hi,

I m french currently teaching english in south area for about one year now. i really enjoy it, and I m planning to take a 4 weeks tefl courses, that i would attend in march or april.

I really want to improve my teaching skills, and learn news things from others, although i don t know what to expect from these courses.

Is tefl useful for non native speakers ? i mean, as a non native speaker, i know that i ll never get a job in a <good> school, well paid, .... but Can the tefl help me ?

thanks for any advice, and opinion that anyone can give me,

regards,

flo

Hello, sancho,

(That's such a Spanish sounding name, "Sancho")

Yes, a TEFL course would help you, perhaps even more than it helps us native speakers. You can take a four week course like the one offered by our forum sponsor, SEE, in Chiang Mai. You could take the correspondence course offered by our other sponsor, ICAL (see top banners in this Teaching Forum). I have known several non native graduates of such courses.

I see that SEE has courses scheduled as follows: January 14th - February 8th 2008 *** FULL ***

March 3rd - March 28th 2008

May 12th - June 6th 2008

As you can see, SEE's courses fill up fast, so you should send them an inquiry. See, SEE, see-saw....

thanks for your quick answer peace,

yes, i have got some spanish blood from my father and my spanish is better than my english but quite useless in here...

Well, I intend to take tefl courses with TITC which offers several destinations over the world, and i chose Philippines (Cebu island), where I ve never been. It will be also the opportinity to travel abroad .

The course cost 1590$ including acommodation, does it sound like an average price ?

Are these courses very intensive, or i ll get some free time to take a look around ?

thanks again mates for your advices

Sancho, US$1,590 is about 53,000 baht. Since that price includes accommodation, it may be a fair price, but we can't compare Filipino apples with Thai durian. The only course that claims to be so intensive that you don't have time for anything else, is CELTA. It shouldn't be necessary to eat, breathe and sleep TEFL 24/7 for four weeks. I'm sure that almost any four week course with supervised teaching practice would benefit you enormously, even if it was taught outside Thailand.