Friday 30 November 2012

Find the Code Of Practice From A Single Source

TEFL Accreditation Organisation
In decades past, before the existence of any TEFL accrediting body, many middle and high school campuses struggled as more and more students entered classrooms without a working knowledge of the English language. This made it difficult to teach any of the curriculum as every teacher was accustomed to being able to teach their subject without having to deal with a language barrier. With just one or two students, some schools could deal with each foreign language student on an individual basis. As more foreign language students entered the campuses, this strategy was no longer feasible. This was particularly true for schools in particular areas of any city, where foreign language students could make up a third or more of the student body.
Generally, the lion’s share of the duties of teaching foreign language students fell to the English teachers. Although the techniques were similar for teaching English to advance students who already knew English as to teaching those whose first language was something other than English, the techniques were still different enough to require increased focus. A second problem was that an English teacher with an 8th grade class, for instance, would be teaching students with a 7th grade foundation. The foreign language students on the other hand could be operating at a 1st grade foundation in English, or none at all. This is not to say the students were ignorant. In fact, many operated in all of their classes with at least as much proficiency as their English counterparts. For many, their only weakness was the language barrier.
Although campuses made a heroic effort to deal with the situation, they were greatly helped out by the advent of standardized teaching techniques. Already gifted English teachers with their own styles of teaching were augmented with the techniques developed by many teachers in a variety of situations. No longer did teachers, looking for new ways to improve their teaching methods, have to scour the internet in search of helpful tips. Now, with a TEFL accrediting body teachers know exactly where to go to get the information they needed.
In some schools, TEFL began to be mandated, and the TEFL accrediting body could also provide training to not only bring their current faculty up to speed but also to have a place to direct new candidates for opening teaching positions.
In modern days, both school faculty and administration are graded on their student’s performance, and the ability of have standardized methods gave teachers a great advantage. The TEFL Accreditation Body could assure that a campus had implemented all they needed to prepare themselves to teach foreign language students.

Thursday 29 November 2012

Becoming a Certified TEFL Teacher Overseas

TEFL Accreditation Body
 English is one of the most widely spoken languages around the world. Most parents from foreign countries are willing to spend thousands of dollars to enroll their children in an English course or hire a private tutor. Being proficient in English also opens the doors for a lot of opportunities. The language is in high demand, which makes teaching English a popular job. For those who wish to become an instructor who teaches English to students in various academic settings, they should enroll in a TEFL accreditation organisation in order to receive a certificate and license to teach.
TEFL teachers often live overseas and teach the language to K-12 students as well as college level students and even to adults. People of all ages aspire to learn English because it makes them much more desirable as an applicant when applying for jobs. It is also an invaluable skill for those who plan on traveling or immigrating to the United States, United Kingdom or other English speaking country. TEFL teachers often work in an academic setting or as a private tutor to individual students. A TEFL accreditation organisation gives teachers the preparation and training they need to provide an optimal learning environment for students who are eager to learn English as a second language.
TEFL teachers have the opportunity to travel overseas and live abroad and make a living as a teacher who imparts their knowledge to students of all ages and backgrounds. In some cases, teachers are not even required to understand the native language of the country. In fact, some employers prefer that teachers don’t speak the native language as they believe that speaking to the students in their native tongue may hinder their immersion process. Teachers who enroll in a TEFL accreditation organisation will learn the steps and the type of lessons to plan.
Being bilingual is a much sought after skill in many countries. If you are in a position to spread your knowledge to students who are highly motivated to learn, then you have your job cut out for you. As a TEFL teacher, you have the role of teaching students the skills needed for listening, speaking, reading and writing. It is a rewarding experience to pass on your knowledge to people who want to reap the most out of the opportunity. If you are contemplating about becoming a TEFL instructor, then look for a TEFL accreditation organisation in your area. While receiving training from an accredited institution is not mandatory, it does make you stand out a lot more as a viable candidate when applying for a teaching position.

