CELTA Offered Online This Year

It looks like Cambridge is moving into education of the 20th century (maybe even the 21st). According to the Cambridge ESOL website, CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) will be available online starting in September 2011. Currently, it is only available in person at over 200 centers around the world (eight, in the United States, at this time). Here's a list of all CELTA course locations around the world.

The online CELTA course will have the same requirements as the face-to-face course (without attendance, of course). The only thing that will not be able to be done online is the teaching practicum. Six hours of assessed hands-on teaching practice will still be required.

I wonder if this opening up of the strict CELTA course requirements will raise the value of other TEFL/TESOL certification courses in the minds of those who favor CELTA over other certificates.

What do you think?

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"The Time Goes Fast!"

This is what one of my adult ESL students said yesterday when I ended our ninety-minute conversation class. We had met a few days before for a free ESL Needs Assessment that I always offer to potential students, but our meeting yesterday was our first conversation class together.

I always love to hear the English language learners (ELL) I work with comment on how fast the time flies when we work together. Comments like these let me know that the ELL is enjoying the class and, I believe, more easily getting the practice they want.

And, I guess I should mention that "time flies" since I haven't posted anything to this Teaching ESL to Adults blog in over a year! Time flies when you're having fun!

I continue to work with adult ESL students and I love it. I appreciate the many of you who continue to find, read and comment on my blog.

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Accusation of Stolen ESL Blog

As most of you know who have been following my ESL blog about my ESL tutoring experiences, as well as ESL tips, grammar tips, etc., I wrote back in September of 2009 that I discovered that someone had stolen my ESL blog. At that time, I filed a complaint with Google. Google researched my claim and took down the site that had stolen my material (they didn't even bother to change anything, the thief stole my blog word for word).

I have personally written each article in this blog based on my experiences teaching ESL, with the exception of a handful of articles from guest writers. You can identify those ESL blog entries because they will give credit to the author.

This blog with the URL of www.esl-tutor.com is the original site. I think if other unscrupulous people are stealing this content, you should be able to identify this because they will have a different URL.

Today, I received an email from an unidentified source accusing me of being the thief. Here is the content of that email sent to my contact page of my main website Teaching ESL to Adults:

"YOUR BLOG IS IDENTICAL TO ONE I'VE BEEN FOLLOWING FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS. SHAME ON YOUR FOR YOUR PLAIGARISM!!!!!!!!!! IT IS UNPROFESSIONAL AND DISGUSTING.

AN ESL TEACHER IN COLORADO (You aren't forthcoming, so I see no need to be forthcoming with my identity, either!)
First Name: ESL Teacher
Last Name:
E-mail Address:
Country: United States
May I post your message on this website? (please choose one): Yes, it's OK to
post my message, name and country. (Due to spammers, I will never post your
email address.)"

Unfortunately, the email writer did not leave his or her email address (which I understand if he or she thinks I am the thief), so I hope he or she will read this post and perhaps get back to me with the URL of the actual plagiarizing ESL blog so that I may report it to Google.

I thank all my followers of this blog and my main ESL site. And I apologize for not writing every day as I did the first year of this blog. I've been spending more time on the main site, so you may want to follow that site for newer material.

Best regards,
Debra Garcia
ESL Tutor

Should You Get a CELTA or a TEFL Certificate?

If you're considering getting a certificate to start teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), you've probably come across the TEFL vs. CELTA debate. Which certification is better? Which courses are better? Which prepare you to teach adults ESL/EFL and which prepare you to teach children? Which certificate do employers prefer?

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions take a lot of research and then most of the answers you find are subjective. If you ask someone with a CELTA, they're likely to say CELTA is better. If you ask someone with a TEFL certificate, they're likely to say TEFL is better. This is, of course, also dependent upon the student teacher's particular experiences at their particular TESOL certification course.

When potential EFL/ESL teachers write and ask me which I recommend, I cannot give a strong recommendation about which is best. (I can recommend my particular program, as I feel it did everything it promised and more.) I can only suggest factors to consider when making the TEFL or CELTA decision. You can read more about what to consider on my main website TEFL or CELTA page.

The one thing I strongly recommend is that after you've done your research, bite the bullet and just do choose a certificate and choose a course. Don't let the "paralysis by analysis" bug keep you from moving forward.

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Choosing the Best TESOL Certificate

A TESOL certificate is one of the quickest and easiest ways to start a career teaching English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language. But with so many TESOL certificate programs to choose from, how do you choose the best one?

What type of certification is right for you? TESOL, TEFL, TESL, or CELTA? On-site or online?

Visit my Finding the Best TESOL Certificate page for tips on finding the right program for you and characteristics of the best TESOL certificate programs.

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Using a Christian-Based ESL Curriculum

Sally in the U.S. wrote this question about a Christian-based ESL curriculum. Unfortunately, she didn't give me an email address to answer her. Hopefully, she'll come back for the answer.

Sally writes:

"I will be teaching ESL to Spanish speakers through my church.
I'm excited, but nervous. I've never taught ESL.

I taught HS 20 years ago -- Media and English degrees.

I have just found your site and think it will help me. I'm open to any other
help anyone wants to offer.

We don't have a curriculum or supplies. We have thought it would be good to be able to use a biblical, Christian based, curriculum. I haven't been able to find one. Any thoughts?"

My response:

Dear Sally,

That's great news, and you're right, teaching ESL is exciting. It seems that churches and other non-profit organizations are great places for non-English speakers to get low-cost or free English classes. And it also seems that these organizations are often expected to provide services with limited or no resources! That's a shame.

What and how you teach will depend upon (1) the English level of the students, (2) their age, and (3) their purpose in learning English.

You didn't mention the specifics of the first two items, but there are tons of free resources online to address the first two issues. It just takes time to find them. However, I want to address the third issue in more detail.

One thing that ESL/EFL teachers, especially teachers of adults, need to ask themselves is WHY are these students taking this English class.

In your case, Sally, is it to get a deeper understanding of the Bible or of their Christian beliefs? Or is it so that they can get a job or make advancements on their current jobs? Is it so that they can take care of the day-to-day tasks of living in an English-speaking country? Is it so that they can feel better about themselves and have more confidence in their English speaking abilities? Is it to gain "survival skills?" Etc.

The teacher has to put the students' needs first. While it's fine to approach a class from a particular orientation, in this case a Christian orientation, the lessons should be something that the students can use in the "real world," in their day-to-day lives. The material and topics covered should be transferable to the students' lives outside of the church.

I don't know of any Christian-based curriculum, Sally. You may be the person to create such a curriculum. I would just suggest that you find a way for students to transfer the English skills that they learn with you into their day-to-day lives.

Best of luck,

Debra

Someone Has Stolen My ESL Blog

Yep. Some unscrupulous person has stolen all the content from this ESL blog and posted as his or her own. Amazing.

You can see the thief's blog at http://www.teaching-esl-to-adults.blogspot.com. I guess he or she is a little behind, though. The last post the thief has as of today is only through February 1, 2009.

I've been writing this ESL blog since March 2007. For the first year, I wrote a post every day. It's a little disheartening to see that someone has stolen all of my work. But life goes on.

I've mentioned before how I advertise on craigslist.org and that I often get responses from scammers, people trying to steal money from other people. Now here's one more way for people to be dishonest.

With the internet there are just so many ways for unscrupulous people to behave. But there is a lot of good that can come from it, too. So I'll focus on that.

I suppose this world economic situation has people doing things that perhaps they would not normally do.

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