Great expectations

I got some great mentoring and advice from Andi White, Evan Frendo (whose professional development group at ELTABB I’ve joined) and Vivienne Arnold, and have decided to take the plunge and do the Trinity Diploma in TESOL. After an initial talk with Duncan Foord, I’ve just had my interview with Nicola Meldrum, and am very happy to say that I’m in. I  have to run off in a few minutes to go to Berlin and do a written task to prove that I can indeed write in longhand. Let’s see if I still can, after so many years of using the computer, mainly!

I’ve waited very long to take this step. Over the years I’ve had second thoughts about being an English teacher without a license to teach at public school in Germany. Also, having done my Magister in Germany in other fields that I found very rewarding (history and political science) I wasn’t really sure I wanted to go the academic route again, and hadn’t seen any shorter courses that gave me the impression that they’d help my professional development, until this one.

What I like about it is its balance between providing structure and being open to development. The course tutors are really great. And the coursework portfolio will include:

• observing other teachers (10+ hours, which is really quite a lot!): I might have to ask my friends at the LMU if they’d let me come round. And/or perhaps I can work with some of the teachers on the Cornelsen book project
• developing an area of your choice (15 hours in a group of at least 6 students): This might be trickier, as I’m doing skills training at the moment. I could use my Management Circle compact course for this project, or perhaps ask to teach students at Potsdam Uni for this. I’d really like to focus on pronunciation, so an internationally mixed group would be ideal.
• doing a written research project: I think I’d like to explore corpus linguistics with regard to the English needed in academic coursework.

Then there’s a written exam which covers a lot of ground, which will make up a large part of the Moodle course, which begins on 1 February and goes through the end of July. There’s also a huge section on phonology, which is pretty good, because it’s an area I need to develop. And finally there are 5 lessons that need to be planned and assessed on site at the school, OxfordTefl, in Barcelona, where we’ll be for the entire month of August.

Eamonn Fitzgerald and Andi kindly wrote a recommendation for me, and Scott Tokaryk is going to help me do this written task. So, I’m out the door, full of great expectations.