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Use An Accreditation Body To Ensure Continued Compliance

TEFL Accrediting Organisation
The first stages of certification from a TEFL accreditation body are generally proactive, that is, the courses taught to accreditation hopefuls are standardized and form the first step toward accreditation of a particular body such as a school system. The school faculty is not initiallyassessed for TEFL compliance before they have had a chance to be trained. As a school seeks general compliance, it begins by educating its key educators, followed by the remainder of the faculty, taught in waves, and moving the entire faculty toward accreditation. The beauty of the standardized accreditation is that the process for the individual teachers does not need to be conducted at the facility. Accredited teachers can be hired with the TEFL accreditationtraining in place, and future applicants for teaching positions can receive the TEFL accreditation as a requirement.
However, once the individual faculty is trained, then the principles of the accreditation must be maintained and at times, key training must be refreshed. This is an excellent job for a TEFL accreditation body. In their role as a TEFL maintenance provider, they can administrator compliance testing on a faculty wide basis rather than an individual basis, and efficiently keep the program intact for the entire school.
In efforts to cut costs, many schools try to avoid or trim down the amount of maintenance they need. However, if they perform a long term cost analysis, they generally find that the best path is to continue with the prescribed schedule for maintenance. The reason for this is that once maintenance is delayed for a month, then it can be easy to delay if for a budget year. After a particular amount of time, the maintenance is not enough to keep the individual faculty sharp – without regular feedback, they become lax, often to the point of requiring complete training from scratch. However, this is also a benefit of maintenance: it does not require anywhere near the commitment of resources that the initial training required. Often, compliance is estimated to take fewer than 10% of the resources of the initial training.
This leads to another benefit of compliance testing through a TEFL accreditation body: the teaching methods are based on results. As a school faculty faithfully maintains their TEFL skills, the students respond with increasingly higher grades, primarily in English, but extending to all subjects because of the dependency of teaching on understanding the English language. These results can be used to justify continued maintenance during the most difficult of budget negotiations. Because more and more schools are being graded on the performance of their students, the maintenance from the TEFL Accreditation Body will be seen as the necessity it is.

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Conform To Industry-Wide Standards TEFL Accreditation

TEFL Accrediting Organisation
More and more educators are finding the importance of TEFL accreditation as they continue to take training courses as part of their personal continuous improvement programs. Some are being asked to take TEFL training in order to meet the standards required in their school districts. Many found a particular emphasis put onto TEFL training during the “No Child Left Behind” program.
TEFL accreditation involves a moderate amount of work and expense. This can be a burden on many teachers who are otherwise involved during their time away from actual teaching. English teachers in particular spend a lot of their personal time because the nature of their classes doesn’t always lend itself to the multiple choice test format. Students need to practice writing to effectively learn composition and expression, and this means that the teachers must spend many extra hours grading essays and term papers. These are much more difficult and time consuming to grade than multiple choice tests. Some teachers are also pursuing their degrees or taking other training and aren’t left with a lot of time. Still others have parental duties at home that take a lot of their attention. The bottom line is that the requirement or even just the opportunity to receive TEFL training is sometimes seen as an intrusion and an arduous task. In spite of these perceptions, teachers who receive their accreditation find many effective teaching techniques that help them with their students that have not been raised in an English speaking country, or even in a home where English is regularly spoken.
The importance of TEFL accreditation becomes clear when one starts to survey the different ways that English is taught as a second language. There are several effective strategies and generally a teacher focuses on one of these. The most direct may be to teach English from a structural point of view, analyzing syntax, structure and vocabulary, just as English speakers are often taught a foreign language. Others start with a cultural background, reading simple English films or listening to English children’s programs. Still others focus on key phrases to maximize the utility of the courses, as if they were teaching a tourist to an English speaking nation. These methods each have their pros and cons, and often they are chosen to match the style of the teacher. Hopefully, they also match the style of the target students. However, if a teacher wants to be on a structured program for improvement, then he will want to follow a standard teaching style with metrics and a proven track record. Then he can receive feedback to help improve his teaching efficiency. This is the power of a TEFL Accreditation.

