Success on your Certificate Course in English Language Teaching

A guide to becoming a teacher in ELT/TESOL

Caroline Brandt

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781412920605, 9781412920599
• eBook ISBN: 9781446237236
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

`Extremely comprehensive and well written in terms of style – accessible to the reader, but intelligent and expressing some fairly subtle concepts. Would that more ELT practitioners could do the same!... Certainly a good read for those thinking about and also those engaged in initial training – or even post initial training stage? - Jenny Pugsley, Head of TESOL, Trinity College London

 

?It's essential reading whether you are simply curious about what is involved in training in ELT, need advice on choosing the right course, have already enrolled and want to make the most of your course, or are a new teacher just starting out. It's a book I wish I'd had when I was starting out in my ELT career, and that I wish had been available to many of the course participants I have tutored? - Lyn Strutt, ELT author and Chair of the British Council Families Association

 

Each year, thousands of people all over the world take one of the hundreds of available short pre-service courses that lead to the award of a certificate in English Language Teaching (ELT) or Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Caroline Brandt?s book is an invaluable guide to anyone thinking of enrolling on one of these courses. With a clear and concise structure that follows your general interest in TESOL right through to the intricacies of the course itself, it can be used from initial research stages to final qualifications, and beyond. Brandt?s decades of experience in this field across the globe shine through.

 

Chapters include:

-introducing English Language Teaching

-becoming qualified

-knowing your certificate course

-getting started

-learning

-working together

-being qualified.

 

Throughout the book there are snapshots of students? experiences in their own words, and summaries of key points for you to take with you - whether into the next stage of learning or the next day?s teaching. The chapters are stand alone resources as well as the building blocks to becoming a fully-qualified English Language teacher.

 

The book is supported by a companion website, which provides quizzes to test understanding of each chapter, lesson plan proformas, a full glossary and annotated website links.

Chapter 1

Setting the scene

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In this chapter you can Learn about:

• English Language Teaching and the kind of people the profession suits
• who this book is for
• why people take certificate courses
• the four aims of this book: to clarify the field of ELT/TESOL; to enable you to identify a good certificate course; to help you to succeed on your certificate course; and to help you to prepare for employment in ELT/TESOL
• the background of the author
• how to use this book.

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ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

English Language Teaching is a profession that is also known as Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages or Teaching English as a Foreign Language. All three labels are abbreviated, so you will come across ELT, TESOL and TEFL. The abbreviation ELT/TESOL is used throughout this book.

As a profession, ELT/TESOL offers a wide variety of interesting possibilities, including the opportunity to teach children or adults. This book is concerned in particular with English Language Teaching to adults.

A career in ELT/TESOL could suit you if:

• you like the thought of a job that involves working with language (though you do not need to speak English as a first language to become qualified to teach it; nor do you need to know a lot about English grammar before you begin)
• you would like a job that involves meeting and working with adults from other countries and cultures
• you like the idea of living and working in another country (though a career in ELT/TESOL does not necessarily mean you have to work abroad – you might well be able to stay in your home town).

If this description fits you, then you should read on. This book will tell you more about all of these aspects, and it will also tell you about how to become a qualified teacher in ELT/TESOL by taking one of the many certificate courses available.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

This book is for anyone who is:

• interested in learning about ELT/TESOL and what the field has to offer
• considering applying for a place on a certificate course with a view to gaining an initial ELT/TESOL qualification
• currently taking an ELT/TESOL certificate course.

Certificate courses are taken each year by thousands of adults of all ages and from a wide range of backgrounds. These courses are open to anyone who has a standard of education that would enable them to find a place in a higher education institution. This means that you do not need to be a university graduate to get a place on a certificate course.

WHY DO PEOPLE TAKE ELT/TESOL CERTIFICATE COURSES?

People take certificate courses for very many reasons. For example, perhaps you:

• are interested both in teaching and in English language
• want to support yourself during a ‘gap year’, before you continue with higher education
• are a recent university or college graduate, and see ELT/TESOL as a temporary career, until you decide what you want to do
• want to work in a country or countries other than your own
• have retired after a career in a different area but would like to continue working – ELT/TESOL can be a flexible and interesting choice
• are dissatisfied with your current job, or have been made redundant, and are seeking a change of career
• are a qualified teacher, and would like to expand your range of skills and qualifications to include an ELT/TESOL qualification
• are well qualified in another area, but living in a country where it is difficult to find employment in your field – you might be in this position if you accompany your partner overseas
• have children to take care of and would like flexible part-time work with opportunities for full-time employment and career development in the future.

If you take an ELT/TESOL certificate course, you will be working alongside people who are taking the course for any of the above reasons, and others besides.

THE AIMS OF THIS BOOK

This book has four main aims:

1. To clarify the field of ELT/TESOL

If you are interested in ELT/TESOL, you may well have typed ‘English Language Teaching’, ‘ELT’, ‘TESOL’, or something similar, into the search engine of your internet browser. This will have resulted in hundreds of thousands of results; an unmanageable figure. You will also have come across further abbreviations such as EFL, ESL, ESOL, and TESL in the process, as well as some jargon, such as ‘explicit grammar instruction’. And this is before you have even visited one of the websites that your search produced.

If you then perhaps refined your search to include the word ‘certificate’, you would have received tens of thousands of results this time, and a brief glance at only the first page of results might well tell you that you can take a certificate course over a weekend, online, by distance-learning, full-time, part-time, in the UK, in Thailand and in New Zealand. If you explored some of the sites further, you would probably have come across further abbreviations and jargon, such as CELTA, RSA, CertTESOL, UCLES, Cambridge ESOL, and guided observation.

You might also have visited websites where visitors have expressed their confusion and uncertainly about which certificates are recognized and which are not, and what is meant by ‘recognized’. You will almost certainly find some discussion about the meaning of the word ‘validation’, and you might also have read about people who have had bad experiences with certificate courses.

Such an initial encounter with the field of ELT/TESOL can be overwhelming, bewildering and discouraging. But help is at hand. This book clarifies ELT/TESOL in general. It will tell you what all those abbreviations mean, and what goes on under the auspices of the profession. It will also explain the terms ‘validation’ and ‘recognition’.

2. To enable you to identify a good certificate course in order to become a qualified teacher of ELT/TESOL with excellent employment potential

Two qualifications in particular are widely-recognized by employers internationally. These are:

• the Cambridge ESOL CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults)
• the Trinity College London CertTESOL (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).

While there are some differences, these two courses are sufficiently similar to allow them to be seen as representing one model or approach. This approach is referred to here as the ‘CELTA/CertTESOL approach’. It is both described in detail and used as the reference base for this book, because:

• CELTA and CertTESOL courses and qualifications enjoy significant popularity and are widely recognized and accepted by employers internationally.
• Many alternative courses, available all over the world, take a comparable approach.

CELTA and CertTESOL courses, being widely accepted, are excellent options, but many courses that follow t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Setting the scene
• Chapter 2: Introducing English Language Teaching
• Chapter 3: Becoming qualified
• Chapter 4: Knowing your certificate course
• Chapter 5: Getting started
• Chapter 6: Learning
• Chapter 7: Teaching
• Chapter 8: Working together
• Chapter 9: Succeeding
• Chapter 10: Being qualified
• References
• Index