Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Donghuamen Jiedao? Are you interested in teaching English in Beijing? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
This course made me aware of what I know about english. Before formally studying it, I could speak english properly but I couldn't tell you the rules behind it. I knew that it "sounded right" but I didn't know why. Now, I know why. I have learned what items are called and I have grasped the logic behind their structure well enough to be able to explain it to someone else. The best example that I have of this is phrasal verbs-- a concept I had never even heard of, but had unknowingly mastered years ago (I will fill up the cup, I will fill the cup up, I will fill it up, but I will NOT fill up it-- transitive separable, thank you very much). This course also taught me how to teach. While I have served as a tutor and an assistant before, prior to TEFL I had never once made a lesson plan independently. The TEFL ideology of teaching-- the role of the teacher, classroom management, the use of materials, the importance of the three phases in a lesson-- is something that I will surely employ in the future and something that I now feel like I would be lost without in the classroom. I am especially thankful that throughout the units I was asked to create so many Activate-appropriate activities. I do not doubt that I will be referring back to these worksheets in the future and putting my ideas into action. My formal TEFL career will hopefully begin in October of 2011, when-- if my application is accepted-- I will leave to teach english in france for 7 to 9 months, serving as the sole teacher in a classroom with elementary, middle, or high school students. Though I do speak french, TEFL has taught me not to show this off. In my classroom there will only be english (within reason)-- how nice it will be to, for once, have the best accent in a room of french people! I also have received an offer to teach english in Rwanda, who just switched its official language from french to english, and I would love to make this a reality before going back to graduate school, where I want to pursue french. While one day I would like to be a professor of french and not english, I don't doubt that this path will give me many more opportunities to expose non-native english speakers to the english language.
