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How Accreditation Ensures High Teaching Standards in TEFL Courses
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In the industry of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), initial training courses come in all shapes and sizes. This makes it challenging for you - a future TEFL teacher - to choose the right course. It’s an important decision that requires serious consideration and research to ensure that the time and effort - and your hard-earned money - that you invest in the course is well spent. For this reason, course accreditation is one of the criteria that should inform your choice.
Accreditation plays a pivotal role in ensuring that courses meet rigorous standards and deliver high-quality training to aspiring teachers. Accredited TEFL courses not only provide comprehensive content but also equip teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge to deliver effective and engaging lessons.Let’s find out how accreditation ensures high teaching standards in TEFL courses, and the key elements of course content that enable teachers to create impactful learning experiences for their students.
The course content
Methodologies and Pedagogical Approaches
Accredited TEFL courses incorporate a wide range of teaching methodologies and pedagogical approaches. These courses familiarise teachers with established methods such as the communicative approach, task-based learning, emphasising the importance of learner-centred instruction. Teachers learn how to design lessons that promote active student participation, encourage critical thinking, and foster language acquisition through meaningful communication. All this might sound new to you, so here’s what you should expect from a lesson based on communicative approach:At present, the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach is the most popular in contemporary English Language Teaching (ELT) classrooms. The primary objective of CLT is to facilitate effective communication among learners, irrespective of their grammatical accuracy, in a wide range of real-life situations. In order to achieve this goal, the language instruction in CLT is centred around functional purposes, such as making a hotel reservation or composing a complaint email. The selection of grammar items and vocabulary is determined by the specific topic of the lesson.Accreditation ensures that TEFL courses cover these methodologies, enabling teachers to employ effective teaching techniques that engage and motivate their students.
Language Skills Development
One of the primary goals of a TEFL course is to enhance teachers' language proficiency. Accredited courses devote significant attention to improving teachers' grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation skills and knowledge. By honing their own language abilities, teachers gain confidence in effectively conveying linguistic concepts and helping students overcome language barriers.
Fun fact: Phonology - related to pronunciation - is one of the most complex features of the English language, as there is no real correlation between spelling and pronunciation in English. This can often be an issue for learners, who might be used to ‘read words as they are written’, as in some other languages. It is also important to remember that many sounds that are present in English, do not exist in other languages at all. This might cause pronunciation issues.
Would you like to know what the English sounds look like on paper? Here are some examples:
feet - sound /iː/
bit - sound /ɪ/
bat - sound /æ/
cut - sound /ʌ/
Accreditation ensures that TEFL courses emphasise language skills development, enabling teachers to model correct language usage and provide clear explanations to their students.Lesson Planning and Materials Development
An accredited TEFL course will teach you how to develop thorough lesson plans and how to use and adapt existing materials - and how to create new ones. Teachers learn how to plan well-structured lessons that cater to their students' needs, interests, and language levels. They acquire skills in designing engaging activities, selecting appropriate authentic materials, and incorporating multimedia resources.Did you know? A lesson is most effective once it is planned backwards! Creating the final production task first makes it easier to build the rest of the lesson.
Accreditation ensures that TEFL courses provide in-depth training in these areas, equipping teachers with the ability to create dynamic and interactive lessons that foster student engagement and facilitate effective learning.
Classroom Management and Student Motivation
Effective classroom management is vital for maintaining a positive and productive learning environment. Accredited TEFL courses address the strategies and techniques necessary for managing diverse classroom dynamics, addressing discipline issues, and promoting student engagement. Teachers learn how to establish rapport with their students, provide clear instructions, and implement effective behaviour management techniques.
You might have heard that variety is the spice of life. This is also true in a classroom environment. An effective classroom management tool is changing the interaction pattern. Depending on the activity at hand, learners might benefit from working individually, in pairs, in small or large groups.
Accreditation ensures that TEFL courses cover classroom management comprehensively, equipping teachers with the skills to create a supportive and motivating learning atmosphere.Assessment and Feedback
We all learn from our mistakes - and so do language students! For this reason, assessment and constructive feedback is a key component of a TEFL course. Teachers learn how to design various types of assessments to gauge students' progress and understanding. They also acquire skills in providing meaningful feedback as a learning tool that helps students improve their language skills.
Accreditation ensures that TEFL courses include training on assessment techniques and feedback strategies, enabling teachers to accurately evaluate student performance and offer guidance for continuous improvement.
The course instructors
Accredited TEFL courses place significant emphasis on the qualifications and expertise of their instructors. These courses ensure that instructors possess extensive experience in specific TEFL-related fields, e.g. teaching exam classes, young learners, business English, holding advanced qualifications in relevant areas. Accreditation bodies require instructors to demonstrate their pedagogical knowledge and teaching skills through a rigorous selection process. As a result, accredited TEFL courses are led by highly qualified instructors who have a deep understanding of language acquisition, effective teaching methodologies, and classroom management techniques. These instructors teach what they preach. They bring their expertise and real-world experience into the classroom, guiding aspiring teachers through the intricacies of TEFL instruction and sharing valuable insights that enrich the learning experience.The course assessment
TEFL courses can be assessed by various entities to ensure their quality and adherence to standards. Here are the key stakeholders involved in the assessment process.
First and foremost, course providers play a significant role in assessing their own courses. They design the curriculum, select course materials, hire qualified instructors, and ensure that the course meets the accreditation standards. Course providers conduct internal assessments to monitor the effectiveness and quality of their programmes.
They do this by requesting the input of their most senior teachers and by gathering feedback from current students and alumni. Students who have completed the course can provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the programme, the effectiveness of instruction, and the overall learning experience. Their feedback helps course providers identify areas of improvement and make necessary adjustments to enhance the quality of the course.
Accreditation by recognized accrediting bodies holds significant weight in the assessment process. These bodies set standards and criteria that TEFL courses must meet to receive accreditation. They conduct comprehensive assessments of the course content, curriculum, instructor qualifications, teaching practice components, and overall quality of the programme.
