TEFL Course

So today I had my final observation hours for my TEFL certification online class.  It has been a very valuable experience for me because I did not have any prior teaching experience.  I learned so much from both the online portion and the practicum.

I learned all about different learning styles, how to write an effective lesson plan, where to find helpful ESL/ESOL resources and I even got a small review of English grammar.  I found the grammar review to be the most interesting and challenging portion because I realized that I had not been taught specific grammar rules in English since elementary or middle school.  When speaking your native language, you do not often think about the order in which you say the words you speak because you learned all of those rules at a young age either formally or informally.  It turns out that it is very difficult to explain to others why you say things the way you do- so the grammar review was very necessary!

It was really interesting to observe my ESL classes because I had no idea that there were all of these people in the towns surrounding mine that were from so many different countries like Vietnam, South Korea, Burundi, El Salvador, Brazil, Iran, China, Colombia and many others. It is very eye opening to see all of these people from all over the world who are of all different ages sit in one classroom to learn the English language.  It was one thing to take an online course and come up with lesson plans for hypothetical beginner/intermediate/advanced students, but to actually be in the classroom helping out these students is totally different.  You see each student at their own level and try to encourage them to take it step by step and let them know that any improvement is a positive one.

I am so glad that I took this course before going abroad to teach because it gave me a little preview of what I am about to be doing and it really makes me look forward to the what I am about to do to help out these students who are trying to learn English.  The teacher who let me into her class was so helpful!  I learned so much from her and really appreciate her letting me in the class to help her our and get a good look at what this job is really like :)