Thursday 22 November 2012

The Code of Practice of the World TEFL Accrediting Commission Sets the Standard for English as a Foreign Language Courses

TEFL Accreditation Organisation
The World TEFL Accrediting Commission (WTEFLAC) was created to help raise the standard of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in countries around the world. Because English is a language that many people want to learn, there have cropped up over the years opportunities for English speakers to travel to foreign countries to teach their native tongue. Unfortunately, there have been little or no standards with regard to the courses offered which has resulted in less than effective teaching and learning. WTEFLAC has sought to create guidelines and standards by which programs can become accredited thus providing legitimacy to the courses offered. This can give confidence to both the student and the teacher who participates. One of the ways that the World TEFL Accrediting Commission does this is through a Code of Practice that all providers who seek accreditation must follow.
There are a number of ways that the Code of Practice helps achieve the WTEFLAC achieve its goals. The Code of Practice requires that advertising be true, that the provider be transparent about fees, and that there is sufficient information for students to assess what the course will cover so that they can make aeducated choice regarding whether they would like to take it.
By requiring an admission policy that has some English language competence and meets equal opportunity standards, the WTEFLAC is seeking to prevent students that have no English experience whatsoever from being herded into classrooms. This is a good idea because most teachers will have little or no experience with the student’s native language and will be unable to teach without the students having some basic knowledge of English.
The World TEFL Accrediting Commission Code of Practice also requires that the courses offered be taught by someone who has at least three years of experience teaching English as a foreign language. While this may prevent some college students from taking a year off to have a foreign experience teaching English, it improves the experience of the students enrolled in the course. The Code of Practice also requires that teachers receive sufficient training.
The guidelines governing the content of the courses simply seek to ensure that the students are presented with material that is manageable, clear and will actually help them reach their professional goals.
The Code of Practice requires that courses provide consistent feedback to the students and that upon completion of the course that the students receive a certificate that is approved by WTELFAC. This can help students understand how they can continue to improve their language skills and have proof that they have participated in a WTEFLAC approved course.
By providing a Code of Practice, the World TEFL Accrediting Commission has set the standard by which English as a foreign language courses should be taught. By monitoring accredited providers, the WTELFAC can ensure that both students and teachers who participate in the courses have a quality experience.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

The Benefits Of Becoming Accredited By The World TEFL Accrediting Commission

TEFL Accreditation Organisation
The World TEFL Accrediting Commission (WTEFLAC) is an organization headquartered in New York City that seeks offer accreditation to providers of English courses taught to foreign speakers. If you are an organization that offers English courses in foreign countries you may be wondering what the benefits are of accreditation from WTEFLAC.
One of the best advantages to becoming accredited by the World TEFL Accrediting Commission is that your courses will automatically be viewed with greater credibility. The WTEFLAC has a reputation of requiring excellence from its members. Each member must adhere to a Code of Practice. This Code of Practice covers different aspects of courses, such as advertising, admission policies, the experience of teachers, feedback, and quality assurance. If you are accredited by the WTEFLAC and follow its Code of Practice students who participate in your courses will have the assurance that they are receiving courses that are valuable to their learning.
Another benefit you may receive from becoming accredited by WTEFLAC is that you could see an increase in both the number and quality of students who participate in your courses. There are many students who specifically seek to take courses that are accredited under the WTEFLAC standards. Students want to make sure that they are taking courses of value and courses that will be recognized by others that they are of value. One of the ways they can do this is by taking courses that are accredited by the WTEFLAC. Students who value this sort of accreditation are often higher quality, more sophisticated students.
The last benefit of becoming accredited by the World TEFL Accrediting Commission is that your reputation as a quality provider of English courses will increase. The types of students who enroll in courses that are from accredited providers are likely those who are committed to achieving their language goals. When they take courses from an organization they can trust their achievement can be greater. When students achieve in the classroom they often share their achievements with others. These are the types of students who you want enrolled in your courses because they can increase your reputation. They will let their friends and acquaintances know that they valued the courses that you offered. Those friends and acquaintances may then become interested in enrolling also.
The accreditation process of the World TEFL Accrediting Commission is not difficult, but it is valuable to those who seek to provide quality English courses in foreign countries. If you are a provider of such courses, accreditation can provide you with credibility, an increase in the amount and quality of students and an increased reputation for valuable English courses.

