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You can already be a good experienced teacher of English as a foreign language, but it is never too late to learn something new. As the idiom says: “live and learn”. I want to share what was useful for me from my TEFL/TESOL course. In the first place, it is not a secret that there are so many different approaches and methods of teaching English. It can be quite difficult to decide which one is the best to use. Unfortunately, there is no clear answer, as much will depend upon your individual circumstances. Your personality, the culture of the students, and their needs all play a part in your decision. Your students need to be motivated, be exposed to the language and have the opportunity to use it, and then you need to make sure that all these factors come into play in the classroom. When you have an effective method, you will quickly succeed. Jeremy Harmer put an effective method; he called these elements ‘ESA’-Engage, Study and Activate. As part of the TEFL/TESOL course, teaching ESA is the most effective and the most logical of all the methodologies for teachers to learn and apply in the classroom. I am convinced that Jeremy Harmers’ ESA (Engage, Study, Activate) methodology is very effective. I used this methodology to plan my lessons. I found a Straight Arrow ESA lesson useful, I did not know about this method before taking the TEFL/TESOL course. Secondly, the International TEFL/TESOL Training course in Teaching English to Young Learners gave the answer: “What is a young learner?”. Course defined young learners as anyone in the age range of five years to thirteen years. This range of five to thirteen is too wide a group to considered only one form of teaching methodology so the course therefore split this age band further in two groups. The first group is for the five to nine years of age group and the second group is for the nine to thirteen of age group. For first group attention spans are short so the lesson would normally encompass a whole range of activities. For the second group you can roughly follow ESA methodology. Students taking time in the main aim of the lessons and a variety of practice activities, in a safe and controlled environment should be covered, before moving to free speaking activities. This information will help you with classroom management when you should teach a different age group or varying level group. Finally, this course gave many useful points that you need to bear in mind. How to give a feedback without destroying a motivation. You need to make sure that you remain positive when replying to suggestions, using language such as "nearly" or “you are close”. Some basic principles for board-work, such as capitalized text is more difficult to read than lower case text. Sometimes it seems that capital letters are better visible, but this is not true. How organize a learning environment. Examples of lesson plan. Many links to internet resources with games, stories, ideas for craft works and so on. Information about cultural issues. This course enhances the qualifications of the teacher.
