Jennifer Patience - TEFL course diary

TEFL diaries  >  Jennifer Patience

About Jennifer...

I left the UK three years ago armed with a TEFL Cert, a love of travelling and a job offer in Korea. After 2 & 1/2 years working here (with some time in Australia in between) I'm leaving to continue my ESL career somewhere new. I decided that I needed to consolidate my training and certificates and am enrolled on the CELTA training course with Language Link in Hanoi. I'm excited to be going somewhere new; I've heard interesting things about the ESL industry in Vietnam (and going back to South East Asia will give me another opportunity to visit lovely Laos...!)

Saying Goodbye

February 20th, 2008

After having already spent a year teaching in Korea in 2005, I returned to Korea from Australia 18 months ago (while I waited to see if I was allowed an Oz visa) and at first taught at a Montessori kindergarten in Suwon. After 6 months, still waiting for a visa, I changed jobs and went to SNFL: Seongnam Foreign Language High School in Bundang. Totally different experiences but I learned so much from both of them. With this kind of job, to be successful you have to be utterly honest; half the battle is gaining the trust of your students. Pre-schoolers aren’t going through any of the angst of teenagers and you know their reaction is intuitive and straightforward. If they like you, they really like you. High school students have a lot going on. They have so much stress from studying and exams, and figuring out their future plans, but if you are honest and show that you respect their ideas and opinions rather than imposing another set of rules on top of everything, that can go a long way to establishing a good relationship.

It’s been great in Korea, I’ve been looked after pretty well. I’ve been lucky with the jobs that I’ve had and the people that I’ve met. I don’t intend coming back, I think I’ve spent enough time here, but you can never say never! It is time to go somewhere else and try something new. That is a huge reason for me to do the CELTA. My teaching experience up til now has been mostly focused around kindergarten - high school. I’ve taught adults, but not to any great extent and it will do me good to get my head around that methodology.

But it is still sad to leave…

Three of my favourite students came to say goodbye..

Left to Right: Jin-Yeop, Me, Ho-Sang and Dong-Jae.

Posted in Korea, Blogroll | 1 Comment »

Why Hanoi?

February 19th, 2008

I applied to do the course in Hanoi. When I was in Australia in 2006 I applied and was accepted onto the course at Latrobe University, but lack of numbers meant they had to postpone it, and my lack of visa meant I had to leave the country unable to take a later course.

I did think about doing the course while I was in Korea and heard that the British Council in Seoul ran it, but again my timing was bad. I popped in one day to enquire only to find out that they had just finished the One Course that they ran per year and would have to wait until the next year to do it.

Once I knew that I would be leaving Korea a whole new area of options opened up, one of them being Vietnam. You can do the course here in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh city. Same course, just run by different schools - Hanoi’s is through Language Link and International House run the one in HCMC. All the people I spoke to about this recommended Hanoi - not necessarily from experience of doing the course, but for the city.

Other factors came into play also, it was definitely cheaper to take the course here and Vietnam was a country in SE Asia I hadn’t visited yet.

Hanoi sounded like a fascinating place. An interesting mix of colonial French and Asian culture and history. Somewhere that you can get pho from a street stall and then sit in a European style cafe and eat French pastries.  No contest really…   How does it always end up being about food…!

Posted in Pre Course, Hanoi, Questions, CELTA, Blogroll | 2 Comments »

Native teachers goodbye!

February 18th, 2008

On my last Monday in Korea we went out for lunch together. I wasn’t the only native teacher leaving SNFL: it was a goodbye for three of us. After lots of umming about where to go, we ended up in a Korean restaurant in Jeongja, 5 minutes from Sunae. I’d been there once before when Tiger (Korean teacher) took me for lunch and as you can see from the dishes on the table it was typical Korean style, many many dishes for everyone to share. The really cool thing with this restaurant was they didn’t just bring the food to the table, they brought the table to the table. Everything was laid out, presumably in the kitchen, and then the staff wheeled out a table top and slid it onto the table that was in front of you. It was a great place to go for a goodbye meal as there was a little bit of every Korean dish I liked: fried fish, noodles, spinach, pajeon (a kind of pancake), soups….

Native teachers together!

