Quite a few years ago, I decided that I wanted to travel the world teaching English. I applied online for a job in Taiwan and shortly after I had a position in Taipei. My employer told me that I wouldn’t need a TESOL certificate and that I should just go over as soon as possible. My first two months in Taiwan were terrible. After only a week at my fist school, I had lost my job. I really did not know what I was doing. Fortunately, my agent found me another job in Taichung, so I packed all my things and off I went to the middle of the island.

In Taichung things did not get much better. I was learning fast and trying my best, but still nowhere near teacher quality. After a month, I had lost my job again. By this time, my agent was getting very impatient with me, but I begged her to give me another chance. After about two weeks, finally she came through with another position in Nan Kan in the north of Taiwan. From this point forward my teaching career progressed nicely. My first months had taught me the basics, but it was not easy. I ended up staying in Taiwan for four years, having learnt a great deal. I decided to start searching for my ext destination. I was having a hard time deciding whether to go to Thailand, or to Japan. As I started receiving responses from my applications, I realised that more often than not, a TESOL certificate was required. I really felt that my experience should have been enough, but apparently it was not.

I contacted TEFL international to get as much information as I could and decided to do the TESOL course at Via Lingua in Phuket. If achieving the certificate enabled me to get a job easier, then it would be time and money well spent. This was my only motivation for doing the course. As the course progressed, I was very surprised at how much I actually still had to learn. There are so many different teaching methods that I had never heard about and although my grammar was not all that bad, the TESOL course gave me great teaching ideas. Most of my teaching experience stems from teaching kids and I was pleased to see that all my students were adults.

It is much easier keeping younger students stimulated in the classroom, there are so many games that one can fall back on, adults, however require higher level of stimulation. The students on the course consisted of doctors, lawyers and business personal, mostly influential people. By the end of the course, I was teaching adults with confidence. Now that I have completed the course, I can not believe how much easier it is to find employment. I have been offered work in Thailand, China and Japan. If I had taken the TESOL course before leaving for Taiwan, I would have saved myself a lot of time, money and pain. In teaching, we are dealing with people. I think teaching courses are essential because we owe the best to our students.