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Jenniferm
Joined: 14 Mar 2011 Posts: 1 Location: Toronto
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Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 1:46 am Post subject: TESL Ontario |
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Hello everyone;
I am currently teaching ESL in a private language school in Toronto, however I am considering taking the TESL Ontario course. However, I am not so sure what the job prospects are for this occupation in Toronto. I know there were some government funding cuts, and I have heard it is not easy to get into LINC schools. If you do know any info and have some advice please share, I have a few weeks to make up my mind whether I would take this course.
Thanks;
Jennifer |
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spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash
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Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:20 am Post subject: |
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It's a very tight job market. You might get lucky, but there really aren't many full time jobs out there. |
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santi84
Joined: 14 Mar 2008 Posts: 1317 Location: under da sea
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Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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The prospects are grim, especially for such a costly city. Have you considered getting your provincial teacher certification? I would not rely on a degree and basic TESL certification in Toronto unless there I had an additional income source. |
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GambateBingBangBOOM
Joined: 04 Nov 2003 Posts: 2021 Location: Japan
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Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2013 1:45 pm Post subject: |
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Ostensible reason to do a TESL Ontario certificate:
Get a job in LINC.
Real reasons to do a TESL Ontario certificate:
1. You want to teach ESL at a university or college in Ontario (and are hoping against hope that you land a full-time job). You need a CTESL from a university (or ***possibly*** from a college) to get into the MA in Applied Linguistics and an MA is a requirement to teach at a university (but if you ALREADY have an MA in a DIFFERENT subject, then they will accept that plus the CTESL).
2. You want to get into a B.Ed program in Ontario and have been turned down in the past because of competition (you already have the required grades, but you lack teaching experience. A CTESL course itself counts as experience, and then there are the placements and job opportunities after it). After finishing your B.Ed you will be able to teach ESL at schools as well (normally instead of studying language teaching for a year, people with a one-year B.Ed study for a few weeks or a couple of months for the 'add-on').
Note: BOTH OF THESE REASONS ARE DIRECTLY RELATED TO EDUCATION JOBS SPECIFICALLY IN ONTARIO. The majority of people who do these programs will not have a career teaching ESL in LINC. There is a real feeling in CTESL programs that they are really just a prerequisite for the MA (you need to have experience teaching overseas 'for a couple of years' normally to get into the MA- but if you already have experience you can go directly from CTESL to MA with no break to get more experience) and an eventual job teaching ESL at the very university.
Many people will go overseas. And that's when they'll discover that their CTESL is a very theoretical program but is not any easier than an MA in TESOL or Applied Linguistics from Australia or the UK etc. Except that it isn't CALLED an MA, and therefore you usually still cannot get access to jobs that require an MA*.
And so they end up either going back to Ontario to do their MA in Applied Linguistics from an Ontario University that requires the CTESL to get in, or they do an off-campus MA from Australia or the UK and study a very different approach to language teaching from what they learned in Ontario (psycholinguistics stress versus sociolinguistics stress).
If you do a TESL Ontario certificate, I would suggest you do one from a university, or an Ontario College (Humber etc. Not one of the recently-added private colleges). We were told that if we wanted to have any chance of working at the university, that we had better do half the practicum at the university. |
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