How Do You Teach English?

The second issue is the mechanics of teaching. What do you do to make your students understand English and be able to use it? Simple - just sit and talk to them. That's what many people who have had no training do, and generally it becomes a one-way stream of consciousness with the amateur teacher trying to fill the period as much as possible and get out as quickly as possible. If you have ever lived in a foreign country and gone to the cinema and found there are no subtitles, you will know how annoying it is to have to sit through an hour and a half of a totally incomprehensible soundtrack. Imagine how you would feel if you had paid for a 'one-to-one' lesson in a foreign language and the result was the same.

A TEFL training course will give you a series of strategies that will get your students speaking or writing and improving their English by the hour. Many of the strategies are straightforward, but the chances of you considering them without TEFL training are slim. There are, of course, born teachers, but they are few and far between - most of us have to be shown how to do it.

How Do You Feel About Yourself?

The final issue is how you feel about yourself. Although teaching English may only be part of your itinerary on a longer journey destined for fun and fascination, the fun in teaching can soon diminish when you realize you do not know what you are doing and you are not doing your best for your students as a result. In fact, you can actually feel pretty bad about it - it can take the gloss off you journey.

Students will come to you for a variety of reasons, some might just want to practice speaking, but others might want to pass an important exam, or need to improve their English so they can move and start a career in a country where English is spoken. If they fail to fulfill these objectives, it may even have been because your lack of knowledge and teaching skills held them back. It is that important. At least having taken a TEFL course, you will leave a classroom knowing that based on what you have learned through training, you know you did the best you could for your students.