How To Become A Language Teacher

  The simple answer is no, you do not need to have any knowledge or experience of languages other than English to take a TEFL course or to become an EFL teacher. The ability to speak other languages is not required as the vast majority of TEFL classrooms around the world rely on the communicative approach to English teaching that specifies that English is the only language used in the classroom. In multilingual classrooms where the students could have a dozen or more different first languages, being able to communicate in one or two of them would obviously be of no particular advantage. In monolingual classrooms you may also find that students are more inclined to revert to their mother tongue during the lesson if they are aware that the teacher can understand what is being said....  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "Which countries require a degree to teach ESL?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol-jobs/can-i-teach-esl-without-a-bachelor-s-degree/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "Why do I need a degree to teach ESL in some areas?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol-jobs/can-i-teach-esl-without-a-bachelor-s-degree/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "How can a non-degree holder boost their chances in the ESL job market?","url":...  [Read more]

English is one of the most commonly used second languages across much of the world and it is currently being studied by tens of millions of people from all backgrounds and cultures. How and where they choose to study can vary considerably, but one thing that most English language students have in common is that their studies are led by a tutor known as a TESOL teacher (or something similar such as ESL teacher, TEFL teacher, etc). The role of a TESOL teacher is to slowly build up their student's abilities in the four language skills; reading, writing, speaking, and listening, to enable them to reach their individual study goals, which could be for work, study, travel, or a variety of other reasons. Please note: the acronym TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. ...  [Read more]

Download the brochure on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and open the door to a new and exciting future living and working abroad. Learn more about our company, our wide variety of training courses, our job assistance services, and much more.  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "How is an ESL teacher different from a foreign language teacher?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-is-an-esl-teacher/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "What age groups do ESL teachers work with?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-is-an-esl-teacher/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "Where do ESL teachers work?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-is-an-esl-teacher/#nameh3"},{"@context":...  [Read more]

The Role of the Teacher If only the role of a teacher was as easy as being a ‘medium through which students learn’. In today’s day and age, no matter what country the role takes place in, a teacher is so much more than a resource for information. When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, simply because I wanted to write on the chalkboard! My teachers seemed to be the greatest printers, curving their letters just so, and I wanted to do it also! Now, after ‘higher education’, and three different career paths, I have come back to wanting to be a teacher, but my reasons have changed. I was fortunate in my years of high school, to have teachers that really cared about me as an individual, and I want to give this back. This is where the difference between...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "Communication","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/how-do-i-become-a-great-esl-teacher/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "Passion","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/how-do-i-become-a-great-esl-teacher/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "Patience","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/how-do-i-become-a-great-esl-teacher/#nameh3"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id":...  [Read more]

Common Linguistic problems Contronyms, Heteronyms, Idioms, Oh my! English is an extremely complex language. Before a student can be considered truly proficient, he/she must not only master a variety of tenses and irregular verbs, sentence structure and parts of speech, but he/she must also work to understand and master lexical and structural ambiguities. Lexical ambiguities are very common and have a variety of names and definitions depending on the level of ambiguity. Homonyms are words that have the same spelling, but two or more meanings. An example of this is: mean. Is it describing an unkind person? Is it an average? Is someone talking about the definition of a word? Another type of lexical ambiguity is the heteronym. These are words that are spelled the same, but have different...  [Read more]

Teacher Self Analysis My early experiences of learning in the State education system of the UK clearly affected my career and attitude to education. In the main, I was taught by root, this had the affect of making me become bored and if I am honest, I did not take full advantage of my education. Later realising I still had some untapped potential I enrolled on a course in Higher Education. I expected the same teaching methods that I had experienced earlier in my life, but instead found a more progressive, student centered approach. My motivation was high and I achieved my Certificate in Education. I took these varied experiences with me when I entered teaching some ten years ago. I soon found that most learners at the college were I worked were poorly motivated, lacking drive and...  [Read more]

Classroom Management The meaning of classroom management is the skill of organizing and managing a class whilst maintaining a friendly relaxed manner and maintaining discipline. I am going to begin by sharing my experiences of being on the receiving end of classroom management and stating what I found effective and what I didn't find effective. I think as a teacher you have to adapt to the level and age of the students you are teaching. When I was in first school I was treated very differently to when I was in high school. During middle school and high school especially, we could analyze and estimate what our limits would be with certain teachers. I found that the teachers who maintained discipline from the beginning had a lot more control over a class as opposed to a teacher who didn't....  [Read more]

Building Confidence in Students Education is certainly the birthright of all people. The motivation of every nation should be to generate literate, well-educated and intelligent residents who are able to add to the proper progress and progress of the whole society. There is still mystery on how accurately a foreign language is learnt. On the subject of building confidence there are yet more theories which are even more difficult to confirm. I myself do not trust that confidence is built using one magic activity, but rather it is continuously acquired all over the learning process. That’s why, all the theories I pick to focus on three things Grammar, Drilling, and of course the role of the teacher. All of these will prepare the student for circumstances they might meet later. [1] After...  [Read more]

