A Culturally Aware Course with Lots of Opportunities for Real-life Application

I took this course to prepare for the CIEE Teach Abroad in Thailand program. I wanted to gain intercultural skills and culturally sensitive teaching skills that would help me be the best teacher possible even though I don't know Thai. Since CIEE offers program participants a course discount, I didn't look into any other TEFL courses. However, I have not been disappointed. My favorite thing about all my experiences with CIEE (Study Abroad, Teach Abroad, TEFL) has been the incredible staff who are all experienced travelers with incredible advice and personal accounts of their own traveling experiences. To me, this aspect is invaluable because the specific challenges in any country or foreign job are unique to that culture or environment. Therefore, I loved the resource of a real tutor and the weekly tutorials where we could discuss course content as a group. This made the course a little more personal as well since most of the work was independent besides occasional discussion boards or peer reviews. The course itself was engaging, informative, and very culturally aware. They integrated cultural challenges and communication barriers in much of the material (not just as its own topic). I also enjoyed how they brought up topics multiple times in different contexts to cover how they may change depending on the age group of students, their proficiency level, the country or culture your in, the classroom environment, and many other factors that are often overlooked. The assignments were very practical and required thoughtful responses to how you may handle real teaching situations. It is hard to feel completely prepared for everything as a new teacher (or even an seasoned one), but overall, I am very satisfied with the course content and believe it is worth the investment.