Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Menghe Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Changzhou Shi? 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.
Why indeed, I asked myself this very question and seriously considered how it would benefit me. Being a native English speaker and having taught within my profession for many years both in my home country and abroad, I wondered how hard it could be transitioning from teaching within the medical field, to multilingual students, to now teaching English. I have resided in the Middle East for many years and taught Neonatology to Nurses none of which had English as a native language, languages varied from Arabic to Tagalog and many Indian dialects. I thought I had mastered teaching in a rather difficult setting with good outcomes and had left behind many remarkable Neonatology nurses. Having a love of teaching and reaching the age of retirement which feels a bit like being put out to pasture I decided I still had a lot to give and why not continue to teach. I have all this experience and imagine how much I could impart to students eager to acquire the English language. I have a degree in Psychology did Education as my second major so nothing to it. Many companies requiring English as FL teachers do not require it, so why would I choose to do it? Having not taught a language before as such, although a great deal of the language was imparted to my students through their various courses and workshops, I thought I could possibly obtain a few pointers that I had not considered if I actually did a course. Asking around for opinions as there were several people I knew who it had done I got varying responses, from, “waste of time never used any of it”, to” excellent such a good course wouldn’t have coped without it.” So was it really necessary? I think when you are going to provide a service to anyone no matter what it entails, it requires you to be firstly, committed to providing that service to the best of your ability and secondly, doing everything you possibly can to ensure that you are prepared and informed. So many times the fundamentals are glossed over and not embedded and the learning that takes place after is often not grounded, a good course will teach you from the bottom up those skills that you will require to provide the best service possible. Thinking that as a native speaker of English you have it all at hand is so inaccurate, yes, it is possible to spot a grammatical error at a hundred yards but knowing how and why it was made is a totally different story. You need to remember those rules, you need to revise tenses and sentence structure, yes, we all learnt them but the need for revision and reflection is invaluable. As teachers, no matter what you are teaching and to whom, you have responsibility to be the best you can. The love of teaching I think is inherent and a passion for imparting knowledge is not a prerequisite for teaching unfortunately. A teacher with a passion will always go the extra mile to ensure that they have all the tools to possible to provide a sound and productive service to their students. Therefore the need to do a TEFL course is but one of the necessities that any teacher who wants to teach English should participate in .I can only say from my perspective that I gained an enormous amount of guidance and valuable tools in this most informative course and choosing to do the course was a very wise decision.
