After leaving the corporate world when my cruise ship contract ended last August, I decided to take on a new adventure. I touched base on this in a previous post, but I wanted to go more in depth on the topic of TEFL certification. Most English teaching jobs require you to have a Bachelors degree, in addition to a TEFL or the equivalent (CELTA, TESOL, etc.) Therefore, I knew I needed to hop on that before I could even be considered as a potential candidate by any school. I'll be honest, I really had no idea where to start. I spent hours on the internet trying to find something reasonably priced. I was also looking for very crucial things that came with a specific program; job assistance, a minimum of 100 course hours (solely class hours, doesn't include student teaching hours), 20 student teaching hours, an accredited school. A lot of ads for TEFL certifications online are scams and schools (notable in Asia) can be very particular about where you earn your certification. During this time, I was stuck at home with no car so I chose to do an online class. I went through the International TEFL Academy which is based in Chicago, and they have schools operating all over the world. The advisors are there to guide you every step of the way, they offer a job guidance resource guide, and the most quality academic content for you money.
My class lasted eleven weeks making it slower paced than the on-site classes. This online class was just like being in college again, you don't work at your own pace and finish it whenever. The instructor sets due dates for everything which was normally 1 week apart. The first couple of weeks was solely about starting from scratch with the basic of grammar, the foundations of linguistics, the development of English, the language tree, and so on. The following weeks were focused on different teaching methods such grammar translation method, TPR (total physical response), communicative, direct, audio lingual, and more. Each week consisted of a reading (you dont have to pay for the ebook with this school, unless you want a physical textbook). After the reading there was a discussion forum that you had to post to based on that reading. I think this was a way to give us a sense of community even if we were learning remotely. There was also a quiz every single week for the given topic, then a mid-term halfway through the course, followed by a final project at the end. Besides quizzes, tests, discussion forum, and writing essays, there were also main assignments worth most of your grade for that week. Since this is a teaching course, those main assignments were to create a lesson plan based on the teaching method of that week. These were definitely a struggle for me, and took a lot of trial and error to finally get somewhat proficient in the flow of planning a lesson. Another component of TEFL coursework is called a practicum aka student teaching. Many programs require between 15-20 hours of this. The International TEFL Academy gives you a very useful and detailed guide on how to accomplish this. In addition, they give you a list of places that offer volunteer teaching locations of the state you live in. Unfortunately for Florida, the list was really outdated and most of the organizations weren't operating or their communication was lacking. At the time, I was teaching English online so I used my job for my practicum hours and they were accepted.
My verdict? I didn't start taking this course seriously until the third week when I started to felt like I was back in college again. It really is that intense with the lecture, studying, and assignments to which I dedicated about 20 hours a week to. Based on different ways that people learn, if you need a more hands on approach, online is not for you. Even though there were additional resources like pre-recorded Zoom lectures and podcasts. As much as I enjoy learning online and teaching myself, but I was never physically in the classroom. Therefore I feel that my experience was definitely lacking in that sense when I came to Korea.
I hope you enjoyed this informational post to make your dreams of teaching abroad a reality. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, or get in touch with the wonderful staff at https://www.internationalteflacademy.com/ . As always, stay tuned for more posts as I document my life abroad.
- Michaela
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