Teach English in Suohuang Zhen - Yangquan Shi

When I decided to take on a job of teaching English to small Spanish children ,and endeavoured to gain a TEFL certificate,I was unaware of what the course entailed, but I was however open-minded and ready to learn whatever was necessary.The promise of a part time job in a local language school has kept my motivation high throughout the twenty units of the course.Some units were quite straight forward ,others required more time and concentration. Having completed the course, and after taking more time to do it than I had originally expected, I ask myself, what is the best thing that I have learned from it? It is a difficult question to answer ,as I have learned so much. As a complete newcomer to the world of teaching in any form, I was surprised at the amount of skills and techniques involved in teaching English as a foreign language. It was something that I had never really considered as there is so much more to teaching English than being able to speak it. From the very beginning, in the first unit about the role of a teacher,the different kinds of learners, and the different classes of beginners ,I felt that as an abslolute beginner, I had so very much to learn, and was quite daunted to begin with! However I have become more inspired and motivated as the course has progressed. I have tried to be consistant and disciplined in the way that I have worked through the course,taking more time on the units that required it, revising verb tenses and other grammatical points separately. Later on, in the part of the course dedicated to methodology and techniques I began to understand that there is more to teaching English to foreign students than standing up in front of the class reciting grammatical rules and speaking with a perfect midland English accent. It is necessary for a teacher to move around the class, change the dynamics of the lesson regularly and keep student motivation high by making classes interesting and fun. A teacher of small chidren should be prepared to get down on the floor and do the activities together with the children,and should also be ready to laugh at oneself ocasionally!These things I look forward to doing when I start my new career as a teacher. The role a teacher plays in the life of learners of all ages is of vital importance to sucessful learning, and teachers should firm yet kind and patient, who doesn´t remember the strictest and yet fairest teacher from their schooldays? I have thouroghly enjoyed the sections where we revise English grammar,it has been a long time since my grammatical skills were put to the test, and in some cases they proved to be a little rusty and needing more work,work that I have already commenced, as while studying this course I have acquired a fascination for English grammar and its rules. One of the observations made at one point in the course ,and one that I will always try to remember is, that an error should not be confused with a mistake, that it is much more important that a student (especially a child) acquires confidence and fluency in their spoken English, and that any grammatical issues that arise can be corrected later. I have lived and worked in Spain for over thirty years, I have had to study and speak Spanish to be able to function properly in a foreign language enviroment, consequently I have a deep understanding of the frustration a person feels in an place where they don´t understand the language. As a conclusion ,the answer to the question of what is the best thing I´ve learned from this course , is that I have learned that I am capable of teaching English, that I am prepared for this new adventure ,and that this is only the beginning .