Online TEFL courses

[Mr Nobody]

Ok, this is my next serious question, I hope you guys can help.

It goes like this. In my city there is no longer any TEFL etc courses except for a masters degree. (I will do that next trip back if i like the first one) I have been searching for months, and cannot see any appreciable difference in any of the online courses. This is likely due entirely to my iggerance. To keep in line with my projected plan for moving to china for a while, i intend to start one of them thar courses sometime in the next month.
Con said he would assess his course when he was more into it. I have read that others did online courses as well. I have found little real information that helps.

I would have liked to do a CELTA but they charge too much, and i would have to move cities for a month. I have too much to do here before i go so my business will run without me, hopefully making a profit with only online management from me.
I know many of you have "real" EFL training, so i am not trying to be insulting or anything. Online ones sound a bit like the English certs given in China, the ones prospective students give Uni admin here and expect to study at an english speaking university without knowing any english.

But I have little choice, it must be online. I know i have asked this in another thread, but didn't get any answers. Is it that there ARE no answers?

So the question is this:
Is there any difference in the online courses, does it make any difference to the Chinese admin etc, and so on. Help, advice, abuse, warnings, ridicule, etc please.

PS, i would like one that actually helps, if preferable, to actually do the job, but failing that, one that simply helps to get me a job will suffice. My actual teaching experience is virtually nil in this area, but in an unrelated area, many years. I need real skills, not make believe ones.

Thanks. (I hope i put this in the right place)

[burlives]

My tefl cert is three weeks old. I did the four-week CELTA course in Thailand. In fact I've been trying to work out how to review it here.

It's not an online certificate. Doing a CELTA puts you in front of a class of students from day one. And it puts you in front of a group of peers and a trainer for feedback every time you teach. It can be distressing but it makes the methodology real and you learn fast. And the people around you are all highly motivated. It's a high speed learning environment.

I was grateful to find that there is a huge amount you can learn on the course. There's such a range of simple useful things and there is also the coherent whole of these things rendered into a lesson. It' the coherent whole that has really impressed me.

Which brings me to the utility of tefl certs in China. I can't speak for online courses and I can't really speak for the CELTA because I haven't spent the recommended two years working it out. But my feeling is that knowing what you are doing in the classroom is invaluable. Exactly how Chinese students will take to CELTA methodology remains to be seen, but I believe that can be worked out too.

Now, all that said, I've already found out that very, very few people know what it means to be tefl certified. In China the blank looks are epidemic. I played the CELTA card in salary negotiations here and saw the beat of mystification in the two FAOs just before they stood up side by side and said every foreigner in the school had a CELTA. The dean of the English department said he didn't believe I could learn to teach in only four weeks. (And he is of course right. The course is a methodology cram-fest for motivated people who mean to go out and explore all the things they learned. A CELTA plus two years experience makes a teacher, is what the CELTA bumpf says.) No student can name the famous certs. And so on. So unless you find an unusually enlightened FAO, a tefl cert won't make a dent in your employability and salary expectations in China. Knowing that, I'd still do the course. It'd be worth it even for only a year in the PRC.

My advice to anyone is this: if you've got about 2000 US dollars lying around, budget for five weeks in Thailand before coming to China and do a CELTA, and then think about spending two years here. Or do an online cert and think about spending a year here. It's not like anyone knows the difference between the certs but at the same time anything that helps you stand up in front of the kids and do a decent job is a good thing.

And be careful about where you get a job.

[Raoul Duke]

Well spoken, Burl.

I scan a lot of other forums...I look for recruiting opportunities for the Saloon, keep my nose in the air for general China and TEFL happenings, and sometimes I just enjoy posting there.

In the process I see about a million job ads.

There ARE places in China that specify the CELTA or Trinity certs. I've had to pass on some sweet-sounding jobs because I don't have one. But most of what I see with this seem no different than any other demeaning job in any other crappy English mill.

Beyond that, my general impression is that most schools in China who insist on certs don't give a wet slap which cert you have as long as you have one. The cert has nothing to do with your teaching abilities- it serves only to placate the regulators and the parents. My advice from this standpoint is to shop purely on price and convenience.

