Authorised TEFL certificate

Foreign Language ExperienceEnglish is the dominant language around the world used to communicate on a number of issues. Because English is used by many people in many places, there is a high demand for English teachers in foreign countries. For people from countries where English is the native or dominant language, teaching it to others seems as if it would be simple. It is something they learned growing up and it comes naturally to them. While taking a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) certification course, English speakers relearn English grammar on a more technical level. However, when relearning the grammar they think they know so well, many future tefl teachers realize that teaching English to those who do not speak it might be harder than they thought. But what about those English speakers who have learned another language? Does having experience learning a foreign language make people better teachers of their own? Having experience learning foreign languages can help tefl teachers teach English to their students even better because their knowledge of foreign language structures and their experiences as foreign language students give them insight on how to organize their classes and on potential problems that may occur in them. For tefl teachers who have learned Romance languages, when relearning English grammar they encounter names and structures they have learned before. First, the sentence structures are generally the same so it will be easier for tefl teachers to relearn and teach sentences because they have been taught the same ones in an alternate form. When relearning verb tenses Romance language speaking tefl teachers have an advantage because they are used to seeing the different names and constructions of verbs. Because of the familiarity with the parts they need for verb tenses, tefl teachers who speak Latin based languages can apply what they already know which makes to relate to English. For example, after studying Italian, a tefl teacher knows several past, present, and future verb tenses and the components and conjugations needed for each of them. She is used to hearing technical terms like ?past participle? and instantly knows what they refer to in both languages since she already connected the words in each language together when learning them. When seeing these same technical terms again but for English grammar, it is easier to know what they are asking for since she has already made connections to it. For those who studied Romance languages after learning English, relearning English grammar in a more mechanical manner comes more easily and they have a better idea of how to explain it when they teach it. For tefl teachers who learned Asian languages, they sometimes encounter different structures which they are not accustomed to in English. However, by learning them it enables them to understand the differences within the two languages and use that knowledge to produce better explanations. Because they might have had difficulties when learning these structures and trying to relate them to English ones, they know of what problems their students might have when learning them in English. In the case of chinese, the sense of time is very different than that of English. Yet, if a tefl teacher studied chinese, they might have an easier time explaining it to native chinese speaking students. Similarly, for tefl teachers who might have studied japanese or korean, they might have an easier time explaining sentence structures to students whose native languages have a subject-object-verb (SVO) sentence order since they too will know what it was like to have to think in an entirely different order. Because they have already learned it, people who learn Asian languages can anticipate problems students might have and think of better ways to help them understand English since they might have shared similar experiences. People who have not intensively studied English or Linguistics, but learned another foreign language have a better sense of awareness when taking a tefl course and teaching EFL classes. They are more aware of the mechanics of grammar since they had to break them down while learning a different language. They are also better able to anticipate problems their students might have since they can relate their experiences learning a foreign language to ones their students might experience. Then, because of this knowledge, multilingual tefl teachers can come up with improved approaches to difficult concepts. So, foreign language experience is extremely valuable when teaching another language because the insight these tefl teachers have benefits themselves and their students.