Course Experience: Alumni Review of The TEFL Course
In general, my experience with this online TEFL course was highly positive and worth both my time and money. Generally, I felt like the entire course was relatively straightforward in the design and layout. The individual content for each unit, how each unit is placed about each other, and the content of each test was mostly easy to understand and felt very relevant to what I imagine I might expect when teaching English abroad. Of course, as I have not taught English before, I feel the knowledge I gained from this course will prove useful for most situations I may come across.
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This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Joseph D. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
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The ability to download each unit is something I can't praise enough, having the utility of each unit at my disposal anytime I have my laptop or phone, I think will help both reinforce the knowledge from the course and help out in any troubling times I might have during teaching. If I feel stuck or overwhelmed, I can turn to my phone and check which unit applies to any difficult situation I might find myself in. These comments especially go towards the two videos of the mock lessons. Until I reached that point in the course, I was still feeling uneasy and nervous about how a lesson might work in practicality. The unit before, unit 10 lesson planning, eased some of this tension but the unit after, unit 11 video lessons, really helped me grasp what a classroom lesson might look like.
Also, having both 'bad' and 'good' video lessons give me a basic set of ideas to work towards and work against. As I am a native English speaker with a good grasp of the English language and its functioning, the main takeaway lessons I had, as you could imagine from my above statements, where the units on how to run a lesson and what different scenarios one might face teaching English. These were, as mentioned, units 10 and 11, as well as the final two units, unit 19 teaching special groups and unit 20 troubleshooting. I liked how unit 19 told what is generally most favored in terms of groups to teach, e.g., children are generally the most enjoyable whereas business classes can be tough. This will aid me immensely when searching for teaching positions in the desired country I aim to go to.
Also Read: Are online TEFL courses valid?
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Of course, not everyone can be happy with everything in something as in-depth as this TEFL course is and I did have some challenges with some lessons concerning their structures and importance. The main difficulties I had were with units such as unit 18 modals, etc., and unit 13 teaching pronunciation, etc. Bear in mind, I have no teaching experience so my comments are to be taken with a good deal of skepticism, however, I did feel these units were especially dense and contained hard to grasp concepts that could have been explained better.
More practical examples could have been used for unit 18 particularly. And I am unsure how important the fine details found in these units will be in practicality with teaching English. Again, this opinion is based on no real experience so I hope to be made wrong when I come to teach. To conclude, my main takeaway from my course experience is to be thoroughly prepared for each lesson and provide suitable variety and necessary content whilst maintaining a non-judgemental and encouraging attitude to my future students.
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