From left to right: Yoshimi (Japanese teacher who is leaving to go to Russia), Ting Ting & Lili (Chinese teachers), Me, Mario & Josh (English teachers), Guido (German teacher who is off to teach at a university) and Honma (Japanese teacher). Tiger (Korean teacher) is taking the photograph.

Posted in Korea, Blogroll | No Comments »

CELTA pre-interview task

February 17th, 2008

The application form for the CELTA courses is about 10 pages long. Pretty much most of the training centres will be asking the same kind of questions, but obviously it does vary according to which centre you apply to.

The Hanoi application basically consisted of 9 “tasks” or sets of questions and essays, such as:

Look at the verb in bold in the following incorrect sentences. For each:
a) Correct the tense, using the same verb given.
b) Name the correct tense.
c) Say what the meaning of the correct tense is.

Example “I read a book at the moment.”

and

Explain the difference in meaning and/or usage of the following pairs of words, in language an Intermediate level student would be likely to understand.

Example: Skinny / Slim

and

Pieces of language can be categorised grammatically, and also functionally, i.e. according to the job they do. What are the functions of the language items below?

Examples:

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” An offer
“If only I hadn’t missed the bus.” Expressing regret

and

Think about your own experiences as a language learner, and/or your experiences of communicating with non-native speakers of English. What problems do you think learners are likely to have with the English language? Write at least 150 words in continuous prose. Your answer could comment on some of the following: grammar, vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Just to give you some idea.

It’s not really a test, in fact you are encouraged to use books to help you out. The difficult thing is not not knowing the answers or why a certain sentence is grammatically incorrect, it’s more really in how to express the answers coherently and working through the reasons for the grammar error or explanations as you would have to for language learners.

Posted in Pre Course, CELTA | No Comments »

What is the CELTA?

February 11th, 2008

Good question. I’ve been asked it a few times since telling people that that’s what I’m doing. CELTA stands for Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults. It’s organised and accredited by Cambridge ESOL, which is part of Cambridge University, and it is partly due to this that the course is recognised worldwide as a benchmark for ESL training.

It’s not necessary to have done any teaching before taking the course. Neither is it restricted to native English speakers, although there is a tough pre-course test where you need to demonstrate awareness of how English works.   Another reason that CELTA is requested by certain employers, is the certainty they get that the trainee will have had around 6 hours of observed teaching practice. I think this is really useful if you haven’t taught before. It can be nerve wracking stepping into a classroom for your first lesson but if you’ve had a chance to practice and get critique and feedback during your training the more confident you’ll be on your first day. I’m really hoping that the experience I’ve had teaching in Korea will give me something to work from - pick up on any bad habits I’ve developed or reinforce things I do that work well.

The other great thing about CELTA is that, even though is it a Cambridge course, you don’t have to be in the UK to do it!  It can’t be done by distance learning (as some TEFL courses can) because of the practical aspect to it, but if a school overseas is accredited as a CELTA centre you can take the course there.

A great place to start looking, if you are interested in taking the CELTA is http://www.cactustefl.com

They don’t run the courses themselves, rather they act more like an agent: you submit your application through them. There is a good search facility on their website where you can narrow down your search, by course type, country, city etc,. They don’t offer every CELTA course so if your preferred city isn’t listed it doesn’t mean they don’t run a course there.

You can get information straight from the horses mouth here: http://www.cambridgeesol.org/exams/teaching-awards/celta.html

Posted in Questions, CELTA, Blogroll | No Comments »

Post No. 1

February 10th, 2008

In 9 days I will be leaving Korea, my home for the last 18 months, and heading off to Vietnam. This last year I’ve been teaching in a foreign language high school and it is the Monday of my last week of classes.

Living and working in Korea has been great. I’ve spent about 2 1/2 years here in total but it is time to move on. Before I left England I did a TEFL cert - an intensive weekend course followed up with a four-part theoretical study - and while it has been incredibly useful, I want to raise my game and my qualifications. That is where I find myself now, about to take the four-week CELTA course in Hanoi.

Everything I’ve heard about the course is that it is Intensive. A Facebook friend of mine is currently doing the course in Europe so I’m eagerly following her progress and hoping she does well. Maybe attempting to keep a daily blog about the course is overestimating my time management skills, but one of my teaching practice books recommends keeping a course journal. I think it should be a good exercise!

Wish me luck!

Posted in CELTA, Blogroll | 2 Comments »