The TEFL Civil War Quote of the Day
“even universities do not insist on any proper teaching qualifications but rather MAs and PHds.”
Love it! I love baiting university English teachers as much as anyone I know, but not sure even I would be brave enough to say that. New TEFL bloggers- they know no fear! Go and give Mike, my new fellow TEFL.net/ Englishclub.com blogger a bit of encouragement and protect him from the Rave’s ESL Au Lait flamers if they ever track him down here.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Yeah, but, Alex … at Uni they don’t teach - they lecture. Different game entirely. Knowledge is revered, not any ‘method’.
What would you prefer - a lecturer who had you sitting on the floor holding hands, asking you to express your sadness for all the poor of the 3rd World, or one who could actually point out the reasons for it and the possible solutions?
Bit of a no-brainer to me!
March 28th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Crikey, Alex, was I being controversial in stating the above bit of info?
What makes anyone think they can teach English to foreigners just because they’ve got an MA unless that MA had observed English teaching practice thrown in? An MA means you’re good at research doesn’t it?
I’m not saying you’ll be a good teacher just because you’ve got a CELTA - you’d have to be determined to fail that after the price of it. But at least these people have opened themselves up for observation and feedback.
But I would say that a DELTA or equivalent is the badge of a good teacher as it’s pretty hard and involves more stressful observations. They’ll find you out there if you’re no good.
Course, you’ve got your naturals as well but just because you’ve got an MA - am I missing something??
Mike
March 29th, 2008 at 3:58 am
Mike, for me it’s absolute common sense- but try saying that on an TEFL forum with MATESOLers around and see the reaction to knocking their sense of superiority…
Sandy- Most MA qualified native speakers in universities abroad teach English language such as how to write an English essay, give a presentation in English or pass IELTS or TOEIC. That is teaching, not lecturing. Or at least it should be- that recent article below from Columbia University suggest precisely that what is going on is lecturing. If they are teaching linguistics or English Lit, that is different and I’d want an MA rather than/ as well as a proper teaching certificate from them- although actually all the things I read on how to do a lecture well when I was researching an article on teaching very large classes sounded a lot more like TEFL than it did my university Physics classes.
March 29th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Point taken, Alex.
Still it vexes me. An MATESOL is a good thing. It’s a difficult task and anyone who does it will learn a fair bit from the theoretical point of view. That dissertation isn’t easy, I know.
But unless it was like one or two on offer in the UK where you have to do a PG Dip first which incorporate what is basically a beefed up CELTA in there with observed teaching practice over several weeks, you can hardly claim to have true teaching credentials.
You may be a natural, but we’d have to take your word/your students word for that!
Surely anyone intelligent enough to have made it through an MATESOL course can accept that there’s a difference between knowing about a subject and having the skills to teach it.
Surely our profs at university give us the truth of this. Anyway, I know with many of you out there, I’m preaching to the choir.
MATESOLs without teaching qualifications but with a few years teaching experience under their belts are often a little like the hundreds of teachers we have in Korea - experience but no qualification. They often have a common sense approach to teaching that has crystallised over time and they are very hard to train from the DoS point of view.
One of the reasons for this is the relatively undemanding and uncritical audience in a lot of countries around the world.
I challenge them all here and now to go and do the DELTA or Trinity Dip! Do this guys, and you’ll remove any doubt about your competence because you were brave enough to open yourself up to feedback!
Alternatively with all your newly acquired knowledge on Second Language Acquisition and Psycholinguistics, you can go on being applauded by students around the world (perhaps rightly) but without the true respect of your fellow professionals.
Now, I think, I’m really in for a hiding! Bring it on! I’m just trying to help (honest…)
March 30th, 2008 at 12:04 am
The point that someone who has studied language acquisition should know the difference between theoretical book knowledge (someone who has studied English by grammar translation/ a pre-experience MATESOL) and a practical ability (someone who has picked a language up or been taught communication/ a CELTA then DELTA or a PGCE teacher) is one of my favourite. As I mentioned in a post about a week ago, though,the point of MAs is to keep people out of the profession rather than to improve the teaching of those in it, which as far as the pay for the people in it go is a not bad, if a little selfish, idea