This month I took a certification course in TESOL to help prepare me for teaching medical English in Laos. My organization recommended that I take the Oxford Seminars: TESOL/TESL/TEFL Course.
The course is two parts consisting of an “in-person” class and an online component earning you a 120-hour certificate. Because of COVID, all of the in-person classes were moved online to a Zoom format. For three consecutive weekends, I sat on a Zoom meeting from 9 AM- 6 PM. Thankfully, my professor (Laura Wilkinson) and classmates made the time enjoyable. Since I’ve taken a couple education classes before, I wasn’t too sure that there would be much for me to learn. But I was so wrong! Teaching English is different than teaching content.
My biggest takeaway from the in-class portion of the course is that every lesson needs to give students an opportunity to use English in practical ways. We should teach students phrases and sentences that they will actually be using in everyday conversations or their work contexts. To ensure this happens, the teacher should only be talking 20 percent of the time and the students should be talking 80 percent of the time. We don’t want to only focus on reading and writing. We want our students to be able to speak with other English speakers.
Our class spent the final weekend of the in-person portion teaching English. The course requires you to develop a lesson with a written lesson plan and to teach it to your classmates. This was fun for me. I chose to gear my lesson towards middle schoolers and to teach them names of body parts. My favorite part was teaching “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” to the class.
After completing the in-person portion, the online component opens up and you have 105 days to complete it. There are 21 topics addressed along with a final exam, which in total is estimated to take you about 60-hours to complete. This part of the class focuses mostly on grammar, and I have been oh so very humbled to realize how little I know about English grammar. The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know.
Overall, this course has helped me understand language learning so much more. I feel like I will able to apply the lessons learned from the course to my own language learning that’s starting in just a few short months! Plus, I’ll always have an ESL teaching certificate and lifetime job placement with Oxford, if I’d ever want to use it.
Note to future Goers: If you plan to leave in the winter, I’d personally recommend taking the course over the summer before you begin support raising. It will alleviate a lot of stress around the holidays and trying to get your visa.