Completing a
tefl course can make a
teacher more capable and thus confident in their job which both improves a
teacher's prospects of getting a job, performing well and getting better jobs in the future. The
teacher's competency improves in a number of key areas. Perhaps most importantly, especially for native
english teachers with no prior
english education qualifications, the
teacher's knowledge of the
english grammatical system improves vastly. While this knowledge is already possessed in an instinctive fashion by many such
teachers, they lack the ability to explain and describe the grammatical system which makes a given piece of
english correct or incorrect. Without such capabilities, the
teacher will struggle greatly in guiding their students in producing grammatically correct
english.
A second key improvement for
tefl trained
teachers is in the area of classroom management. While some of the techniques suggested in the course may seem like common sense, and may well have occurred to the student, the
questions posed to the
teacher during the course force more profound thought on such issues than might otherwise be the case. A
teacher who has done a
tefl course therefore has a better understanding of how to manage a classroom in such a way as to promote a disciplined, efficient and consequently effective learning environment for pupils.
A non-
tefl trained
teacher without experience also usually has no idea of how to plan a lesson in such a way as to make students learning effective.
teachers who undertake the course will have a far better understanding of how to incorporate effective
tefl methodology within their lessons. They are thus more likely to gain students attention and lessen their inhibitions at the start of the lesson if they employ an effective engage stage and later on to instigate the crucial area of student verbal communication if this is followed by an effective study and activate stage. A
teacher who has planned well is also more likely to spot problems which they or their students might encounter and integrate effective learning solutions into the design of the lesson. Furthermore, if the
teacher keeps a hold of their lesson plans and subsequently reflects on the successfulness of these techniques and how they might be improved in the future, lesson planning can also be a key ingredient in increasing a
teacher's proficiency.
A
tefl course can also be particularly useful for a native speaker when reflecting on areas of
english communication, which they may have taken for granted. A case in point here is some of the intricacies in the
english pronunciation and phonology system, such as how certain words are conjoined when spoken or how intonation and stress can be used to change the meaning of the same word or sentence. Again, while perhaps already being subconsciously aware of this, a
tefl course can force a native
english speaker to realise the importance of these factors and think more deeply about how these facets of the
english language were used within their own past conversational experiences depending on the nature of the communicative context. This kind of
english knowledge is crucial for students trying to understand how the language is used, and therefore, taking a
tefl course is a vital first step in helping
teacher's realise its importance, and how they might go about teaching it.
In conclusion, knowledge of these factors will instill inexperienced
teachers with a far greater
degree of certainty as to how they should approach
english language teaching, where they might otherwise have been confined largely to a greater amount of trial and error based guess work. This will mean that in the early days of a
teacher's career they will have firm foundations upon which to build and so will spend more time working on improving the finer aspects of their teaching skills rather than trying to work out their basic teaching methodology. Consequently this means that employers are more likely to be satisfied with their initial performance and therefore provide them with good references that may be critical in obtaining quality teaching positions in the future.