Our TEFL course content

Upon graduation, you will have an adequate base knowledge of grammar and phonology, as well as of teaching approaches and techniques. Coursework is for the most part completed at our training center during the working day, but you will need to spend a proportion of most evenings and weekends doing home study and preparing lessons.

The course runs Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 7pm with an hour and a quarter for lunch. We work on any public holidays that might arise during the week in order to avoid adding days to the end of the course.

Successful graduates will be able to teach:

• General English
• Business English
• Young Learners
• One-to-One lessons

Course content includes:

Grammar:

• Past, present, perfect and future tenses, conditionals, phrasal verbs, auxiliary verbs, modal verbs
• Passive structures
• Reported speech
• Syntax
• Lexis
• Parts of speech
• Articles
• Form and function

Phonology:

• The consonant sounds and symbols
• The vowel sounds and symbols
• Diphthongs
• Intonation
• Word stress
• Sentence stress
• Connected speech
• Regional and international variations
• Articulation
• Teaching speaking
• Teaching reading
• Teaching writing
• Computer assisted language learning
• Teaching young learners
• Alternative approaches to Lesson Planning
• Job guidance (trainees have this for life)
• Using dictation
• Eliciting
• Error Correction

There are 2 projects to complete:

The UFLOT (Unknown Foreign Language Observation Task):

In the first week, you have 2 beginner lessons in a language that most trainees do not speak, given entirely in the foreign language. As a result of this you gain an insight into how it feels to be one of your future students, being spoken to in a new language. The objective is that you adapt teaching methods that help you find other ways to get our meaning across. The task also helps you empathize globally to a greater extent with your beginner students. You write a short project based on this experience.

The One to One project:

The objective of this project is twofold. It gives you experience in preparing a course of study based on a student's needs and interests, and also gives you practice teaching class with just one student. The procedure is that you choose a student and diagnose his or her needs in English, and interests. Based upon the diagnosis, you design a lesson for the student, teach it, and then evaluate it in depth. To what extent did it work? Why? Finally you design an imaginary further short course of study for the student.

Also included in the course:

• 2 self-evaluation tutorials
• 2 grammar tests
• 6 hours minimum of teaching practice
• Lesson Planning Assistance
• Observation of your classes and feedback

Your final grade will be based on:

• Teaching Practice
• One to One project
• Grammar tests
• UFLOT essay
• Professionalism

Workload Commitment and Professionalism:

The course is a lot of fun, but you will be busy from 9 am to 7pm (you do have 1hr 15 for lunch!) Monday to Friday, and parts of evenings and weekends at home, for the 4 weeks. Trainees will NOT be able to combine the course with ANY other form of work (or other time consuming commitment) during their month with us.

However, of course there is still time to enjoy this beautiful and exciting city. We are in the city center overlooking a beautiful park - just the walk to the school will be a pleasure!

How does the teaching practice on a TEFL course work? Who do I teach? How often do I teach?

You teach a minimum of 6 hours in total, to small groups (e.g. of 1 to 9 students) of mixed age and mixed nationality. You will gain experience of teaching at least two different levels. Your students come to the classes for free and are delighted to have a real teacher teaching them - the classes are a lot of fun! The first lesson you teach in week 1 is planned for you. We give you plenty of help planning your lessons, and you get in-depth feedback after each time you teach. You will also observe your fellow trainees and experienced teachers.