TEFL Pacific Missouri

This course has been more challenging that I thought it would be when I set out. Primarily because I know much less about the grammar and structure of the language I use every day! While I was slightly aware of this issue, this class really brought it into the light. I am thankful to have more knowledge about the english language and I know it will greatly benefit me in the future. I have worked as a secondary Social Studies teacher in the united states, so the parts of the course that have dealt with how to teach and how to interact with students was very familiar to me. However, I realised that much of what I have been trained to do has to be a bit undone in the esl classroom. What works in a history classroom does not work in an esl classroom in many ways so this course has been very beneficial because while I probably would have been able to teach english in a foreign country based on the facts that I am a native speaker and am trained as a teacher, I realise this course has set me up to be much more successful due to the fact that it refocused my mind on how to teach english specifically. I know that is the point of the course, but I didn't realise how great a tendency I would have had to veer towards teaching a topic and expecting students to pick up english as we did that. That may sound crazy, but I thought that is more like what an esl class would be. I feel that the course helped me to see what types of lessons I would actually be teaching and help me think through what those would look like. Though my husband and I are currently in london, we plan to move to Turkey in the next year or so. There will be opportunities to help with english classes where we are, but we believe we will have even more opportunity when we move to Turkey. We look forward to being in the classroom again and teaching students english. This course has helped me feel more confident and knowledgable about teaching english when we move to Turkey.