Actual Teaching Practice

[jerry921]

I'm still at the dreaming stage of a career change to the ajarn path, so I'm still reading threads here and looking at TEFL courses. A big question I have is about the amount of teaching practice in these courses.

It's my understanding that these courses include practice teaching in front of peers, watching peers practice, real practice teaching of real students, and post-analysis of the real teaching. I can see that this adds up, but the amount of real practice with real students seems to be about 6-8 hours out of a 120 hour course, and this doesn't seem like a lot to me.

I'm interested in all comments, of course.

[kenkannif]

That's about all you get at most courses mate to be honest. Although some will provide you with more if you want it or they feel you need it.

It's not the teaching practice per se you need to worry about it's OBSERVED teaching practice.

Also you'll find some courses include the OTP and other forms of teaching within the 120 hours, others add it on to the 120 hours.

[Bluffer]

I'm still at the dreaming stage of a career change to the ajarn path, so I'm still reading threads here and looking at TEFL courses. A big question I have is about the amount of teaching practice in these courses.

It's my understanding that these courses include practice teaching in front of peers, watching peers practice, real practice teaching of real students, and post-analysis of the real teaching. I can see that this adds up, but the amount of real practice with real students seems to be about 6-8 hours out of a 120 hour course, and this doesn't seem like a lot to me.

I'm interested in all comments, of course.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Believe me. If you havent taught before that "only" 6 hours is going to feel like it lasts a lifetime. The actual amount really depends on the course you do.

For example on the TEFL Intl course I did, I had 6 hours (over a period of 1 week ) observed teaching in a school by an instructor and fellow course members with written feedback from both and 1 hour that was videotaped so I could observe myself. Sometimes this can be better as you can slow things down and analyse it when you are calm and remember this was the bit I was nervous and thought I fecked up on - oh! it went ok! or I thought this bit was really good - oooops As well as that I had four 1 to 1 lessons in the evenings, 2 of which were observed.

When you are not teaching during the week, you are observing and giving feedback. All this helps your teachnique, especially if you look at different things when observing. The body language, the language level, what games worl, what dont, the reaction from students and so on.

The rest of the time is spent learning how to teach, doing practice teaching, preparing lesson plans and materials and so on.

The 4 weeks I dont think could practically allow any more actual teaching without bursting.

Edited March 24, 2005 by Bluffer

[Sexy Beast]

Jerry

A 120 hours isn’t a lot however without the allocated time that’s all they will allow. Real teaching practice only comes with experience but a TEFL course will give you more of an insight into what to expect when you do take up teaching.

[jerry921]

Thanks!

I've actually done something similar to teaching, I had a "lab" as a Comp. Sci grad student where I had to stand up and explain programming to 1st year undergrads. I was doing that 2x a week at 1:15 min a time for one academic year. Obviously this was supposed to be teaching, but I had to do it totally on my own. I had no theory of teaching, learning or lession planning, just scribble some slides and get up and talk through them.

TEFL to younger students would be a whole different ballgame. Sort of like the difference between amateur and professional, I expect. The undergrads were more or less there to learn and would generally sit and listen and ask questions when they didn't understand. And rather than trying to get them all to a passing level, we were supposed to flunk at least a quarter of them (because there wasn't enough space for more in the upper level courses). So in that environment there was very little way to fail as a teacher short of inciting a riot in the classroom.