My opportunity before TESOL:

My name is Kelly and I currently reside in Tunisia. I was offered an opportunity to teach English at a local private language School in Tunisia. I took this opportunity even though I had never taught English and not being a teacher of any kind, when I took this opportunity I was nervous but thought to myself how hard can it be to teach my native language to non native speakers, easy, I thought after all I am English and they are Arabic.

During my opportunity:

Whilst I was teaching I came across numerous problems. I went head first in to teaching. My most memorable experience was when I was teaching what started as 4 Beginner students of English. I was using a course book for this and although I did incorporate my own activites the students were getting very bored with what was being taught but luckily they enjoyed my lessons and having the benefit of what they called me ' a real English person' teaching them. After a few weeks the class grew to 9 students, I soon began to realise that the students were learning at different stages and different levels, I then began to encounter a lot of problems from discipline to lesson planning.

Even though I knew the students enjoyed coming to my lessons I started to feel that I wasn't really doing them any justice, they were learning English and getting the most out of their classes but in time I started to lose confidence in myself, from my personality change the students picked up on this and before long the classes were becoming riots.

It wasn't so much the culture differences or the level of students it was from the shock of becoming a teacher and entering into a whole new ball game, during my first few weeks of teaching, I started to realise that this was something I really enjoyed and got great satisfaction from teaching, I felt I was doing myself a disservice by not being qualified.

It was for this reason that I started to search the internet in to what qualifications I should have to teach English as a Foreign Language.

TESOL:

Whilst searching endlessly on courses available to become qualified as a TESOLteacher, I enrolled with ITTT online.

I started to recieve my units via email and had the benefit of a fantastic tutor available anytime to assist with any problems I encountered during my course. The TESOL course has been so easy to understand, all the explanations have been clearly written so anyone can understand what they are reading, the material has been illustrative and down to the point, no language used to make you confused. The worksheets have been really good fun to complete but at the same time challenging.

Being a native English speaker I was very surprised to come across so many things I didn't know from grammar to teaching in general, from classroom control to resources needed. The entire course has been a great and educational experience.

Why complete a TESOL course:

Simply because without completing this course you are misleading yourself, a good teacher comes from experience but also a good teacher comes from knowledge. I had this experience of teaching as an unqualified teacher and can truly say that if I had not taken the TESOL course then I would have packed up my pens and given up on teaching altogether.

Thanks to the TESOL course, I am more confident and ready to take on any problems I face throughout my new found career as a TESOL teacher. I have an understanding in to the world of teaching that I didn't realise existed.

I am confident with the grammar that needs to be taught thanks to the grammar units in my course, I am confident in teaching pronunciation and understand phonology, thanks to the explanations in my course, where as before TESOL I thought phonology related to making telephone calls!

The advice given in the TESOL course will remain with me throughout my teaching experiences and I know that time and time again I will revert back to my units for help. The activites and ideas that the TESOL course has provided me will keep my lessons fun and interesting.

I know that I will succeed successfully as a TESOL teacher thanks to the TESOL course.

Kelly Colby