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…)

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.

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

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!