As is often pointed out, the best reason to get a cert is to teach you about teaching. There is no substitute for real live experience and hands-on instruction here. However, some of them may be better than nothing.

There has been a standing discussion of online cert providers over in the discussion forum at our friends at TESall.com. You might give it a read. www.tesall.com I think most of us here either have degrees, CELTA types, or no cert at all.

Let's see Dave Sperling do that.

[burlives]

The other thing to say about tefl certs is that if they are what they say they are then they are meant to set you off on the path to becoming an independent teacher of English able to negotiate using the object of instruction as the medium of instruction. And, especially in public schools, that's not what you're supposed to do in China.

In any kind of institutionalised school setting the real teachers are Chinese. The foreign teachers are the cheerleaders. Unless you work for some kind of language mill you are supposed to augment the Chinese teachers instruction, not instruct in your own right. That kind of sucks after all the money you spend.

What I think is that if you land a job as an oral english teacher, then you have your best chance to teach as a tefl certificate holder might teach. If you have some kind of higher degree or tradeable epxerience, they'll try to get you to teach culture or literature or specialised writing.

The real reason I was so down on this school I'm at now is to begin with they refused me a computer, which is a lot of things but it's also a tool of the trade -- how else do you prepare work sheets? --, and then they tried to shuffle me into the teaching of thesis writing. I was looking down the barrel of one semester of not following up on all the instruction I had spent six months reading for and saving money for and four weeks immersed in.

[con's fly is open]

I'd be willing to teach thesis writing, Western style.
But not Chinese style. A teacher at my school had been hired before she'd handed in her final thesis; it consisted of transcribing someone else's thesis. Then she did a couple of Google searches and came up with one for her boyfriend.
I refused to help her- intellectual property rights is a sensitive subject for me- but she nonetheless passed with flying colours. So did her stupid, lazy boyfriend.

[Mr Nobody]

I have just been reading some of the students bits on that forum suggested by Raoul.

Shudder.

Jesus wept, you would think that prospective English teachers would at least be capable of speaking and writing English. They write like children.

I haven't find the bit talking about online TESL though. I can't get past the (I don't have a word for it). I will bravely soldier on.

Oh, and thanks guys. I am still on a learning curve here (heh, i made a typo that said learning curse, made me laugh)

[Raoul Duke]

Burl- As we all know, giving individual teachers their own computer is a poor use of money that really should be going to serve The People. Well, one of The People, anyway...one who really has his heart sincerely set on that nice new shiny black car this year. Besides, if you have your own computer, then you won't be working right there in the school where you'll be handy and where they can kinda...you know...watch ya.

Con- did those students pass because of credits they'd already earned under the previous teacher, or were they just mysteriously passed "to keep them from getting discouraged"? I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I already know the answer to this question.

Teaching thesis and other writing classes could be OK if they did them right...but they don't. You end up with 6 sections of 95 students each and a hellish nightmare of grading. And you don't always have the teeth to really enforce plagiarism bans.

Mr. N- Yeah, that isn't a forum to spend a lot of time poking around, I'm afraid. I look for China questions I might be able to answer and then move on. I cite it because it's the one discussion of online certs that I have seen lately. I do like the rest of TESall, though...as I say on the Links page, it has a lot of the essential functions of Dave's ESL Cafe, only without the jackboots and swastikas. Some innovations, too...the ESL News thing can be interesting.

[burlives]

con's said:

I'd be willing to teach thesis writing, Western style.
But not Chinese style.

See, that's what I told the numbnuts here -- if they'd just advertise for a writing teacher, they'd get a fine selection of persons whose first interest is writing. Instead they advertise for a speciality-unspecified foreign teacher and then ask him to take up the slack of the vice dean goofing off and go be an academic teacher on a language teacher's salary.

Well, they said, writing is part of the language, innit. Yeah, but western style thesis writing involves structuring and presenting an argument, which is not very much like what the bright-eyed hopefuls in the class have spent their entire education preparing themselves to do. You want someone to do that on your low salary, you gotta get someone whose passion is writing.

I want to get into some basic instruction, and I'm starting to think that there's not a lot of that to be done in a university.

[Mr Nobody]

So let me see if i have this right.

