TESOL Certificate case studies
TESOL Certificate · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The TESOL Certificate - also written out as the Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages - is an entry-level professional credential for people who teach, or intend to teach, English to learners whose first language is something other than English. It is typically pursued by career changers entering the field, pre-service teachers building a first qualification, volunteer and community tutors, and teachers working abroad or in private language schools who want a recognised foundation in English language teaching (ELT). The TESOL Certificate case studies are 5 cases and about 4,528 words.
1The /θ/ drills that do not survive into speech
You teach a B1 general English class of 16 adults at a private language school: nine Mandarin L1 speakers, four Vietnamese, three Arabic. Over three 90-minute lessons you have drilled /θ/ against /s/ using minimal pairs (think/sink, three/tree) with choral repetition, back-chaining and pair drills.
927 words, about 5 min2Four learners who cannot access the coursebook
You teach an A2 evening class of 18 adults, 90 minutes twice a week for 12 weeks, at a community centre. Six learners are refugees with interrupted schooling; four of those have limited literacy in Arabic script and no experience of Roman script.
903 words, about 5 min3The podcast that was too hard and the coursebook that was too easy
You teach a B1+ class of 14 adults, two hours a week, preparing for a listening exam. Unit 5 of the coursebook contains a 50-second recorded dialogue on a familiar topic with four gist questions; every learner scores 4/4 on the first listen, twice.
858 words, about 4 min4Nine groups, one teacher, ten minutes
You teach a class of 36 secondary students in a room with desks fixed in rows, 45-minute lessons. You introduce a 10-minute information-gap activity in groups.
921 words, about 5 min5Twelve minutes a script, and nobody reads the red ink
You have 22 B1 learners, each submitting a 150-word essay every two weeks. You currently spend about 12 minutes per essay correcting every error in red and writing a holistic mark out of 10.
919 words, about 5 min