  Globalization and the increasing demand for English speaking professionals all over the world, especially in emerging regions, has brought about a new, steadily growing sector: English as a Second Language (ESL). An ESL teacher is, therefore, an educator who works with English Language Learners (ELLs) whose native language is not English. The goal of the ESL teacher is to help the students reach a certain level of fluency in English, on both a spoken and written level. ESL educators are not to be confused with foreign language teachers. ESL teachers do not share the same native language and are specifically trained to offer explanations and directed teaching methods to non-English speakers. This teaching style is mainly focused on repetition, drills, demonstrations, and...  [Read more]

Teaching one-to-one Teaching English as a foreign language can be done one of two ways: teaching a group of students or by teaching on a one-to-one basis. It’s estimated that up to 40% of TESOL teaching is done one-to-one, however teachers find it increasingly difficult to find relevant material, advice and assistance on the method. Nicola Meldrum argues that teaching one-to-one “unfortunately is not covered much in ELT discussion” and that ‘It is somehow assumed that teaching English as a foreign language means organizing huge groups of students, while the reality is that one to one is a normal and significant part of our teaching lives”. Teachers are in effect left to their own devices; however this doesn’t stop the concept of teaching one-to-one being an effective and...  [Read more]

Teacher Career Development Wikipedia® states that the study of career development looks at how individuals manage their careers within and between organizations and how the organizations structure the career progress of their members. This is alluding to the fact that professionals and organizations are in a partnership. This definition fails to mention the importance and influence of colleagues throughout the lifetime of a career. It is the freedom and support that is given to the teacher by her employer and colleagues throughout the lifetime of her career that can create the feelings of happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment, to not have this can lead to a career that is discarded only to search for something that may not be as rewarding. So what happens to teachers when the...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "What are the basic requirements for becoming a TESOL trainer?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol-jobs/how-do-i-become-a-tesol-trainer/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "What are the characteristics of a TESOL trainer?","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol-jobs/how-do-i-become-a-tesol-trainer/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "Do I need advanced qualifications to become a TESOL trainer?","url":...  [Read more]

Pronunciation Problems for Chinese Students of English As a global language, English has been popularly taught as the second language in China for quite a few years. Now there are more Chinese people learning English on various purposes, such as applying for a higher paid job, studying and living abroad, or establishing business with western countries. According to my experience of learning and teaching English, it is harder to master English pronunciation than English grammar for Chinese students. Chinese grammar may appear quite simple compared to that of many highly-inflected Western languages (e.g. Russian, Latin, etc.), or even the low-scale verb conjugations, for instance, of English (e.g. "swim, swam, swum") because of the lack of inflections. Even though there are similarities...  [Read more]

  Connected speech is also an important element of phonology and it's involved in joining words together in an effect to make our speech more efficient. Some might say it's a product of being lazy but nonetheless it's what we all do and we want all of our non-native speakers to speak as naturally as possible, so we have to be aware of these things. Here are a few of the more common examples. We have linking, dropping, changing and extra lettering. An example of each would be with linking, we link our words together so that they almost in effect become one word. Instead of saying ?What do you want to do,? we typically will say ?Whatdoyou want to do?? Then, we can also have dropping. Rather than pronouncing each and every consonant, we can sometimes, especially in certain accents,...  [Read more]

  Globalization and the increasing demand for English speaking professionals all over the world, especially in emerging regions, has brought about a new, steadily growing sector: English as a Second Language (ESL). An ESL teacher is, therefore, an educator who works with English Language Learners (ELLs) whose native language is not English. The goal of the ESL teacher is to help the students reach a certain level of fluency in English, on both a spoken and written level. ESL educators are not to be confused with foreign language teachers. ESL teachers do not share the same native language and are specifically trained to offer explanations and directed teaching methods to non-English speakers. This teaching style is mainly focused on repetition, drills, demonstrations, and...  [Read more]

The land that gave us Plato and Aristotle, also bequeathed us the symposium, or drinking party. The latter still being alive and well today. These days Greece is a country that pivots around its huge tourist industry, and this falls into two types: There are those who come seeking the cultural experience to be gained from visiting ancient monuments, like the Acropolis in smoggy Athens, and there are those who like to party it up on the island resorts. Perfection, as Aristotle observed, resides between extremes, and the person who seeks eudaemonia - the good life in the best of all possible worlds - perhaps does a bit of both. Given the tourist orientation of the country it is important to remember that a good deal of the services laid on to support visitors go into hibernation between...  [Read more]

{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ [ {"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh0","name": "Communication","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-makes-a-great-tesol-teacher/#nameh0"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh1","name": "Passion","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-makes-a-great-tesol-teacher/#nameh1"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name": "Patience","url": "https://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-faqs/tefl-tesol/what-makes-a-great-tesol-teacher/#nameh3"},{"@context": "https://schema.org","@type": "SiteNavigationElement","@id": "#nameh3","name":...  [Read more]