TEFL 101
Welcome to TEFL 101. I will be your instructor, Mike Masse.
I’ve always enjoyed saying that. 😉
Introduction
These pages deal more with the esoteric side of TEFL; all of that classroom and book stuff about philosophy and methodology and everything that will give you a greater understanding of what’s going on under the hood.
Why would you need to know that? Well, you might be surprised to learn that it’s not terribly difficult to find a job as a TEFL teacher. It’s also usually not hard to teach an English class. However, it is very hard to find a good job and to teach English well. I learned that lesson the hard way. When I got my first job teaching English, I had read on the internet that it’s an easy job where they don’t expect you to do much. You know, get a steady paycheck while you explore the world and learn about yourself?
The reality couldn’t have been further from the truth. Well, I did get a steady paycheck and I did explore the world and I did learn about myself. But, it wasn’t an easy job by any means. And while my original employer wasn’t bad, they also didn’t pay very much or have much in terms of training, so I spent most of my first year flailing about, throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck.
And the reason I had to do that was because I didn’t know what I was doing or what the thought processes were behind it. Over time I learned, mostly by myself, about the philosophies and methodologies and all of that background stuff. I did that through trial and error, constantly questioning what I was doing in the classroom and the results I was getting and subjecting things to almost scientific method-level experimentation. I also asked questions of other teachers, finding out their thought processes and rationale for things they did in their classrooms.
This is why I recommend you start here if you are a new or aspiring TEFL teacher; you can copy what other people do in the classroom. But until you understand why they do it and the thought processes and reasons for it, it’s very difficult to change, modify or adapt to fit a different language target.
When I first started, I couldn’t plan or teach a lesson, and now with a minimal amount of prep time, I can
You can do that, too; I’m pretty sure I’m not anything special. But it was a long road to get to where I am today. Heck, I’m still learning new things even today, more than 20 years in. So I’m compiling everything I learned here. Hopefully this will give you a head start on things.
On to the Good Stuff
The TEFL 101 pages are broken up into 4 areas. The Basics are some of the very foundational ideas and concepts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and the ways it which it is similar to and differs from some other aspects of English teaching.
One might think that teaching is kind of monolithic; that you just teach and the student learns. But that’s not at all the case. There are numerous schools of thought on teaching, both in theory and in practice, and all of them address what we do in the classroom and why we do it. This is referred to in academic circles as Pedagogy.
If Pedagogy is the what and why underpinning what we do in the classroom, Methodology is how we approach these things in the classroom; the techniques we use. In the same way that there are multiple pedagogical theories, there are multiple methodologies.
Special Topics is for one-off articles about various other aspects of TEFL teaching.