It’s Time To Find A Decent TEFL Course
In the Teaching English as a Foreign Language Profession, a good TEFL course certificate is one of the best springboards to success. Finding an English teaching course is tough to do in a marketplace with dozens of competitors, no real international oversight, large marketing budgets, and internet forum shills. Luckily, you only need five tips to find a great course. These five tips will help you evaluate TEFL courses and come up with a suitable short list of courses that fit your needs and desires. Many new English teachers need significant grammar study.
Tip #1 is to check the grammar content of the course. Many of us didn’t study a lot of grammar back in high school or college. While we may be able to know the rights and wrongs concerning grammar rules, we don’t quite remember the rules or even the effect of the rules. English as a Foreign Language students need to learn these rules and you as a teacher need to know the rules well enough to teach them. A good course will have a grammar module and should provide you with specific methods for teaching grammar concepts.
One of the big reasons a lot of new teachers take a Teaching English as a Foreign Language course is to prepare themselves for teaching their first English classes.
Tip #2 is check how much observed teaching practice a course provides. A good course will have observed teaching practice. This is a chance for you to teach a class and be evaluated by your trainer. You receive constructive criticism, ideas for improvement, and confidence to teach classes solo. You get the practice you need to confidently conduct classes.
There is no international TEFL accreditation agency.
Tip #3 is to check out the recognition of a course. You need to see how long the provider has been in business, what qualifications the trainer has completed, and how many students have completed the course. It’s a good idea to ask for contact information of former students if in any doubt and see how well their course has been accepted in different teaching situations.
Paying a high training fee to get started in a generally low paying field of work never makes sense.
Tip #4 is know the real total cost of the TEFL Course When pricing a course, you need to keep several factors in mind. Of course you want to know the course pricing, but remember a typical course will require your full time attention for 4 weeks. During this time, you won’t be able to work elsewhere. If you take the course locally, you may not have to increase your living expenses, but if you have to take the course elsewhere, you need to add in the additional cost of living to the total price of the course, not to mention transportation costs (air, train or bus tickets) to the course center itself.
With just a few caveats, internet feedback is a great indicator of TEFL course quality.
Tip #5 is to get internet feedback about the courses you are interested in. You can get this feedback by simply Googling the school’s name or visiting internet teaching forums. Generally, if the feedback on internet teaching forums are positive about a course, then probably the course is a quality course and vice versa if the feedback is negative. One thing to keep in mind when getting information about a teaching course on the internet is to pay attention to who is paying for the advertising on the forum. Another thing to keep in mind is that some course providers are accused of posting incognito on internet expat teaching forums giving either positive feedback about their course or negative feedback about competitor courses.
If you follow these five steps, you’ll have a better chance at having a great TEFL course experience and you’ll be on your way to an adventurous career in teaching English as a foreign language
Can You Find The Perfect TEFL Destination?
The Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) Profession is known by many as a path to fun and adventure in exotic foreign lands, as a way to pay off student loans or as a way to dodge problems back home. Instead of focusing on the reason why they want to go teach abroad, many new teachers find their job first and worry about the destinations later. Unfortunately, many lose sight of their original reason for going abroad and become disillusioned. That doesn’t have to be the case. With three easy steps, you can be focused on the reason why you are going abroad and find the destination that best meshes with your goals.
The first step in finding a destination is to take a good look at yourself. Why do you want to teach English in a foreign country? Is it for the adventure? Is it for the income? Are you running away from something? Do you want to help students in other countries? You need to take out a piece of paper and write down your reason. It doesn’t really matter the reason, that’s your personal choice. You just need to stay focused on that reason.
Once you’ve identified why you want to find a TEFL job, you should research destinations. The local public library has a lot of travel books. Pick up a Lonely Planet Travel Guidebook for the countries or regions that interest you and read them. Having trouble finding a country or region? Open an atlas and randomly choose a few countries. In your research, you want see if it is a place you might want to teach and live in. Don’t make the mistake of focusing on just one country, keep an open mind and in the end try to have a list of five to ten countries that you might want to teach in.
The last step is to see how well your goals mesh with your preferred destinations. I suggest visiting sites like Dave’s ESL Cafe or the ELT World and make pointed posts asking the user base if they can give insight as to how well your goals mesh with each of your preferred destinations. An example might the following posting:
“Hi I’d like to teach English in Indonesia. My goal is have an adventure and write a book about it. Is it possible?”
You may get conflicting answers, but even those conflicting answers can be helpful. It’s providing you more information from diverse experiences. You may discover it’s just not doable in some or all of the destinations you chose, but remember, you can always go back and find alternative destinations. On the other hand, you may find that several destinations mesh with your goals. Remember to always stay focused on your written reason for TEFL.
After settling on a destination, you can start to research what type of qualifications you need and what preparations you should make in order to work in country of choice. Never fear, you will be in a better position than other potential teachers because you will know why you are going abroad to teach and your primary destination
Secret Indian Telemarketing Weapon
I love surfing Youtube and searching for really funny videos. The other day someone was talking about telemarketing and outsourcing. They were complaining about the loss of American jobs and how it was particularly heart wrenching for them. I found this video a few months ago and Manoj is all I could think about.
This video is so hilarious….it took me a few minutes to realize that it’s fake, that’s just a testament to how well the video was made. Take a look at it yourself.
10X10X5 Savings Plan
Since my time teaching abroad, up until now here in the US, I have been utilizing a 10X10X5 Savings Plan. It has helped me to achieve many of my personal and family financial goals with very little financial pain.
It’s a rather simple plan, but it’s simplicity doesn’t get in the way of its effectiveness. The 10X10X5 works like this. 10% of your income is set aside for charity or church tithings. Another 10% of your income is set aside as savings. 5% of your income is set aside for entrepreneur activities. Maybe it’s opening a business or investing in a more risky investment.
What kind of savings plan do you have?
The Subject of Religion
I was emailed a link to a discussion on the infamous troll forum, Ajarn Forum the other day concerning the Nature of God. It began with a quote from one user that I didn’t find necessarily bad, but another user did find it as slightly anti-God.
One user posted their problem with the quote and then out came the anti-God corp. They have sunked so far into vice and depravation that they think there only hopes for avoiding the second death is to attack Christians and anything to do with God. They believe that their way is the only way and that they are the only ones with the truth.
What makes them any different than over zealous Jehovah Witnesses that knock on your door constantly?
It’s a good thing that I decided to end any association with Ajarn Forum.