Thread: TEFL or CELTA to teach English?

Most courses teach you how to communicate first!!

In the Tesol course I attended the grammar wasn't the "have to have", the Germans are great at grammar first then communication, (Married to one) I prefer the ability to talk and have a chat, grammar is important of course. But not vital to communication.

I am sure that is the correct way, javd.

My daughter was taught Spanish by a Chilean teacher in the form of conversation. His maxim was - " think of learning a language as a baby does - he hears the words only ". He would not let her write or see the written word until she could speak to him.
I was taught at the same time with OH by a lady ( Spanish was not her native tonugue ) and she insisted on pages of tedious grammar .

The moral of this lesson ? Guess who is fluent in Spanish now ?

I ony referred to " had had " for those doing advanced lessons for examinations as this young man was, as I said. I really could not explain to him in a way that made any sense to him because the same format didn't exist in his own language.

Interesting thread, well for me, any way

Teaching English is Spain can be so demoralising, many of the students are forced to attend classes by their parents, others are only there to pass Cambrisge examinations, it seems that very few want to learn for the pleasure of it.

Of course as a teacher it is my job to ascertain the needs of the student and then prepare lessons that keep them learning. Generally I prefer talking to the student, giving them the confidence to use a subset of vocabulary in short sentences. At some point though the teacher needs to recognise that the student has enough knowledge to start pushing them to learn more, and this is when reading comprehension, and grammar become a necessary evil.

Fortunately, even with advanced students, the teacher usually decides the content of the lesson giving you plenty of time before lesson to really get to grips with the material. I'm not going to go into the cold spare room right now, but if anyone is interested I have a couple of grammar books I could mention that make a huge difference when teaching grammar.

I agree that holding a qualification is not necessarily going to get you better work. What it does give you, however, is a bit of an edge when applying for jobs in English schools here, which if fine if that's where you want to be. And which qualification is preferable will depend on the schools.

Personally I've never held the qualifications mentioned here, and learnt most of the grammar I need for classes from preparing the classes themselves (If you teach, initially, using courses with a good teachers' book and key, then you should be OK with the explanations and, as pointed out, if you don't know the answer you can always say "I'm not sure on that one - I'll make a point of finding a good explanation/some useful examples for the next class")

Once out of the schools and working freelance (which is always more profitable and rewarding from my point of view) then it's not the qualifications that will sell you but the experience you have. If you're a biologist, you might want to advertise on the noticeboards of the Biology departments of local universities. There you might find people willing to pay a good price per hour not for your ability to explain "had had" but for your ability to talk fluently about the subject they're interested in, or to correct the academic papers they're sending to scientific journals.

Hope this is of help.

Giles