All TEFLed Out

This broadcast is brought to you by a very sleepy lady :)o\

This weekend I’ve been on a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course with i-2-i in Cardiff. It was really intensive, starting at 9am Saturday morning for 11 hours, then again today for nine hours. In between (i.e. last night) I went for a celebratory drink at the Rummer with one of the guys, to congratulate ourselves on surviving the 11 hours. Only, the one drink perhaps turned into three or four drinks, and we were feeling a little fragile this morning! Ho hum.

But, it was completely worth it. So much was covered, from teaching grammar, intonation and stress, through to student-teacher interaction, eliciting correct responses, and encouraging free interaction. It was full-on, but there were 16 of us in the class and we all gelled so well. We had a really good laugh along the way. Such a range of backgrounds too, from people in their 40s who fancied a career change to people in their early 20s looking for an adventure. We've set up an e-group to keep in contact.

I'd strongly recommend this to anyone who fancies living and working abroad. The course was incredibly helpful and i-2-i give you access to quite a few resources. I've already done their online grammar course and I’m now going to do their 'teaching business English' one.

I've still got my fingers crossed for VSO, who have said:

Many thanks for your recent application to VSO and your interest in contributing to our work. We recognise that you have very valuable skills and experience, and are currently talking to our programme offices overseas to see whether there would be any suitable placements for you.

We will be in touch again shortly.

But I’m not holding my breath as it's quite hard to get in with them. If they don't have anything, TEFL would be an excellent alternative. Both of these would be sustainable ways of travelling, which would mean that I could stay abroad for longer and see more places.

By the way 'Happy Birthday Phil,' who's 26 today! I was all up for going out and joining in the celebrations down PC's tonight, but then I fell asleep - I was absolutely shattered. When I woke, I treated myself to an Indian from City Balti - very nice vegy potato-ey curry, rice, onion bhajia and coconut naan bread (enough for two meals) for £10.40 including delivery. Good stuff :)