1. Online courses aint much chop, but that doesn't matter since the Chinese authorities don't give a rat's bum and haven't got a clue anyway.
2. Methodology is of questionable use even if you do a "proper" course. ie, CELTA. etc.
3. Even with a "proper" certificate, you don't get a better job or better pay etc.
4. Therefore, just get the cheapest cert with the least work, go to china and work for a year, see how it goes. If i like it, then do something serious about the whole issue, but that won't help much either, just give me less grief (I like less grief).
5. Research like crazy and scream for help, especially in the early stages of actually teaching. Do lots of preparation, etc.
6. None of this matters in the slightest, since it all depends on the job i get anyway, which is really the area I should be concerned with, not my own performance as a teacher.

Something like that?

Post release edit, memo to self. Classroom experience is vital component. Must get classroom experience. OK. That should have been point one.

[Raoul Duke]

Very close, Mr. N, very close.

The better certs- CELTA and Trinity- CAN lead to better jobs, they just don't NECESSARILY lead to them. Not every job who demands these certs offers pay and perks to match. However, there is a tiny but significant fraction that do.

If you ever want to leave East Asia and teach in a country fittin' fer decent people to live in, the CELTA/Trinity become de rigeur. This may be the best reason to get a CELTA etc.- the mobility it gives you.

The other one kind of depends on you- your makeup and background. If you feel that you can march into a roomful of rabid middle-schoolers and acquit yourself well, then your uni degree and a no-name cert (or even just your degree) are probably enough.

If you feel a bit at sea about how all this is done, and that some minimum of training will make you feel better prepared and more comfortable, by all means take it. If possible, take one with at least some component of hands-on training.

Otherwise, you're dead-on right about the certs.

[Mr Nobody]

Yeah, well, the ONLY part that i feel really insecure about is classroom experience.

I have only done a couple of hours teaching one of these classes earlier this year, in Nanning. yes, they asked me to sing, yes they asked me if i like Chinese girls and was i married etc, and most of them acted like those pottery warriors except for the ones that talked on mobile phones. two thirds of the class didn't even bother to turn up, and basically my job was to walk through the exam. I can deal with all that, at least on that level of exposure.

I enjoyed even though i was dying of a nasty nasty bug. But i have enjoyed teaching ever since i was arrogant enough to think i knew more than someone else.

But unfortunately I cannot think of a way of getting that needed experience before i go there. My city does not have any CELTA, efl, etc courses at all any more (i found out about a local church run one where you get the cert but they do bible studies to teach it. I do not think it will be suitable for me, a staunch atheist, and after all, I will be going to China, not somewhere where they welcome such intrusions.) ("Today, kids, we will be covering smiting. OK, the Lord smiteth, I am smitten, He smote him. All together now . . ., Ok, now use smite in a sentence.")

Sigh. Looks like online crap and winging it with a sigh and (metaphorically speaking only, of course) a prayer. One of my student's gf teaches EFL to chinese students at the uni, and two of my students are teachers. I will hassle them as much as i can for background material etc. I can't think of much else i can do.

Oh, my gf teaches english in china, so i can hassle her when i am there. That should help some. Plus she can massage me whenever the lack-of-culture shock smites.

[George61]

Mr. N..you can always ask Burl for a copy of his notes.

[burlives]

There are several ways to be successful in a classroom and only some of them involve actual teaching. I think that actually teaching is worthwhile, even if the teaching job is a means to an end. In that regard a little tefl teaching methodolgy will probably go a long way.

If you can't arrange a decent course, then some self-help can be found in a few books. One minimum suggestion would include How to Teach English by Jeremy Harmer, together with some ESL course book.

How to Teach English by Jeremy Harmer. I dipped into this book on the CELTA course but didn't read it much because I was already getting its content from the CELTA trainers. In other words, it is a reasonable textbook guide to more or less current CELTA methodology. But be warned, make someone watch you when you teach and get some feedback on what you thought you were doing.

