TEFL-Too Good To Be True?
Oh yes, there are many pitfalls when it comes to TEFL. Having narrowly avoided the Chiang Mai Linguistics Institute meltdown (an option I was seriously considering when I still thought I could go to Libong to volunteer), I toyed for a while with courses that offer guaranteed job placements, until I decided to focus on the EU both because it’s more constructive and because I don’t want to run from the problems I’m facing right now. Hey, Barcelona is practically a commute away from London.
It turns out that this was another good decision. As TEFLtastic puts it, there are jobs—even in this day and age—that nobody wants to do. How do you grade homework for a class of 70 students? Obviously you can’t set them individual tasks every day, not even small ones: if you spend 10 minutes a day marking each student you’ll add 58 hours to your working week! Perhaps you could set them one task to mark over the weekend. Once they are more advanced they could work on a mini-project that you’ll assess over the holidays…
But there are two problems with that. The first I’m going to dismiss. You may have to face a class of 70 kids and if you volunteer in areas desperate for teachers, you almost certainly will. Since this is something I hope to do one day, I’ll take that as a given.
The second is more important. The kids cannot be granted (sufficient) individual attention, and—especially in areas where educational services are patchy—you’ll be faced with an even broader range of abilities levels among your students.
There is no practical solution to this, but there are a few things worth trying.
The peer feedback system, such as I understand it in TrinityCert TESOL, is likely to break down beyond a certain class size, but it might be possible to gather students into small groups and to keep adjusting them so no over-riding cliques form. That way you can still count of peer support, even while the groups compete with one another.
Why? Because competition adds spice.
The students’ homework will not be assessed by the teacher but will be auto-corrected, following the peer-group’s own assessment during a game or a quiz (with gentle prodding from the teacher throughout: I’m currently following the Paul Noble Spanish course). Students will discover the pitfalls together, bolstered by revision shots at the beginning and end and throughout each lesson.
To continue spinning this fantasy, take irregular verbs. It’s what I consider a milestone and I’m not about to feed them in gradually because I’m relying on the learners’ capacity to absorb long lists of words if they are motivated enough (hint: I’ve learnt hundreds of new Danish words a day because of a computer game somebody wrote for us. And that was in 1985!)
The list will be administered in chunks during a week-long bingo tournament (a few minutes at the start of each lesson) during which the peer groups stay the same. The price: a glittering new penny for each round and a feel-good activity for the whole class after the grand finale, which includes the entire list of irregular verbs.
This is a neat fantasy, but it may just work. However, in a class of 70, there are some students who are likely to be left out. Those who have had the desire to learn beaten out of them, who have underlying anxiety issues. Those who are dyslexic or have been left out of the loop for too long for whatever reason. Those who have no confidence.
Any ideas? How would you make use of the only resource at your disposal: the other students in the class?
Tags: pitfalls, TEFL, Volunteer Teaching, Tag Index
Denni