Realities Of A TEFL Course

Many TEFL course providers evoke images of carefree travel, adventure and exploration into their advertising and entice many young college leavers to sign up for a TEFL course and sign up for adventure. The Guardian has a cautionary tale about one adventure minded school leavers who took the plunge and found out that there is more to adventure in a TEFL career.

I found myself at a loss of what to do for one hour lessons. Halfway through most of them, which took place late in the afternoon, the children were tired. Now if it had been like a nursery when the children, under supervision, can play and paint in a relaxed environment, it would have been manageable. One hour trying to enforce games was too much for kids with an average attention span of two minutes.

It does take training and knack to pull of this. There’s a reason why many TEFLer’s do not like teaching young children.

Obviously as experience grows, knowledge and skills increase and toddlers lessons did become slightly easier. Yet there were other aspects of the job that were starting to outweigh it. If I thought I was clueless on teaching young children, I felt more of a charlatan in the business classes I ‘led’.

A 22-year-old graduate, whose knowledge of finance was drawn from the yearly trip to the bank to discuss the next installment of a student loan, should not be teaching business. However, with Tokyo being such a finance-orientated city, business learning adults are the second major source of income for private language school.

This is a problem for schools who are unwilling to pay a decent salary for someone qualified to fulfill the service they are selling.

Everyone with grandiose ideas of adventure and travel should read the entire article to get a clearer idea of the realities of TEFL.