Job Discussion Forums

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

What, specifically, is your degree called?

CELTA, TEFL, TESOL are not tests. They are introductory-level courses for teaching language.

Sonnet · Joined: 10 Mar 2004 Posts: 235 Location: South of the river

You could, undoubtedly, land an EFL teaching job in a number of countries with your qualifications and experience.

Would an introductory-level certificate be useful to you as a teacher? Depends entirely on the language-teaching training and experience you already have.

tedkarma · Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 7:00 am Post subject:

Back to the orginal post - YES - I've wanted every bit of training I could ever get - and I have taken a lot training. I like to get better and better every year.

I want to be an excellent teacher and really help my students. While you may not learn a whole new world in every course - probably every course will offer you some new ideas, new ways of doing things - and at least some food for thought.

Students pay a lot money to sit in your class - they should get what they paid for.

goodbye · Joined: 13 Oct 2007 Posts: 17

I have a TEFL certificate because I thought it would be helpful and look better on my resume. It was only a 60-hour course over three weeks, but it was very helpful and worth the money.

jillford64 · Joined: 15 Feb 2006 Posts: 397 Location: Sin City

I got a TESL certificate because I couldn't imagine changing careers without getting any kind of training. Also, it appeared necessary to make myself competetive in the job market or to get a work permit in the countries I was considering. I opted for a program at a university near me for 260 hours plus the option for additional electives and a practicum rather than a one month CELTA- or Trinity-type course because I had the time and the money for the longer, more expensive program. Also, I felt that a longer, but more extensive program would mesh better with my learning style.

keepwalking · Joined: 17 Feb 2005 Posts: 194 Location: Peru, at last

The most useful thing I got from my TEFL course was an appreciation of how much I DIDN'T know. I had a good arts-based degree from a reasonable university but didn't understand the grammar of my own language in a way that made me able to explain it to another person. I had also slept through most of my language classes at school and so had no idea what it felt like to try and learn a foreign language. We had a course in Arabic, taught only in Arabic. This was a language none of us were familiar with and it was very revealing to see how it felt and to watch how we tried to cover our misunderstandings. We knew, for example, that the teacher would ask us numbers at some point in the lesson and so we sat in the same place each class and learned just one number. (I can still say 5 in Arabic, 10 years later! No clue what 4 or 6 are though)

The teaching practice gave me a chance to think about the HOW of teaching. I realised that just because I had said it/explained it/written it on the board, that didn't mean that anyone had learned it.

The TEFL course for me was a great eye-opener. I learned to teach in the next year of different classes every month.

One thing I would say about the course is that you need to choose your provider carefully. I got a place on a great course which was intensive in both theory and practice. I'm not a fan of the on-line courses at all: you can't learn to teach if you don't stand up in front of a group of people and then have someone else dissect your performance. Painful, but invaluable.

Mangosteen · Joined: 12 Oct 2007 Posts: 13