Search results for 'tag:Essays tag:TEFL' matching tags 'Essays' and 'TEFL'

500 word Essay "To become a TEFL teacher"

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:50:52 GMT

After spending the last 6 years living as a volunteer at Mission : Wolf it has been my most successful learning expirence. Mission : Wolf is a remote wolf sancuary and educational facility located in Colorado. Arriving I had no idea the pysical and mental lesson I would learn their. I lived in a tipi and worked on a varity of project from fence building to office work. I learned to give tours to vistor who came to see our wolves. I had to learn the stories and how to tell them. This was important in order keep the attention of a varity of people from all over the world. I soon learned âI forget what I hear, I remember what I see, I understand what I touchâ. Our Motto was âEducation vs Extinctionâ, educating people about wolves was the only way to save them. We encouraged people to apply this lesson to other things they feared or hated, people or wolves. I also learned self confidence and to not be afraid to mess up. I learned how to maintain vechiles and care for wild animals. We operated on our own solar power and gravity water system, which requires awareness and maintence to keep the facity running. In order to be a good educator and learner I had to adapte to my ever changing surrandings.

As a volunteer I got to expierence living with a varity of people some times from up to 13 different cultures at one time. Lanuage and culture was always a common obstical we had to overcome and teach volunteers and remember ourselves. Although many times a few would share a common laungage we encouraged them to all speak english to bring unity. We took turns rotating cooking and cleaning so indivusals could learn and teach one another about different food, launguage and culture. As a camp they did volunteer work which was hands on this helped over come laungage and culture barriers. We would also work with them on sayings and slangs which they struggled with the most and had the most fun with. Since we didnât have television we would spent our evening talking and learning from one another and our days teaching the vistors about wolves and nature. As a good teacher you must always be a good student first. You need to continue to learn yourself and be open minded to be able to teach others. Patience and fun are necessary to help make the learning and teaching experience successful. We always had fun with the camps and often took them on trips to see the local attractions. We build their confidence and built our own along with it. We always believed education was the key to helping the world and wolves one person at a time. Smiles where the rewards and tears when they left our accomplishment on a job well done. I learned education is a way of life and you must always be the best student to be the best teacher.

The saying and quotes provided in this text may be copyrighted. They have been provided for educational purpose only and cannot be duplicated with out the written consent of the author or Mission : Wolf. For more information about Mission : Wolf please visit their website at www.missionwolf.com. Author Kathleen Bennett

Re: please help me get through my celta!

Rafs — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:15:07 GMT

hi

I survived my CELTA and have empathy with what you are going through. It seems very heavy on going and you will not get everything right. But you will absorb and learn more when you have the time to take it all in, after the course

The essays need to be done systematically and approached well.

The actual prep time for the lessons is hard and you need to bounce ideas of your colleagues or other people, even in forums.
What I would suggest is taking a look at these;

http://www.handoutsonline.com/index.shtml
http://www.tefl-magic.com/noframes/home/welcome.htm
http://www.eslmonkeys.com/

The thing is that once in the real world you do not have to prep as much as for CELTA. Also you have prepared lessons due to the ones you did for CELTA.

All in all hang in there it is worth it. Then you can try CertEBB

Re: Linguistics not science

julielai — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 01:48:07 GMT

Yes, Hong Kongers adopt a rather utilitarian, if shortsighted, approach to learning. Sadly, the longest distance between two points is often a shortcut.

A-level shouldn't take up that much time. Active listening, thinking, and participation in class all minimize the need for revision. My elder sibling became é«èçå without burning that much midnight oil. (I did okay in my mock exams, though I didn't take the real thing.). Just goes to show you: in HK, quantity trumps quality--students put in more time to make up for their increasingly passive learning style (writing 50 essays with the same mistakes instead of doing one right, for instance) You've just proven my point.

etymons (... um... I mean the root of a lexical item. I don't really remember the English jargon for it):

Why use jargons when simple words will do?

Looking at dictionaries for meanings, phonetic representations whatever does not mean you are forming rules of some sort.

Didn't I say we would be spinning around our own definitions of "prescriptivism"? Your understanding of the term is framed by grammar; mine by the outcome.

In any case, the example proves we shouldn't make assumptions as to what native speakers use dictionaries for.

Language is of course not a science, but the STUDY into it can be, just as one may well argue whether translatology is an art or a science.

Last time I checked, linguistics is still in the Faculty of Arts. Never seen it listed among the sciences.

CUHK translation majors told me all they do is practise; no theories. Beijing U.'s foreign lang. institute (???) does the same thing: language labs all day long. They are not elite programmes for no reason.

I am not really sure whether university English courses lay more stress on the scientific side of languages than on the cultural side thereof.

You're mixing up English and Lang. Ed. programmes (Yes, Lingnan has both in the same dept., with IED components as an add-on) But most TEFL-like programmes cover mostly linguistic and educational theories, including sociolinguistics. Mandatory cultural literacy coverage, including literature, are kept to a max. of five courses. (Lingnan's has four; some have fewer or none.) No wonder my CUHK friend says "Lang. Ed." depts aren't real English programmes (sorry!). My TEFL friends tell me themselves how little they are learning (there's more, but I won't leave specifics here).

My IELTS suggestion isn't about cultural literacy; I'd like the incompetent English teachers screened out. I've nothing against exams, as long as they are only part of the requirement.

If these programmes have a common core curriculum, we won't need a benchmark. As it stands, many TEFL majors aren't learning the same thing; exams will help measure everybody against one standard.

even if the government has declared equal legal status of Chinese and English. Discriminations of this sort conduce to English being >treated the utilitarian way.

