TEFL Goyang

If people had told me a year ago that I would now be sitting at my computer frantically typing my last assignment of the tefl course at 6 o’clock in the morning, I would have told them they were crazy. I would have told them that I already had a job and that I didn’t think I had it in me to be a teacher. Didn’t a teacher have to know far more than the students? Didn’t a teacher have to be confident standing up in front of a class of students and speaking with assurance on a subject as scary as english grammar? If I had known just how thorough the tefl course was a year ago, I would have jumped right in there and then. If I had known that the level of support you get whilst studying for this certificate was so helpful and amazing that you never feel you’re doing this on your own, I would have signed up immediately. It really has been an exceptional experience for me. However, there are just a few things I wish I had known before starting the course. Firstly, I never anticipated the workload would be this challenging. However naïve that may sound, I had told myself that I had already made it through my university degree, so the workload couldn’t be any worse. I was wrong. I set myself a goal of completing a unit of the course per day in order to get through the course as quickly as possible, whilst still gaining a thorough understanding of the materials. Some units were straightforward and easy to navigate, but some units were a lot more challenging and I had to spend most of the day working through the unit in smaller sections so as not to feel too overwhelmed. As tough as the workload has been for this course though, I do feel that the content of it has been so thorough that I feel ready and prepared for the classroom now. Had the course been easier and shorter, I don’t think I would have had this much confidence in my abilities now. Before starting the course, I also wish I had known how difficult the english language is! I speak two other languages in addition to english and I don’t remember struggling too much whilst learning them. Swedish, in particular, was very easy to grasp, with fairly simple grammar and very few irregular verbs to learn. As a native english speaker, I rarely think about pronunciation of words or sentence formation, but as I was working through the grammar units I began to realise that english is not an easy language to learn at all. The combination of twelve verb tenses and all those irregular verbs……how do people do it? Having english proficiency is something I’ve taken for granted all my life, but now I appreciate just how much of an overwhelming challenge learning the language can be for a non-native english speaker. I hope this new-found realisation makes me a compassionate and understanding teacher. As I have previously stated, if I had known that the benefits of taking this course far outweigh the challenges of it, I would have signed up a long time ago. I wish I had known earlier that by the end of this course I would feel this confident in my teaching abilities, which were non-existent until a few weeks ago. The course has taught me so much more than grammar and teaching methodologies. Thanks to the amazing support of my tutor and the excellent course materials, it has also supplied me with the tools and resources for actually standing in front of a class myself and feeling positive and confident that I can teach english. I am extremely excited at the prospect of a new career and my only regret in taking this course is that I did not do it much sooner.