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Things I wish I'd known before starting the courseWhat can help prepare you for teaching ESL or EFL to students? Do you need hands on experience as well as course work to prepare you? While I have gained tremendous insight from this course, there are, of course, things I wish Id known before starting this online course. Hindsight, they say, is always 20/20 and I completely agree. They call it reflection for teachers because teachers are always trying to improve their methods of teaching. Reflection is looking back at what worked while teaching a lesson and what didnt work. The things that worked and you saw progress in, you want to repeat. The things that didnt work you might want to try again later, or abandon altogether. Thats the beauty of reflection; it allows you to see mistakes, or things that you want to change for the future. When I interviewed for my position overseas, the last statement that I was told was to take an ESL course. Meanwhile, I was trying to complete the mound of paperwork necessary to get my passport, visa and all of the other necessary things to travel overseas. I didnt get a chance to take this course until around December, which was well into the school year. I had always thought that I was pretty good with english, but with ESL there is a lot more grammar involved that is so necessary for students, and I didnt realize the importance of it all. I never realized how difficult it would be to teach a foreign language to young learners. I wish I had been more prepared through research and practice before I began this course and actually started teaching ESL. According to TEFL Uncovered, by James Jenkins (sponsored through i-to-i TEFL course/http://www.onlinetefl.com/e-book/tefl-uncovered-low.pdf), he speaks on personal reflection of why you want to teach english as a foreign language; what are your motivators? Teaching in a foreign country can be tough. Are you ready for cultural changes? The book is in a workbook fashion and asks a lot of questions that makes you really consider all different aspects of TEFL. I wish I had known and considered these things before taking the course. Also, he speaks of the focus being on the students and not on the teacher. The more that there is student time and not so much teacher time, the better it is. I think that I became more focused on the teaching aspect (getting the knowledge into their heads) and not as much on getting my students to actually speaking english, even with the mistakes. In the future, I will focus more on simpler projects and not try to push things so fast, so that the students can have a better grasp of what they are doing in the beginning. I definitely saw progress with my students, but had I done more research before taking this course and been ready, I could have been a more effective teacher. I had also not realized that there were so many english learners across the globe. Where I am in the Middle East there are 50,000,000 english learners (British Council Learning. August 1 2009. FAQ-the-english-language.htm>). There is much to consider as to the country and what types of conditions that a person can tolerate and much thought needs to be put into where you want to teach. I did it kind of backwards, by accepting the position and then taking the TEFL course, but I still wouldnt have changed my mind. These things would have been good to know before I took the course. The culture shock for me was a big one, and the book spoke of being realistic about the changes and the different phases that you will go through, and then reverse culture shock when you return to your homeland. I think I just wish that I had been better prepared before taking the online course. I will be better equipped next year as I finish up my contract overseas and will be able to put into practice all that I have learned through the ittt online course.