ESL course books, preferably at the right level, should be bought in both the student edition and the teacher edition. Teacher editions generally cost about five times the student edition, but will give you lesson plans. I've elected to go with two, New Headway and Cutting Edge, at intermediate and upper intermediate levels. (Although, I'm advised that NH will have more success in China than CE, and I actually don't know yet if Chinese college students are intermediate, upper, or advanced.) New Interchange seems to be available readily in China (and conveniently the teacher book and the student book are the same price!), but I like it less than NH. New Concept appears to be very modest indeed as a text book. The rest of what you can find in China appears to be very ill-suited to any western-style language teaching.

(Another text book to think about is Practical Techniques for Language Teaching by Michael Lewis and Jimmie Hill. A slim volume of uber-technique. It lays down detailed axioms of what is and is not crap in a language classroom. But by itself it's not too helpful.)

Although a decent ESL coursebook will give you the grammar, consider getting a decent reference book. Grammar for English Language Teachers by Martin Parrott and Practical English Usage by Michael Swan will both overload your luggage limit and answer more than you'll ever ask.

That'll be five bucks and a firm handshake, thanks. Remember me when you're in management.

[Raoul Duke]

Burl said:

I actually don't know yet if Chinese college students are intermediate, upper, or advanced.

From what I've seen, there will be all three of these levels- generally in the same classroom.

Is New Headway written by a guy named Nunan? If it's the book I'm thinking of, it is pretty good. Unfortunately I rarely see it sold anywhere.

I'm OK with New Interchange. Decent method and material, with good multimedia support. I like the way it integrates all aspects of English communications (The 4 Rs: Readin', wRitin', Retchin'. wRithin') simultaneously. Best of all, it seems to be available all over China in the XinHua and Foreign Languages bookstores.

New Concept English (or, as I usually describe it No Concept English) is a travesty. The finest pedagogy 1958 has to offer. It is used a lot here. Surprise, surprise...rumor has it that school owners get paid a kickback if they install No Concept in their schools.

[Mr Nobody]

If i get anywhere with this thing, it will be all to your credit. Or blame. You can decide later. I thank you all from the bottom of my glass.

Well, I think that you all deserve a round on me. Maybe more than one, but hey, i am a tightwad. Raoul, sir, could you please bring out that special vintage rocket fuel with the high octane additives for my friends, and of course one for yourself. (oh, er, i actually do know how to make absinthe, you were talking about it in one of the threads.)


Burl, your five dollars is safe, and the firm handshake too. Thanks guys.

Maybe i can video it and watch it later. That is how i do my lectures, seminars etc. Sit down with me girlie or some local experienced guys and rip it to bits, while boozing to reduce the pain.

I will see about the books on amazon.com and the local bookstores. I have to get a cert anyway, so will coincide the two. Have to recover from my last amazon purchase of a bunch of books on Jade. Love that old jade carving.

[Raoul Duke]

Mr. N,
while I pour that round, a question. Do you know how to make absinthe that doesn't taste like...erp...anise? Anise makes me .

[burlives]

In fact, a cursory examination of New Interchange, which I haven't used, suggested several similarities with New Headway, which I have used. I'm still thinking I need a Beginners level course book in the library and I'll probably see if NI has something.

The principal writers of the New Headway books I have are John and Liz Soars. But I do know there's a new version of the books. Apparently they really have called it New New Headway. Someone in the British Council told me so.

It wasn't done deliberately, in fact it happened by accident, but my last language point lesson in the CELTA was on "second" conditionals at intermediate level using the New Headway coursebook. For an enthusiastic class of various nationalities I was able to model several times "if I were a princess, I'd live in a castle."

It doesn't hurt to be camp in Thailand.

[George61]

Trouble is, I am not familiar with "modern" terms for Grammar. Tis been so long since I had to study it, I have also forgotten most of the "old" terms. Not to worry, since my own Grammar is superplus perfect, I only panic when I read posts like Burl's. Fortunately, I only have to teach Oral English.
By the way, " absinthe makes the heart grow fonder" Does this make it an aphrodisiac?

[Hamish]

George61 said:

" absinthe makes the heart grow fonder" Does this make it an aphrodisiac?

OH CHRIST!

BOUNCER!! PITCH THIS DRUNK OUT ON HIS ASS!!!

