Choosing a TESOL career can be one of the most rewarding experiences that you decide to do in your lifetime. What you have to remember is that a career is the biggest part of your life, we all work to earn money to put food on the table so long hours doing something that you have a passion and drive for, makes living a whole lot easier in the long-run.

Selecting this career path is one thing, but professionally developing and honing in your skills is another subject point which we wanted to discuss today. The following 5 tips have been designed to help a TESOL teacher’s development through each stage of their career.

Planning lessons and courses

The key to a successful teacher lies with the preparation, and with that preparation comes easier to follow course modules and better end results. Your goal is to teach students, but to teach them in the best ways possible by exercising new ways of planning lessons and courses, trialling and testing activities and sticking with the ones that seem to bring about the best results.

Whether its beginners, intermediates or advanced students, there is always room for improvement and a better way to helping them reach that much desired TESOL certification at the end of the course.

Rather than focusing heavily on theory based concepts try broadening your horizons and utilizing more practical based lesson plans that can help students engage, interact and communicate on a more regular basis.

Developing Materials

The Internet is a haven for wonderful fountains of information that can easily be accessed and downloaded to help structure how you can teach your students. If you feel at any point during your career that improvements can be made to aid the learning of English to foreign students then this could be the path you need to take to see what other teachers are doing and what other suggestions you can use.

Remember, there are forums, chat rooms and specialised sites where teachers and academics can all congregate to learn more.

Online Professional Development Courses

Sticking with our subject of Internet resources you should also look out for any online courses that can help you advance your career, don’t just leave it down to a self-taught basis. By looking for new opportunities to head your career in the right direction means you are going to be unlocking the door to even more benefits.

Constantly striving to reach the highest point you can, can be tiresome and effort does need to be put in, however using online courses means that you can study at a time and place that suits you. If you already have a busy day-to-day life you can put aside some time in the evenings to research and study your next step on the ladder in your TESOL career.

Communication

A vital part of learning a new language is communication and you should always have this measure at the forefront of your mind when you come to teaching as well as learning. Successful careers in TESOL are built around this one key objective where teachers get students talking to one another and exchanging dialogues.

There is only so far that theory can be pushed and its only during verbal communication when we really learn a new language. Students will learn from each other and learn from you so this fundamental aspect on the career ladder always needs to be at the top.

Technology

Finally, technology is a major part of our day-to-day lives, it’s around us everywhere we look in the 21^st century so using it rather than shunning it will advanced your career in leaps and bounds. Bringing interactive devices such as tablets, laptops and whiteboards into classroom environments will help students learn at a much greater pace than the older traditions of pencils and paper.

It will also allow students to sync work and learning between devices and apps so that they can learn and progress during evenings and weekends if they wish. This also goes for TESOL teachers who have the ability to do the same, and in some cases they can even tap into students work and progress which makes for a very technological jump in professional career development.

We welcome your feedback to our work.

Email:  General Information   |   Dr. Daniel de Roulet   |   Prof. David C. Pecoraro

Thank you!

Daniel & David

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5 Tips to professional development in TESOL career