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
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