Honeymoons for TEFLers
“For the first 4 weeks of our honeymoon I was actually studying full-time for a CELTA degree in Rome ”
You can read how much his wife liked that here.
I shouldn’t laugh, it took us nearly a year after the wedding before we got a holiday on our own with no family members to take to meet each other. Did have a bit of a chuckle imagining it though. I hope his lack of teaching confidence during his teaching practice didn’t affect his confidence in other ways (if you know what I mean, nudge nudge wink wink), and if she’d actually seen that teaching practice there might have been the TEFL equivalent of a Narita divorce.*
*Japanese women who speak a bit of English being completely unimpressed by their dependant and scared-of-foreigners new husbands on their honeymoons in Guam or Hawaii and so dumping them the minute they get back home- made easier by the fact that at that point they have often only had a ceremony and not yet signed the papers.
February 15th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Ooh, is the CELTA now a degree? It used to be just a certificate, and on a par with basket-weaving and finger-painting, but I suppose it’s been infected by the disease known as ‘academic creep’. Which is just like basket-weaving and finger-painting, I s’pose – now apparently degree courses at Trumpton College of Applied Arts and Technology!
February 16th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
As above, I was wondering if CELTA was now the equivalent of a degree in some places.
This would be sad, were it not for the fact that this person only spent the first four (4) weeks of what must have been a bloody massive holiday doing the degree.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
When I first went into TEFL it seemed like being a 4-weeker was the bare minimum. Now if you are a 4-weeker you seem to have exalted status at language schools because so few people have them. Nothing, fakes or internet shite seems the norm. On the other end of the scale everybody and his dog are doing MAs and the value of them has gone down as there aren’t the jobs available. PHDs of course are rare in the TEFL game as few have the time, money, interest or can get the funding and if they do they sure as hell won’t go in the classroom unless perhaps in Japan or Korea. Distance learning has flooded the market with qualifications of all varieties.
February 17th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Try getting a decent job in the UK without a PHD. for that matter, try with a PHD.
February 17th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
What has the UK got to do with it? With a PHD in any TEFL like “discipline” (ha ha) you are gonna be working abroad. Better to do a Tom Godfrey and very campily con others out of money and train the fresh meat.