Need advice, re: English teaching certificate

[Ross Barlow]

I need some advice that someone here may be able to give me.

I am thinking of taking a course here in Thailand to train me and give me a top certificate for teaching English here. TESOL/TEFL/TESL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages/ as a Foreign Lang./ as a Second Lang.). Several private educational institutions here provide such training, and I must choose one.

I know that I can easily get an English teaching job here just by being a native English-speaker with a BA degree. But I was never taught to teach English. I taught history, philosophy and social studies in the US at high school level for 10 years. It has been 40 years since I studied grammar, and I cannot explain it to anyone. My in-laws here are asking me about verb tenses I do not think I have ever heard of.

Taking this course would help me teach with much more comfort, and I never like to do anything half-ass. Also, the recognized quality of this certificate would give me optimal choice in a job search. I am picky and would like more flexible part-time work teaching adults that does not take me across Bangkok every day. (Long travel time through horrendous traffic = Hell. Short and/or aesthetically pleasing travel = Tranquility.) There are several language schools near the Chao Phraya River which I can easily reach by a short express boat trip, and the boat pier is a nice 1 km walk from home and next to my local temple.

I should choose a course and register by next week. They are intensive, and I am crossing my fingers hoping that my health can hold up for such a four week endurance test. I still have bad headaches on occasion and other health problems. The course will wipe me out, but I intend to take it.

There are two top programs offered here which I must choose from. There is the Cambridge CELTA (Certificate in English Lang. Teaching to Adults) certificate course offered by ECC Thailand. And there is the SIT TESOL certificate course offered by the American University Alumni (AUA) Language School here. The SIT (School for International Training) originates out of Vermont, and the CELTA out of England. Both courses cost the same, have the same intensity and the same number of hours, and they are both equally prestigious here.

Do you have any advice or thoughts on my choice of course based on experience or word of mouth? I am leaning strongly toward the AUA SIT course, mainly because the technical grammar vocabulary is the American English that I am more accustomed to. I have a distinct impression that the CELTA course would require me to learn a lot of extra British English vocabulary and grammar concepts that are foreign to my ear. Because both of these courses are head and shoulders above anything else offered here to English teachers, I do not see a big difference between them at the moment. Any advice?

I will register for one of the courses next week, but they do not start until November. This gives me a good six weeks to get on the treadmill more and try to build up a reserve of strength for the long haul of the course. It is going to knock the hell out of me.

Thanks for any input that anyone would care to provide.

At the very least, such a course may improve my barbaric English usage and spare all of you a lot of grief.

-Ross Barlow.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ross,

I think you chose wisely already. Stick with your roots and it will be easier to learn. I believe there should be the same market value either way, so the gain will be in learning, not teaching.

I never went into English teaching in Brazil. I went straight into technical translating after I left the artistic world. I don't know if Thai bilingual technical dictionaries are the same as in Brazil, but if they are (and I suspect they are), not one is really very good. You will have to buy many over time. Sometimes you can find surprisingly useful things in used book shops for low price.

I see teaching technical language as being similar to technical translating. And I definitely see Thailand having many of the same types of bilingual problems. The main source of difficulty is with the nature of technical life. A large company becomes a small island in the middle of civilization. In-house jargon develops over time, along with a bunch of charming abbreviations, and both British and American technical experts go through it, so the technical words are usually a mish-mash of both. There are no dictionaries for this.

Also, I found accounting vocabulary to be a holy mess because of the different legal/economic orientations (although it was lucrative because it was always in demand) and for law, I found to useful to supplement the study of legal terms with reading actual case law from both countries, since some legal concepts are very different between legal systems based on Roman Law (Brazil) and Common Law (USA).

Probably some good advice would be to try to see if it is possible to focus on a specific language market. General beginning English is no problem, but if you hate kids, stick with adults and teens, or vice-versa. If there is a market for a specific technical area like law, you might want to focus on this during your studies by bugging your teachers. You also might try to become friends with some bilingual professionals in the field itself. They are an excellent source of technical vocabulary and jargon you will not find in the dictionaries. You will probably have to start your own lists, so it is a good idea to think about some kind of filing system for this.

In short, basic language teaching is one thing. Technical language is many different things and this is not covered in teaching courses. You sound like a creative dude, so you should be OK. Creativity is precisely what is needed to get around these problems.

Michael

[Ross Barlow]

Michael,

Thank you so much for your thoughts and advice. Your experience is just what I was hoping to find. It gives me a lot to think about.

-Ross.