Page 60 - Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies 2009

Chapter 3: Examining Courses, Qualifications and Jobs
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✓ To make sure that trainees can plan lessons with clear and achievable aims using methods appropriate to the learners’ levels of achievement and age.
✓ To give trainees basic classroom management skills and the ability to provide relevant activities.
✓ To make sure that trainees are able to use and adapt published teaching material and create their own basic teaching material.
✓ To highlight the main advantages and disadvantages of various language teaching approaches.
✓ To ensure that trainees can continue their development in TEFL after completing the course.
Before you start, the course provider sends you an EFL reading list and often asks you to complete a work book that provides an introduction to three important areas of the course. One is the unknown language section, the second is a grammar section and the third section is about how to teach.
Some courses include lessons in a foreign language so that you understand how the students in your class feel. Through these lessons you can gain the dual perspective of both a teacher and a student and experience various teaching techniques. You produce a project based on these lessons near the end of the course.
Teaching practice is an essential part of the course so expect real live stu- dents to volunteer to take part in your lesson. You also have the opportunity to see various other experienced teachers at work and your tutor gives you continual advice, feedback and support.
Courses with a learner profile project give you the opportunity to get to know one EFL student a bit better and analyse their language skills in depth. For the project, you usually conduct an interview with the student and record
it. In addition you set them a written task so that you can write about their strengths and weaknesses and discuss ways in which you would help them through EFL lessons. You may teach one lesson with the student in which you address one of that student’s weak points.
A materials project is designed to help you use and adapt basic materials, such as a photograph, in the classroom. You’re asked to show how to use the same set of materials with students of different levels and abilities.
At the end of the course there’s often a test on grammar and phonology (pronunciation).