Archive for the ‘MA TESOL’ Category

Hi, I’ve just read your DELTA experiences and wondered if you could advise me on the best course to take. I’ve been teaching for 12 years (PGCE and Degree in English) - 6 years in Comprehensives in the UK and 6 years in France at a Lycée and University. I’m now back in the UK teaching in a Comp and want to get back into TAL or TEFL……which type of course would you recommend? I’ve been told there are 4 possibilities:
 
RSA Trinity
CELTA
DELTA
MEd TESOL
 
I’m going to be in the UK for the next 5 years so I would be teaching here rather than abroad.
 
Thanks,
 
Diane

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Any advice for Diane anyone?

Noticing that two of my three nominations for TEFL bad boy of the century have been involved in selling 4 week TEFL courses of limited career worth has made me wonder whether the whole non-CELTA non-Trinity lot of them have been nothing but another nail in the coffin of TEFL being taken seriously. I have motivations for wanting to think otherwise as I did send 100 or so people out into the world to end up cursing themselves, me or the course provider when some of them were inevitably told “We don’t care what your training consisted of, we only accept Cambridge Certs.”

The other disadvantages of the plethora of “equivalent” courses individually are well known, and can probably best be understood as the TEFL equivalent of knock off DVDs-usually cheaper, usually inferior quality to some extent, sometimes nothing like what you thought you were getting. Like pirate DVDs, though, collectively their effect on the whole industry is mainly to stop the “legitimate” providers getting up themselves and charging what they like.

Here some examples of the ways I have seen the changes in the market as a positive response to a bit of law of the jungle capitalist competition:

-More CELTA and Trinity courses available in cheaper countries,something that was lead by other course providers-and in fact quite a few of the ones which are Trinity now started off as such

-More additional services like airport pickup, lifetime job seeking help, accommodation etc

-Advertising in more unconvential places, ie not just the Guardian

- A healthy scepticism about 4 week courses in general-mainly prompted by the seedier, but also keeping C and T on their toes and always having to justify the quality of their courses

-Cambridge has been forced to keep the CELTA as a stand alone practical teaching qualification, whereas their own professional and commercial logic might have allowed them to jump on every trendy methodology or convert the CELTA into an intro to the DELTA

- The fact that the majority of course providers have settled on 4 weeks as the standard (hugely better than two weeks, at which point trainees have usually improved their standard of lessons little if at all, and not much worse than even 8 weeks, at which point trainees have long passed saturation point ). This has provided the idea of a month practical teaching course as an alternative to an (often impractical) 1 year MA with a legitimacy it wouldn’t have had if it was C and T

- The fact that C and T can point at being better than certain dodgy operators takes away the emphasis on being worse than a PGCE

It occurs to me that I’m having it both ways a bit here, but what are blogs for if not thinking aloud… Any other answers to the original question to help me sort my logic out anyone?

I’ve been reading “English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity” (hence “the ELF” of the post title) by Jenny Jenkins, and although its a much easier read than that Pseuds Corner book title might make you think, the main reaction so far is “Who cares?”

To summarize 37 pages in 37 words, the concept of English as a Lingua Franca is that as more and more English is used between non-native speakers a new variety or varities of English are being created that are just as valid and important as Glaswegian English or even RP and SAE- and much more relevant than those forms to most students studying English. So far, so fascinating- if we are in the process of the language and teaching changing, you can probably tell from the post below that I’d be happy to have something to shake things up. The important little grammar word here, though, is “if”.

Let’s see what Prof Jen Jen has to say about it: (more…)

“even universities do not insist on any proper teaching qualifications but rather MAs and PHds.”

(more…)

“In many parts of the world, it’s still the case that anyone who speaks English as a native can get a job teaching the language, despite the efforts of professional organizations like TESOL and university departments of Applied Linguistics. I hope that the chapters so far will have convinced you that this is almost as daft as employing someone as a human biology teacher because they have a healthy working body.”

(more…)

“A professional is one who emphasizes public service, has high standards of performance, has a broad knowledge of his or her field, and participates in professional conferences and associations.”

Quote from The Japanese Police System Today (pg 33), not the most typical source of quotes for a TEFL blog I’m guessing, but as someone who has contributed a fair amount to English Teaching Professional (ETP) magazine over the years but always had a slight doubt about what the title of the mag was supposed to mean, seeing a definition of “professional” really caught my eye. So I decided to give myself a English teaching professional ranking, a quest you can join me on if you fancy:

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“A dollar a day”

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This story about how the Peace Corps are looking to bring more over 60s back into the classroom really caught my eye today. One reason was that my eye really was caught, seeing as I was pressed up against my newspaper by the rush hour Yamanote circular line crush and unable to even fold it another way, let alone turn the page. The other was I have been suffering from the walking stick shaking wrath of TEFL pensioners recently, so think getting them back into the classroom might be a good thing (that or more aqua aerobics).

(more…)

I was a trainer on 4 week certificate in teaching English to adults courses (similar to the Cambridge CELTA) where some of the trainees already had teaching experience before they came on the course, mostly because they had decided it was still worth the money to work in better schools and/ or work legally (in Turkey, for example, you need a teaching qualification to get a visa). Having seen such people at the beginning and end of their training courses and having been able to compare them with TEFL noobs, and also being totally out of that end of the business now and so able to give my completely honest opinion, here are my two Turkish lira on the matter: (more…)

Hope that headline got your attention, but actually I have nothing to say about the MA today at all…

Right, now to talk about the CELTA. I have decided to trust a whole lot of people I have never met and take the PGCE (standard British 1 year postgraduate teaching qualification) to be totally superior to the CELTA and a whole lotta learning more than a DELTA. The only compensation for me as someone who has done the C and the D but not the P is to imagine that the PGCE powers that be have been ripping off the CELTA as they have introduced classroom teaching earlier and earlier in the course.

Anyhows, as few more people are likely to start using 5000 pounds of someone’s money and two years of their lives to do a PGCE before popping off to Spain for a year I think the only sensible thing to do is combine the best of the two. And here it is:

The Super CELTA (although Advanced CELTA might be a better name!) will be a combination of the CELTA just as it stands now and in-service training once you start your first job, which will be set by Cambridge and admininstered and run by the employers. The employers will be able to easily justify checking up on their first year teachers and making sure they continue their training, the teachers will be able to choose a good school simply by the fact that they offer support for this extended qualification, and Cambridge will be able to use it to spread good practice in teacher observations and what have you.

So that’s decided then. You can disagree with me, but then I will just edit your comment to make it look like you’ve been blabbering on about lobsters invading the earth…. Only joking! Bring it on! And there’s also a similar thread in D’s E C you can comment in as well/ instead.