[Mr Nobody]

Absinthe without anise should be possible by leaving out the anise: quite a lot is in it. I have two recipes around here somewhere, i will pm them when i find them. My biggest worry is that for some reason, with all the many available recipes, ALL had anise. Wormwood apparently tastes quite nasty, and the rest of the crap is to make it taste ok, is my guess. I don't think people drank it for the taste. stuff i have read leaves me to believe they drank it flaming or in or with mixers and chasers etc.

Someone recently suggested to me that just about all anise drinks actually had wormwood in them back in the bad old days. I suspect that is an exaggeration, but i don't know.

The fake (wormwood free) commercial absinthe i have tried (for purely research purposes) doesn't taste too strongly of anise and a lot more like embalming fluid, but if you hate anise (i am not fond of it) then maybe it is worse for you. The lemon balm seems to cut the flavour of the anise, just like lemon juice does with black sambucca.

You need a still. Have to have just about pure alcohol, soak the herbs, redistill it, add other herbs sort of thing, water it down to 75% v/v. I suspect extracts would also do the job. They are available. I am new to the whole distillation thing, having avoided it since day one. Reproduction of old style boozes however has been a serious hobby for decades. I make great meads and sacks, and so on. (easy brag, you can't get here to try it)

But i think absinthe has more appeal because it was banned than because it was good.

[Lotus Eater]

my gf teaches english in china, so i can hassle her when i am there

Parade rain again - sorry. Chinese teahcers of English DO NOT teach the way western teachers of English do. In general the Chinese teachers follow the traditional Chinese method of teaching and are quite insecure about doing things differently. A lot of Chinese teaching is based on look and listen and rote learning or vocal repetition, not so much conversation and activities. If she does things differently - more power to her!

My post-grad students ask me for advice about their teaching and I am trying to give them some clues about the difficulties I have come across with students.

I have Jeremy Harmer's "The Practice of English Language Teaching" - bought in Oz on my last trip there. He has some interesting discussions and ideas in it that will give you ways of thinking about stuff - but not so much lesson plans etc. It's been good bed-time reading

[Mr Nobody]

Ok, thanks. Yes, i should have thought, very different methodology. My ignorance knows no bounds. Sigh.

Actually, she does try to get them more active. She started teaching Putonghua to dialect speakers, and did a second degree etc in English, now teaching it for a couple of years, and now nearly finished her masters in it.
She does try to get them involved, but says they are so lazy. She gets quite frustrated at times. She also kicks out people who use mobiles and so on, but i would say she also isnt as proactive as a westerner would be. I do know that they get her marking other teachers exams and things because the teachers are also too lazy, and these teachers' students get lower marks from her for the same test. She was holding one up in horror that he only got 6%. I think you get more than that for getting your name right. But she is pretty progressive in many ways. She does accept the whole get-a-certificate-regardless-of-your-english thing though, which took me aback.

but that is neither here nor there. I agree that to teach that passively would be stifling.

[burlives]

I bought Jeremy Harmer's "The Practice of English Language Teaching" two years ago and consider it a waste of money -- it's an academic and relatively shallow survey of method, and I found it almost usless as a manual. How to teach English is likely to be much better.

Also, younger Chinese teachers are much more on the ball than is usually supposed. It really depends on their motivations. A lot of teachers are there for the stability, and they easily fall back on the Chinese didactic method. But another lot are interested in teaching, and if they had their education recently in some kind of teacher's college, then their active grasp of method should not be dismissed too quickly. It's just that extracting anything of substance from a Chinese is very like pulling teeth

I think a lot of young Chinese teachers really want to use their English skills. At least for a while it makes them relatively innovative in the classroom.

[MK]

I remember coming off my Trinity Cert course and plunging full of enthusiasm into my first Chinese college classroom...the backlash against 'my idea' of teaching was swift and brutal:

'your lessons are boring'

'you can just tell us something interesting about western persons and culture'

'We want you to talk more'

'we are already knowing the grammar. We dont want use textbook'

A lot of Chinese students view the foreign teachers class as purely of entertainment value. It can be pretty rough going if you go in there with the intention of actually teaching them how to communicate in English.

[George61]

Yeah... "we want you to talk to us".... Twould be great if they would bloody listen and copy what we say...but they DON'T m'kayIN LISTEN!!
poo, I can mimic accents simply by listening, and practising. Why can't they??
Too difficult!