Beg to differ. English used to be the medium of instruction for many secondary schoolers, so cultural literacy wasn't a big problem. We were exposed to English vocab. in every core subject. After 97, HK lost its linguistic identity, as is epitomized in the ever-changing language education policy.

But the 'study' was halted by the profs, on the grounds that I am but a yr1 student, so that I should leave the topic to my yr 3 (actually yr 4) final paper.

Your prof. is right to keep your project in hiatus. Students should be well-rounded before they become specialized--there's plenty of time for that yet! Again, going back to what I've said about a lopsided education.

Your suggestion relative to the English curriculum is good... but I wonder if it would be possible even in the university, as the topics suggested are each already a large topic.

Many of these courses I've seen in curriculum outside of HK. Eng. teachers don't have to be experts in any of these areas; a basic course in each will suffice (except for writing and lit.--we are making up for lost ground)

This is a fairly typical Eng. teacher curriculum in the states: http://www.tamiu.edu/catalog/current/ba-engl8th-12th.shtml (and this is not even a top program. See how much a HK student is missing, both in English and general education)

I love linguistics not really because I treat language in a parochial scientific way. I am limiting 'language' to the 'essence' (leaving >this undefined) because I am more interested in the common traits shared by ALL human languages.

Linguistics is like åµæ³. Too much strategems on paper will turn anybody into a é¦¬è¬.

am therefore applying by non - JUPAS for CU linguistics... to see if I have a chance.

Good luck. You have a great shot given your passion for the subject--but won't non-jupas disqualify you from student aid? (I have no clue)

PS. I've written to the local papers on these subjects, so some of my comments are nothing new.

Summer can seem like slavery

Our_Man_In_Hubei — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 04:44:31 GMT

TEFL 302A: Essay: âSummer can seem like slaveryâ

Would you willingly sign a contract that may say that you have to work an extra day per week during the peak summer season and/or teach a few extra hours a week â FOR NO MORE PAY?!

Speaking with the benefit of hindsight, I would say that it is utterly ludicrous for private language schools to insist that their teachers be made to do more for no more pay just because it happens to be the peak season when more students come to study. Yet there are plenty of expatriates who have signed a full-time contract which says â in effect â that they must do more work for no more plenty during the very time when one would think that teachers should receive more money for more teaching.

After all, summer is the peak time when private language schools generate more than enough revenue to satisfy even the greediest of investors â and yet the successes of summer schools are based mostly on the sweat, frustration, fatigue and tears of full-timers who have signed contracts which condemn them to work more for no more money (to a certain extent).

I had signed two 12-month contracts for a private school, a franchisee, in which signers were expected to work up to one more day per week (six instead of five) and teach up to five more real hours per week â for NO more money. Having been through the rigors of two summer schools, I used to hear bitter mutterings from my fellow teachers, who described the situation as âsheer slaveryâ. What, they asked themselves, possessed them to do something they never would have dreamed of doing in a million years back home? Yes, they realized that they had signed the contracts, and signing implies that they have read and understood the conditions, and that they therefore had to abide by those conditions.

Of course, these people, undoubtedly hungry to start or continue their TEFL career, had been recruited during the off-peak season, a time of relatively low teaching loads. Perhaps they thought that there was nothing to make a fuss about. âAn extra five hours of teaching a week for no more pay? OK, so long as itâs just for a few weeksâ¦â Maybe that was something that they didnât fully understand at the time â yet, by the time they realized that they had to deal with more classes full of kids who donât understand and donât want to be there and donât want to learn and who want just to talk and talk, it was far too late.

I can be thankful that I have, since February this year, gone over to the public sector, which means that I now have the benefit of a full summerâs vacation where, if I teach at a summer school, be it in the public or the private sector (and I have done both already this summer), I get PAID for EVERY lesson I do, and I mean EVERY. In one summer school lasting seven days, I earned the equivalent of a MONTHâS salary based on what I receive from my public school.

THIS is what we expatriates should be doing when we come to teach English in foreign countries. To me, the private schools, which want people to sign up as full-time teachers to do more work in the summer for no more money, are guilty of exploitation. I should know, because fellow colleagues used to tell me that they felt no better off than slaves. Yet, as I said, the conditions were laid out in the contracts â the summer work conditions came as no surprise to them, and so it was basically their own lookout, and they had therefore little choice but to swallow their annoyance.

This is one way of learning about the realities of teaching abroad for private language schools. Thank heaven I am no longer in this âmock-slaveryâ position now â if I want to do more, I get PAID â provided, of course, that the opportunities to do more work exist during your well-earned vacation (shop around!). So, fellow expatriates, if you feel a little disgruntled this summer because of this âmore-work-and-no-more-payâ situation, take heart: your contract will eventually expire and you can seek other opportunities where you may not have to be in that situation again. I did, and Iâm more than a little grateful for it.

Re: "Estuary English" as a pronunciation model for TEFL (Joanna)

Guest — Sun, 17 Aug 2003 21:33:34 GMT

Hi guys, Thanks a lot.

I know almost every article on Estuary English (EE) from Google search, and I'm writing an essay on it. I wonder what other EL teachers know about it and how they view it. Do you know any teachers who know something about EE and could share their opinions?

Do foreign students have the opportunity to find out about this variety? Would they like to learn it?

Thank you.
Best wishes,

Joanna

Re: Is money happiness or not?

Woodward — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 20:44:05 GMT

This is what you sent me by e-mail. It is a good start for an essay, good as a reading exercise but not ready as a lesson plan. Lesson plans need to be easy to follow in a classroom situation. If there is too much text together, it's easy for a teacher to get lost. More on this later in the TEFL section......