TeachingEnglish
PGCE sufficient?
Submitted by RachelofRettendon on 14 February, 2012 - 12:29
Hello, I'm a UK qualified teacher and have taught primary school age children for over 20 years. I have an honours degree in English, and a PGCE qualification. Is this sufficient to apply for TEFL jobs abroad? I'm thinking of proper schools rather than the more back packer/gap year type experience... that sounds wrong, I hope you know what I mean! Would it be best to try and get a TEFL qualification? If so, which one? I do hope someone can enlighten me as too much googling has left me very confused! I find most info seems to be aimed at the very young and newly graduated with no teaching experience. I think I must be a late developer. :)
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Hi, it really depends on the institution, country and needs.
Often if you have such qualifications as yours many would not require you to have a TEFL cert.
I did the Trinity College London Cert TESOL; many of the participants were qualified teachers who had been working for many years. The majority of the class was in their mid fifties.
Many people chose to take the Cert TESOL as they felt they needed a refresher course before pursuing TEFL jobs.
This was the 4 weeks intensive course. Some after completion came to the conclusion that perhaps after all TESOL was not the road they should go down.
I guess as confirmation to yourself if you do the course and you love it then TESOL is the way for you. However if you do the course and hate it then there is no real loss as you haven't signed any contracts with schools overseas, or worse ended up in a place/situation that you really don't feel comfortable in.
The two main TESOL certs are:
Trinity College London Cert TESOL - briefly covers YL
http://www.trinitycollege.co.uk/
Cambridge CELTA
http://www.cambridgeesol.org/exams/celta/index.html
Good luck!
Hello! I'm a student and I'm learning English. Could you help me please, I've got a problem with one sentence. I don't know what ending to choose: "There is neither gas nor electricity in this city, ... "(is there or isn't there?) Which rule to follow?
What countries are you thinking of working in? If you are interested in China, let's get in contact then.
Our school is a middle school specializing in Foreign Language teaching.
I would say: "There is neither gas nor electricity in this city, is there?". As for the reasoning, if your main clause contains a negative connector (i.e. 'neither'), the tag question which follows is normally positive (i.e. 'is').
This would work the other way around too: "There is both gas and electricity in this city, isn't there?". Here you can see that the main clause contains a the positive connectors ('both', 'and'), and so it would sound most natural to have the negative tag question ('isn't there').
This is called opposit polarity tag questions and more information can be found here (pages 7-10):
http://www.cambridge.org/other_files/downloads/esl/tge/TGE-Chapter4.pdf
As with any subject area, TEFL is a specialist field that a good teacher needs to be familiar with. In this way it is no different from teaching science, history, or geography, each of which neither a PGCE nor an English humanities degree prepares you for specifically either. It's true that TEFL is unique in that everyone who can speak English already knows something about it, making it possible to teach it to some degree without any real grounding. However, it's also unique in ways that make it more challenging to teach than other subjects - the main problem being that the medium of teaching (English language) is also what is being taught. So, for example, you can't just 'explain' something in English, because learners might not have the English to understand the explanation in the first place, and so on.
If you wanted to back-pack or gap-year, I'd still recommend some kind of TEFL qualification (eg. a 40hr online course); but if you're serious about working in proper schools, then I'd recommend at least an accredited 120hr certificate course (eg. the Cambridge CELTA or the Trinity Cert TESOL).
Such courses are aimed at new (second or foreign) language teachers. But they are equally accessible to people of any age group; cover amazing ground; and will leave you greatly impressed by how much you can develop and learn in a short, 4-week intensive course. I've worked (as a tutor/trainer on such courses) with PGCE qualified teachers, people in their 60s starting a new career, TEFL teachers with 10+ years experience but no formal qualifications, etc, and all have found a CELTA course helped them greatly. I've even heard of people with previous undergraduate or bachelor degrees specifically in TESOL taking the CELTA and finding it extremely beneficial.
Check out Cambridge ESOL's website to download the syllabus if you're still unsure.
Kind regards,
Heath