The Benefits of a TEFL Certificate for Your Career
A TEFL course isn’t a must to teach English, but it has its benefits. Today many schools require English teachers to have TEFL certificates, especially in China and other Asian countries. Online TEFL course has twenty units, each one of them teaches about different topics and allows the examinee to improve their teaching skills. The first unit explains what makes a good teacher and how a good teacher should behave in the classroom. It also explains what makes a good learner and what the teachers can do to help those students who have difficulties. A teacher has different roles during the lesson, sometimes he has to take control and lead the lesson, sometimes he has to organize the class for certain activities, and sometimes he has to give up control and monitor what is going on in the classroom during certain activities. A good teacher should know when to correct his students and how to encourage them without taking the initiative away.
This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Yaroslav P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
Methodology
The course teaches the ESA methodology, Engage, Study, and Activate. In the first stage, which is the engaging stage, the teacher should make the students think in English he should prepare them for the English lesson. Then the teacher moves on to the study stage, during this stage the teacher can teach grammar, new vocabulary, and other material. The last stage is the activate stage, in general, the teacher will allow the students to practice new material they have learned during the study stage. A straight arrow ESA lesson is where the teacher takes the lesson in the order, but it’s possible to vary the order of this method. For example, “Boomerang ESA lesson”, engage, activate 1, study, activate 2. Activate 1 allows the teacher to find out what the students already know and then teach them better during the study phase. There are more different possibilities but it must start with the engage phase and finish with the activate phase.
Also Read: 7 Activities for Teaching the Present Progressive for the ESL Classroom
Basic Skills
The course teaches a little bit of grammar and suggests many methods to teach the grammar. It is not easy for non-English speakers to understand all 12 tenses, some languages have 3 or only 1 tense. The course explains articles and how to use them, verbs, nouns, adverbs, gerunds, pronouns present, future, and past tenses, along with ideas on how to teach them and what problems students might have. The course explains how to plan a lesson, what methods can be used during the class, for example, the course suggests the teacher should use real objects or pictures because it allows the students to learn visually and understand it better. The course also shows two videos, one of a good lesson and one of a bad lesson, it allows the examinee to see the wrongs visually and acknowledge the mistakes.
Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course!
The course provides many sources of material that can be used to teach English, it doesn’t suggest the teacher should only use the coursebook. There are numerous different ways to teach English, the course explains about teaching equipment that teachers have, for example, the board, interactive whiteboard, overhead projector, visual aids, worksheet, and work cards, CD player, videos and DVD, video camera, dictionaries, course books, resource books, photocopies, computers, and online sources. The course explains how to teach pronunciation, how to evaluate students, how to manage the classroom, and how to deal with different groups, for example, one on one tutoring or business groups. In general, the TEFL course provides great material and methods for English teachers.
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