Teach English in Sarsod - TEFL Courses

One thing I have gained from this course is the confidence to prepare work without any course material; obviously when I am teaching I will have course material to hand for me and my students to use and learn from, particularly if I am teaching in an Institute rather than privately, however I feel confident to prepare my own work on a bigger scale than solely relying on a course book, which in turn will aid my level of teaching and ability to improvise long term. A very useful aspect I have learned from new is the Phonemic Alphabet, which I had never used at school. So having seen it and learned how to use it I think it is something I shall definitely be using with students in the future, and I feel that it can be helpful for students no matter what level. I have put it into practice already with an 11 year old spanish/french girl I look after who I would say is almost fluent in english/upper intermediate; we looked at the Pronunciation Poem by George Bernard Shaw and we used the phonemics so that she could pronounce the words (most of which she already uses when speaking) without hearing it from me. She also uses it in her english lessons at school. As a native speaker I didn't realise/think too much about the way in which we link words and sounds naturally when we are speaking, so that they could sound as something else, eg. nineties/nine teas. Again, this has already come to light when I speak to the girl as occasionally she hasn't understood something I've said due to it sounding like something else. Something else I had forgotten since school are Phrasal Verbs and it's something I have recently been teaching to the girl; teaching the existing phrasal verbs and how to use them correctly depending on the article and object at hand. It's something I have noticed foreigners making mistakes with in general conversation so I feel it's something important to teach students learning english. I have been focusing on certain parts of speech with the girl as although her english is mostly perfect I have noticed a few areas she consistently makes errors with so the parts of speech PDF was extremely useful aiding my explanations. For example, I have been able to create my own texts, asking her to point out all the parts of speech and focus more on teaching her differences between possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives and how to differentiate between them depending on the following/preceding aspects of the sentence. Within this, I have been able to teach her the way in which we use countable and non-countable nouns correctly, eg. much bread/many onions. I found the Placement Test helpful as it has shown me the appropriate types of questions and statements to be using when evaluating and placing new students into levels, and it is something I will use whether I teach privately or in a school. I am fairly confident to start teaching as this course has shown me that I am already teaching english language properly and have been doing so over the years when I have had opportunities. And it has also simply jogged my memory since I left education at the age of 16 with simple things, like forming tenses and using auxiliary verbs. This course has shown me the values of teaching both in schools and privately and made me think about all the ways in which they could bring me the most enjoyment from teaching; the same for teaching children and adults. The equipment and teaching aids PDF was helpful for me fully realise all the different ways information can be displayed and in turn how each different one has its pros and cons within the classroom and how each one can be used for different teaching techniques, eg. using an OHP to reveal information gradually, keeping the pace of the lesson and so as not to bombard students with too much information, which then gives a teacher time to focus on each language point they are making. Whereas visual aids around the room can be temporary but also permanent and this aids students long term within lessons. The PDF and feedback from my tutor has also prompted me to give thought to the fact that some countries may not have all the equipment available or functioning well, due to the difference in their way of life/standard of living. So, it will always be a better idea to have extra work prepared should I need to improvise due to lack of/broken equipment. Lesson planning will be much easier after the many lesson plans in this course! In conjunction with ESA, which I hadn't given much thought to before, the course has been useful in teaching me how to properly structure a lesson and with the feedback provided by my tutor I can practice creating lesson plans based on improvements I have been made aware of.