NEW FROM TEXT-AND-TALK ACADEMY

First of all, unless you have not previously taken our TEFL Certificate Course, you no longer need to spend 16 weeks doing our TEFL Diploma Teacher Development Course! The reason is that the first half of our course (the TEYL: Teaching English to Young Learners Course) is provided free of charge within our TEFL Certificate Course. Therefore, to compute your much reduced course fee for the remaining 8 weeks (which, for the most part, you can study in the convenience of your home), please refer to our course fees page for full information.

But what exactly does our diploma course contain and provide for you, and what makes it different from, and in many ways better than, other diploma courses?

Here are the facts. Of all TEFL Diploma programs in the world, ours is at once the most unique, the most practical, the most affordable and the shortest. It is not difficult to describe the difference between a TEFL Certificate Course and a TEFL Diploma Course: The former is to train people and give them the skills and confidence to teach conversational English as a foreign or second language to natives of non-English speaking countries. The emphasis is, and must be, on conducting successful conversation classes, as that is the most urgent need for all foreign learners of English. It does not, and cannot, train teachers to teach more specialized English classes, however.

A TEFL Diploma Course, on the other hand, comes after the Certificate Course and is concerned with teacher development. In other words, it is designed to help already-trained teachers to improve and continue to improve and grow throughout their entire careers, in terms of teaching methods, techniques and cutting edge knowledge. It focuses teachers on how to improve, what techniques other teachers use and how successful these are, and on what new teaching discoveries have made that can be applied to one's own students. Such courses could be, for example, the Cambridge DELTA (Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults) Course, which is conducted online for about six months (an approach we do not quite approve of), and the Trinity Diploma Course which can run as long as two years to complete. Other diploma courses (heavily burdened by intensive educational theory) typically run full-time for 12 weeks, and still do not focus well, if at all, on the teaching of advanced skills courses.

Most such courses, and a number of others, are worthy of the study, particularly if one aspires to write his or her own textbook materials and/or aspires to share knowledge that has been learned with others as a speaker at a TESOL Conference. However, in the real world that we share with teachers who need to maximize their earnings, and who in order to achieve that need must develop skills in teaching very highly-paid English classes other than just conversation, we see a diploma course as an Advanced Skills Diploma Course, i.e., one that facilitates teacher development in the most important sense...

In this approach, teachers trained through our course become focused of their own accord on their professional development, and on all of the new cutting edge developments that are being made in the EFL/ESL world. In other words, we minimize theory in the course by giving trainees the advanced skills they will need to best advance both themselves and their students, while at the same time motivating them to continue on their path of self-improvement. They will develop themselves, and many, we have little doubt, will end up as authors of teaching materials and speakers at any TESOL conferences they might choose to address.

The Diploma Course Content. The content of our Advanced Skills Diploma Course is of two divisions:

    1.    The Career Studies (or Advanced Skills) Division. In order to get the best jobs, EFL and ESL users of English must have very high levels of English ability, ititially just to enable them to study in universities abroad. It is vital that such students take and pass either the T.O.E.F.L. (Testing of English as a Foreign Language) Exam or the I.E.L.T.S. (International English Language Testing Services) Exam at a high level in order to achieve this objective. Unfortunately, very few English native-speaking teachers in Asia have been trained or are otherwise qualified to teach these students, with two very unfortunate results: The quality of teaching is very poor, resulting in poor test scores; and there simply are not enough teachers around to meet the demand.

Another type of course is required to enable Asian students to obtain work in the airline industry in such jobs as air hostesses, check-in clerks, accountants, baggage handlers, controllers or pilots. This latter group prepare for their employment by taking the T.O.E.I.C. (Testing of English in International Communications) Exam, though this test is also administered to persons throughout the business community as a gauge of how well staff are able to understand and relate to foreigners using English.

Still other teaching needs are courses to help students with their study skills, reading skills, writing skills and listening skills. Business English, per se, must also be taught, and taught well, to enable staff to do their jobs effectively and advance their positions. And students with special needs require teachers with ESP (English for Special Purposes) skills such as, for example, how to locate companies, set up appointments with managers, and powerfully present proposals to foreign company executives, while they are traveling outside their own country.

    2.    The Young Learners Division (now provided free of charge when you enroll in our certificate course). A TEYL (Teaching English to Young Learners) Course is a very valuable block of training for anyone aspiring to teach English successfully to young children. While a very large number of the best teaching jobs entail teaching children (and there are important techniques to learn in doing that), most teachers would prefer specialized and intensive knowledge, in order to teach as well as they are capable of teaching, and to acquire the best-paying jobs. Unfortunately, such TEYL Courses are quite rare in Asia, and this division of our Advanced Skills Diploma Program (again, free with with our TEFL Certificate Course) fills that void with a pleasant, but comprehensive, internal course. Therefore, if you are planning on teaching English to children, or accept that teaching kids may be the best English job you will be able to get for awhile, you are fortunate that the TEYL course is now included as part of the TEFL Certificate Course.

In any case, you can acquire all of the above skills just by doing the certificate course, while also signing up for the 16-week diploma course and paying ONLY HALF of the fees for that course. Again, for complete instruction on how to do this, please visit our course fees page or e-mail our Enrollments Director, Mr Leigh Richards, or contact him by any other method at Contact.