Saturday 3 November 2012

Why the World TEFL Accrediting Commission is Important

TEFL accrediting body
In today’s foreign language teaching market, it has become necessary for an independent body of skilled professionals to service as a watchdog over language instruction companies who fail to adequately train their students for the real world of foreign language instruction. This is especially true when English is the second language being taught.
Institutions and teaching programs offering students the ability to learn the fundamental skills necessary to teach English as a second language were falling short of their promises, partly due to the internet and the ‘ease of use’ it offered. As a result, students were graduating and receiving their certification but were woefully unprepared for the real world teaching environment. In response to this need, the World TEFL Accrediting commission was formed to be that watchdog over foreign language instruction companies and an advocate for those seeking to learn how to teach English as a second language.
Since this has become more and more of an issue with the increased usage of the internet, the World TEFL Accrediting commission decided to come up with a set of standards and a list of skills that must be adhered to so that everyone with the TEFL certification can be hired to teach English as a second language in other countries and do their jobs very well.
One of the benchmarks the World TEFL Accrediting commission set when teaching is that the English course must incorporate real world teaching practice into its’ curriculum for students seeking certification and that live teaching time must constitute a large part of the instruction time. This ‘hands on’ approach has produced more fluent and confident instructors as they are forced to deal with the real students, skills that cannot be accomplished just by reading a book or watching online. The World TEFL Accrediting commission believes that actual classroom instruction for the students learning to teach English as a second language hone their skills in front of a live audience, just like they would be doing in a real classroom environment.
In addition to live classroom training, the World TEFL Accrediting commission has set another standard, requiring instructors who teach English as a foreign language have at least three years themselves of real world experience. This helps establish credibility with the instructor from the student.
A third standard requires the school offering the instruction to follow a standardized plan of methodology and course curriculum.
Following these standards set by the World TEFL Accrediting Commission goes a long way to ensuring those students who receive their TEFL certification are getting what it is they paid for and having the confidence and skills necessary to find adequate employment once they have graduated.

Friday 2 November 2012

Benefits of the World TEFL Accrediting commission

TEFL Accreditation Organisation
It is one thing to be fluent in a certain language, but it is quite another to have the knowledge and knowhow to teach that language to someone else, especially a language as complex as English. In order to effectively teach English to someone requires that you be able to do far more than just speak it. It requires training from an educational institution which has been certified and endorsed by the World TEFL Accrediting commission.
The primary objective of the world TEFL Accrediting Commission (WTEFLAC) ommission) is to raise the standard for all for course providers who offer English as a foreign language through partnership, education and respect. As the accrediting body of TEFL, the primary aim of World TEFL Accrediting commission is to provide a honest, transparent and competent market for those looking to teach English to others.
World TEFL Accrediting commission requires all course providers to adhere to a strict code of practice in order to maintain their accredited status. The scope of TELF Accreditation Body’s coverage includes advertising and promotion, the admission of students, course delivery, modules and content, proper staffing and staff training as well as course evaluation and quality assurance.
All courses accredited by the World TEFL Accrediting commission organization have been thoroughly vetted in order to make certain it meets their rigorous code of practice and thereby ensuring students have a solid foundation of knowledge in order to maximize their goals as a teaching professional.
The reason the World TEFL Accrediting commission came into existence was the observation that many institutions and programs were offering inferior training courses, resulting in students and educators receiving a certification for English as a foreign language but not the practical skills to execute the training. Even more so, many of these graduates were unable to find employment in their field due to the subpar training they received.
Now, with the World TEFL Accrediting commission serving as a watchdog over companies who offer English as a foreign language instruction and as an advocate for the educator looking to improve his or her foreign language teaching skills, those students who rely on good teaching and practical teaching to further their goals for learning English as a second language.
If you are considering enrolling in a school or institution which offers courses covering English as a second language, check to make sure they are properly accredited with the World TEFL Accrediting Commission so that you will feel confident you are receiving the right instruction from the professionals who have proven their foreign language instruction proficiency.