Anyone with experience of TEFL / CELTA / TESOL?

[WriggleJiggle]

I am already a teacher, but want to do a course to enable me to give extra support / 1 to 1 sessions to children in my school who have EFL.

The CELTA / TESOL courses I have looked at are about £900-£1000 for a 4/5 week fulltime course. From what I have read on their websites these seem to be aimed at people with no experience of teaching.

Is it possible to do a much shorter (and obviously cheaper) course as I don't think I'll be able to persuade my current head to give me a month off and pay the course fees at this rate.

You can do basic TEFL very cheaply online (investigate i-to-i) - it won't give you stacks of awareness about teaching but seeing you're already a teacher you don't need that.

If it's something that really interests you there are postgrad courses in EAL and bilingualism (I looked at University college Chichester and Centre for Language in Primary Education)

Look here for some more ideas.

Thanks for that. I'm interested in moving more towards SEN teaching, but can't go down that route for various reasons at the moment, mainly because my head wants another EAL teacher rather than a SEN teacher just now .

Are the online TEFL courses actually worth doing? From what I've read, they're not really worth the paper they're written on (or rather the screen ).

I have an MA in TESOL from the Institute of Education, and I think that there are several universities (including the IoE I think) who now do an MA by distance learning. That would obviously be more of a commitment, but might be worth exploring? Itwould certainly open up more options for you.

You may also want to have a look at your local colleges. You could do an ESOL specialism for preparing to teach in the lifelong learning sector. I know our local colleges have part time courses. Although they are aimed at teaching adults, ESOL teaching is aimed at teaching settled immigrants (which I am guessing most EAL children are the children of).

Some of them are, some of them aren't. You can't really teach TEFL abroad (or indeed in the UK) with them, although I've never had issues with my i-to-i abroad! But like you I didn't need a CELTA or a Trinity cert, I just needed some ideas for how to teach EFL, confidence in my own ability to answer questions about English and not just speak it and a crash course in what would be appropriate to teach at what time as I work by total immersion, usually with children who haven't been consistently exposed to English before.

I guess it depends what you (or your head) needs out of it.

Thanks, what I really want is an overview of what I should be teaching i.e. topic areas, and ideas of resources I guess.

There must be courses about teaching EAL (rather than doing a qualification), I just can't think of the names of any providers. That would get me started for September, and then do a 'proper' qualification over the coming year.

The CELTA courses are fantastic and INMHO capable of teaching even a fully trained teacher a thing or two. AFAIK the DELTA is the next qualification up the food chain.

Of course the CELTA is about teaching to adults, there is a childrens version (possibly an add-on?) but I seem to recall it being hard to find a centre teaching this.

I have also done a course called ESL in the mainstream, which I think came out of Australia but has been conducted here.

What age children are you teaching?

KS2 or KS3

I've got the DELTA.
A friend of mine with a PGCE has just been offered a funded place on a CELTA in Liverpool somewhere (uni I think) so there is obviously funding out there for people who don't necessarily want a CELTA to dash off abroad, but to enhance their career options within the UK.
I'll ask him who is paying up for him and let you know.
There are also lots of CELTA courses which are run part time over a year, you do one evening a week, and then at the end a "residential" (full-time) which is the bit when you get your observations done etc. I know quite a few people who did it on that footing as well.
Tbh, in your situation, I'd wonder if there wasn't a better more specialised ESL course rather than a CELTA, which ultimately is for EFL, but I'm presuming you are talking more about children with English as a second, rather than a foreign language?

TBH it isn't rocket science and for that age group I would recommend using Read Write Inc by Ruth Miskin for teaching reading/literacy etc. There is a Fresh Start strand for older children. Ruth Miskin developed her programme working in a school with high level of ESL and you can see that in the programme as there is so much about language development - that is what I'D spend the money one.

I don't think the CELTA will be of any use for what you say you want. However the ESL in the Mainstream course could be of real value to all the staff in your school.

Have a look at here too www.naldic.org.uk/docs/support/prof_dev.cfm

The ESL in the Mainstream info is at the bottom of the linked page