May 14 2009
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
I began an online course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language last night. Taking the online course was a hard decision to reach. There doesn’t seem to be any accreditation body for online courses in teaching English, so that kind of limits the reputability of the course certificate-granting companies.
I thought about taking a course from my local community college that could last a semester to a year, depending on how many classes I could take at once. It was only about 15 hours worth of classes, but I like to sleep a lot, and I have to work full-time. I don’t know how some people can go to school and work full-time, but I can’t without being exhausted, grumpy, and useless. On top of that, I like to shoot for making A’s whenever possible. That wouldn’t happen in that course, probably.
The community college course would have been the best option for me as I want to teach English to adults in this country, not travel to South Korea or another country and teach English to children there. The certification requirements for most positions teaching English to Adults in the States are more stringent. The community college course is actually a “Teaching English as a Second Language,” which is supposedly a bit different than teaching it as a foreign language. There is some flexibility in all this, though, and I am counting on it to be beneficial to my own circumstances.
I took as many hours (100) of training as I could get in this online course, though there are 40 and 60-hour options as well. Weekend courses are also available at conferences in the States from the company I am taking my course from. I have an individual tutor to provide feedback through e-mail, and that really helps a lot with getting new ideas and perspectives.
I cannot get the personalized training from the local college program practicum, but I am going to volunteer to be a class aide for a teacher of an 8-week English course offered through my local adult education center. I have also tutored and taught English as a volunteer off and on for a few years. So, I’ll have a different route to the practical experience necessary to teach English.
