38 Part I: Getting Started in TEFL
Intensive TEFL courses last four or five weeks. Don’t try to keep up your part-
time job or even your favourite TV show because every waking moment is
filled with lesson plans and projects. However, this type of course is a great
way to jump in and get started.
If that sounds a bit too much for you, plenty of courses are spread over three
months or even a year, enabling you to attend sessions in the evenings and at
weekends, so you can fit it in around your job.
In any case, you need over 100 hours of tuition, plus feedback and homework
time to gain your certificate.
What you can do with this certificate
With a bachelor or master’s degree in any field and an EFL teaching certifi-
cate you’re eligible to apply for the majority of vacancies.
To be honest, many university graduates have no idea what to do in a class-
room so some employers bypass your level of education if you’ve managed
to prove yourself and passed a certificate course.
What the course covers
The overall aim of certificate courses is to provide initial training for people
who want to teach English to speakers of other languages and to make sure
that they meet the criteria for teaching by demonstrating English usage accu-
rately, by giving well balanced lessons and by evaluating their lessons.
Objectives for the course usually include familiarising trainees with all those
areas that go into English language teaching – methodology, classroom pro-
cedures, techniques and aids, language awareness and testing. You have the
opportunity to teach and to find out how to prepare and evaluate lessons too.
Other objectives for taught certificate courses are:
✓ To help trainees learn about the main pronunciation, vocabulary and
structural features of current English.
✓ To raise awareness of the learning needs of individuals or groups of
learners and of the motivation they have in a variety of circumstances
and environments.
✓ To make sure that trainees can work cooperatively as members of a
teaching team or group.
✓ To help trainees develop the ability to create and maintain the learners’
interest and establish rapport.
