang, China

For people who are just doing TEFL for a while before they go home and start their real careers, I agree that supervision is probably a good thing. It weeds out those who really can't do this, and it gets the rest started on their journey up the learning curve before they start teaching. The OP is a registered teacher with classroom experience, though, and could get by quite easily without supervised teaching. For her it is matter of adapting skills that are already well established.

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

santi84 · Joined: 14 Mar 2008 Posts: 1317 Location: under da sea

Le cr�me de la cr�me of employers often require supervised teaching practice throughout an employee's career - even instructors with 10, 20, 30 years experience can benefit from frequent observation.

MarkM, as an ESL instructor AND second language student myself, I take issue with those who prefer to skip some basic components of qualification because TEFL/TESL is not their 'real career' - while it may not be their 'real' career, I can assure you that my classroom time away from my family and my tuition fees, along with my expectations of quality instruction, are very real Wink

nickpellatt · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 1522

Ditto with Santi. Im studying Chinese at the moment on a distance learning course with my University, and I have already changed tutors once because I am acutely aware of my tutors limitations as a language teacher. Despite being a native speaker, and an unrelated Phd holder .... he would certainly benefit from something as simple as a CELTA (If they do such a thing for teaching languages other than English).

I attended a face to face tutorial and he couldnt even set up, instruct for, and organise a 'find someone who....' activity!

fluffyhamster · Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 8:18 pm Post subject:

The OP is an ostensibly qualified and experienced teacher who just wants a bit of ELT icing on her cake. I doubt if there is much on these cert courses (even the "good" ones like the CELTA) that she doesn't already know or couldn't work out or learn from a decent book or two, and even if there were, these certs count for very little in terms of pay (entry level, and in the west, a definite step down from public school teaching) and are completely unncessary for the purposes of securing a visa wherever. I mean, if you want a peek at what "real" ELT is, try searching out a few clips on YouTube (there are a depressingly large number of suitably uninspiring clips Smile

).

So I guess I'm with MarkM, in that I believe the OP will soon be able to work out for herself what's working (the Simple/non-Progressive 'what "works"' always sounds far too absolute and impersonal for my tastes). The main tasks of an ELT teacher are basically a) marshalling good (vital, relevant) examples (which may require some boning up on grammar, phonology etc), b) making them come alive (or rather, back to life) in the context of the "classroom", and c) anticipating areas of linguistic difficulty (which often arise because of rather than in spite of the input, which leads us back to a) again!). The magic only really happens in one's own classroom, and observers etc are at best critics (paid to have an opinion regardless), and at worst, intrusive bores. The most central thing is the (your) linguistic script, and all the rest is often mere methodological handwaving, superfluous commentary. (Or, as quite a few directors have remarked, you can't make much of a movie without a decent script).

Ultimately, ELT should be a much more academic subject (i.e. academically-demanding of the trainee TEACHER certainly!) than these "practical" certs flog and fob it off as. As long as you have a brain, keep your hand on your wallet and your eye on more serious avenues of research and professional development than this all-too-brief "training" will give you. (It's a bit like somebody expecting to become a brain surgeon with just a few first aid courses. "There, that Band-Aid ought to hold his brain in just fine!" Rolling Eyes

). Then, the flip side of the "In ELT we're all pros, or at least aspire to be, and even the best of us can do with being kept on our toes" coin is the very commonplace situation where the so-called language professional is paid to teach language and bring students up to speed fast, but actually does nothing of the sort, with the students still languishing around some indeterminate post-beginner, intermediate stage for as long as the course drags on for and/or the funding is forthcoming (i.e. a lot of ELT is not predicated on measurable results).