TEFL/TESL/TESOL Course Review

At ITTO, we use the communicative approach and immersion techniques to prepare our trainees. Our daily classes include morning input sessions with our instructors and afternoon teaching practices. The group input sessions are guided by professional TEFL/TESL/TESOL trainers and include the use of interactive techniques and experiential activities in order to develop the long-term thinking and planning skills that are needed by TEFL/TESL/TESOL teachers. Each input session follows a similar pattern: performing, recalling, reflecting, concluding and practicing.

During our professionally guided input sessions, trainee teachers frequently break into small groups to create teaching materials and practice teaching techniques. All the activities that we practice model the type of skills, qualities, attitudes and teaching techniques that trainees will be expected to use in the classroom.

The course is designed to be developmental and incremental and to encourage trainee TEFL/TESL/TESOL teachers to be creative and confident in their work.The following is an outline of topics covered during our daily input sessions.

1. Classroom Management
   • The role of the teacher and the student in the classroom
   • Classroom arrangement
   • Managing a class
   • Maintaining discipline
   • Giving instructions
   
   


2. Teaching Skills
   This is a highly practical element of the course aimed towards building trainees skills in the following areas:
   • Teaching grammar, vocabulary, speaking, reading, listening and writing lessons (receptive and productive skills)
   • Creating materials
   • Correction techniques
   • Evaluating a textbook
   • Distinguishing between errors and mistakes
   • Teaching beginners, intermediate, advanced and individual students
   • Games, fillers and warmers
   • General models for language structures
   • Teaching business English
   • Teaching children
   • Student groupings.
   • Setting up activities
   • Elicitation
   • Lesson planning
   • Equipment and teaching aids
   
   


3. Language Awareness (Grammar)
   This section of the course aims to consolidate trainee's knowledge of the English grammar system and provides practical ideas as to how it can be taught.Some of the 35 different aspects of grammar covered include:
   • The tense system.
   • Nouns/adjectives.
   • Verbs/adverbs.
   • Infinitives.
   • Gerunds.
   • Parts of speech.
   • Modal auxiliary verbs
   • Conditionals
   • Relative clauses
   • Phrasal verbs
   • Teaching pronunciation
   • Phonetics
   • Unknown language.
   
   


4. Phonology
   Focuses on areas such as stress, intonation, rhythm and the International Phonetic Alphabet.
   


5. Unknown Language
   Candidates are put into the position of language students and will be taught an unknown foreign language. This gives candidates a chance to view lessons as a student and note techniques used by the teacher when teaching beginners.
   


6. Teaching Practice
   The most practical and important element of the course. Trainees teach real students of English and put into practice the skills learnt on the course. A very important feature of our course, we are able to offer our trainees the opportunity to actually teach genuine English students of our affiliated schools. Due to our affiliations with high quality ESL/EFL schools in Guadalajara, ITTO can offer its students a unique teaching experience that many other TEFL/TESL/TESOL training schools cannot.
   
   All teaching practices (a minimum of 10 1-hour classes) are fully observed, constructively critiqued and graded by our trainers. We emphasize progression and trainees are expected to address issues raised in feedback during their next teaching practice.
   
   If you would like to attend a TEFL/TESL/TESOL course that exceeds international criteria and also gives you a genuine feel for teaching English in a foreign country, we recommend the International Teacher Training Organization TEFL/TESL/TESOL Course in Guadalajara, Mexico