In this portion of your program, we are going to take good look at how to develop courses, curriculum and more. EFL teachers often work where there is no planned curriculum or at best there is a pieced-together program based on an (often poorly-written and outdated) ESL series of books/programs. If you are a relatively skilled teacher, seen to be knowledgeable how education works when it works correctly, you may be asked by your school to outline or develop the full curriculum for your school or develop new courses. Sometimes the local curriculum is so poorly constructed you will feel the need to build out a course or program even before you teach it, even if you are not asked to do so. Here we will delve into some processes for making that happen.
None of the comments above should be meant as criticism of the school systems and small language schools that employ most of us. Many small schools struggle to survive and most have had no one on board with the skills to build out their programs. Truly over the last thirty years, they have significantly improved their product, hired better skilled teachers and made many changes to professionalize their schools. All in the midst of economic peaks and valleys, health pandemics, and even political instability.
This part of your course will provide you with a QuickTake component, to quickly get you up-to-speed with practical, apply-them-today methods and an Extended Concepts component that will provide a more academic look at program building. You can do just fine with only the QuickTake, but the Extended Concepts will help you approach the tasks on a deeper level and provide the background information you might need to defend your decisions in a professional setting. And to be confident in those decisions.
