So you want to teach English...

When is it time to look for alternatives? I was talking to Sheldon a couple of nights ago about how I felt I needed to contribute to living together, but couldn't do much. He said I shouldn't worry about it, that he knew I was trying and he thought I was doing all the right things.

1) Contacting people I knew.

2) Making new contacts (volunteering).

3) Trying to better my CV by taking courses and studying.

It is true, when I look at it written down I am doing all that; but walking around the flat aimlessly with nothing to do doesn't make you feel like you are achieving anything. Yesterday, for example, I made an executive(ish) decision; I would take the CELTA course. CELTA stands for Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults, it is a Cambridge ESOL title. Maybe some of you have this already; I didn't need it in Spain, as I worked in private local language schools and as long as you had a degree with English in it or you had a good level of English that was enough to get you started. However, outside of Spain (or my town) schools are more picky about who they hire -which I understand, you don't want to hire someone who knows a lot of English but doesn't know how to teach it.

I was confused by all the acronyms used in the English teaching world: TEFL, TESOL, CELTA, ELT, ESL... I did a search and wrote: Teaching English as  Foreign Language (which would stand for TEFL) in my search engine. This website: http://www.tefl.net/ came up, and it has helped me understand. TEFL, TESOL, ELT... they all mean the same. However, -according to the website- there isn't a certificate called TEFL, the three main certificates out there at the moment are:

The Cambridge CELTA- more info here http://www.cambridgeesol.org/exams/teaching-awards/celta.html

The Trinity CertTESOL - more info here http://www.trinitycollege.co.uk/site/?id=201

The SIT TESOL Certificate - more info here http://www.sit.edu/graduate/6882.htm

I have investigated a little using http://www.tefl.net/tefl-courses/ , which finds TEFL courses in your area and the only school that offers them  the school that offers this course is the same one I took my CV to. The problem with these courses is that they are not cheap, and I would have to think of a way to fund it. I was hoping I could take the course in January, but they are intensive courses and I have college and the volunteering post to tend to. I know how intensive these course are because I did a similar one in teaching Spanish as a foreign language (more info on that in another post); so I would either have to exempt myself from school for a month -which I don't think is wise- or wait until I sit the maths exam and do it in the summer. That might be a better solution. By then I will hopefully have been able to find a job and save up some money for it. (I bet by my next post I will have dropped out of school and will be studying Russian, it wouldn't surprise me)

So that is what I have been upto. That and emailing the people I had done some translations for in the past. And vacuuming the carpet -it's amazing the amount of dirt it accummulates, especially my hair. There's a darkened area on the beautiful cream carpet, right where I -coincidentally- dry my hair. I should do my maths homework, come to think of it.

Other websites to check out are:

http://www.tefl.com/

http://www.englishclub.com/

http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/index.asp