Program Reviews

Highly rewarding and perfect for refining your techniques as a teacher, if you are looking to move forward in your career then this would be a good place to start.

As an English teacher in Japan a few years back, I was looking for the same thing. An opportunity then came up to be an Assistant Director of Studies in the school I was working for. I applied and was offered the job but felt I needed a little more background knowledge in teaching, and so I dived into the Dip.

There is one thing that doing the Dip taught me the most - that you can not criticise the teaching of others before you have truely criticised your own.

This course made me question every detail of my ability to teach, and this has been vital in my job as an ADoS. One of the most important responsibilities that I have in my work is to regulary watch teacher's lessons and provide feedback.

After doing the Dip I now feel that I can do this with a new confidence.

If you are looking for progress, moving forward in your career and one mighty challenge, sign yourself up to add to your professional growth, maturity and potential future opportunites.

The DipTESOL is an extremely rewarding course designed to take the average ex-pat English teacher from preschool toddler to the budding romance of a high school disco. Creating a sense of awakening, when you realise the wonderfully under developed scientific side of what it means to become a professional EFL teacher is in your hands to shape and mould. This course gives you the tools to shape language learning.

I found the Trinity Diploma very insightful and rewarding. An area I wanted to develop when I started was teaching pronunciation and the diploma certainly helped with this. It also gave me a better understanding of learner styles as well as approaches to teaching reading and listening skills. It has been very satisfying applying what I have learnt in my classes and I find myself reflecting on lessons in a much deeper way than I had done previously.

After a hard week, mind numb and exhausted the last thing I wanted to do was teach an evening class at the end of my week. The lesson started of routinely enough and progressed to the meat of the lesson. Though I tried to stay focused my mind was elsewhere. Then the student asked a question. Time slowed down and data points connected and a stock answer came out. A puzzled look from the student, that means I don't really understand but I don't want to say anything. Hold on a second, I was just reading about this language point in the TESOL Diploma texts. What was it saying again? Oh yes, let's take a step back and approach this from a 'task based' learning scenario. Wow! This is going really well, everyone is really getting into it! Wait, how do you pronounce that word? I spontaneously start dictating it on the whiteboard in IPA, students can say it magically. Hold on, one of them is really having problems with the plosive, no problem, draw a diagram on the whiteboard showing the position of the lips, tongue and palate. Then demonstrate using a tissue over the mouth. Hold on a second, the lesson is over already? Where did the time go? The class finishes on a good buzz. Every day is a new day!

I had been teaching English in Japan for several years before taking the Cert TESOL course in Tokyo through Shane English School. It would have been nearly impossible for me to have gone back to school to get my TESOL certification otherwise, so this was a great opportunity to learn over my summer break.

The course itself was incredibly challenging, and I learned a ton of stuff through this four week trial by fire. I believe that this course equipped me for the first time with the tools necessary to actually teach English with confidence. I am glad that I took this course, and would highly recommend it to anyone already living in the country who is looking to up their skills.

It was always about the Unit 1 exam for me. I have always had a weakness for examinations and and I knew that the exam was going to be my most challenging part of the course. Since secondary school, I dreaded taking them as I found myself not remembering my revision notes, I was just a flustering mess during exams. I knew that I had to dedicate a lot of time personally to study and prepare for the Trinity exam. After countless tries I managed to eventually pass the Unit 1 exam. The satisfaction I got when my tutor told me the result - well I will never forget that fantastic feeling (and pure relief)! The hard work and dedication paid off in the end.

I was less fearful of the other parts of the Diploma and I really enjoyed doing them; especially phonemic transcription from the teaching practice.

From my experience, it is very important to have a plan together at the start of the course to stay focused and maintain it in order to study efficiently. Personally I started out with no plan and I did lose motivation and then days, or even weeks, can go buy without study as 'life' gets in the way. Keep your eye on the goal and eventually you will see that finish line in sight!

From completing the course, I can safely say that I have gained so much more knowledge within ELT, gained more confidence in incorporating more phonology into my teaching and generally becoming more of a reflective teacher.

My advice to anyone in taking the Trinity DipTESOL - Do IT and don't look back, it will be the best decision you take in a long time!

Derek

I started the course in late 2011. Due to personal bumps in my life, I took a break for a year and was on the verge of dropping out. However, the tutors were very supportive and understanding. I resumed in 2013 and they truly helped me to develop as a teacher and also a better academic writer so I could complete the mandatory assignments. I would truly recommend this course even if you are not sure whether teaching English is a career that you would like to pursue. The three top reasons why I think you should do the course are: the fee is reasonable, it has a combination of both theory and practical aspects and it looks good on your c.v. I hope this helps for those who are considering in studying this course.

* What made you take the course?
I was recommended this course by a friend of mine. I originally wanted official certification in English teaching in order to further my career here. Furthermore, I wanted to learn more TESOL teaching strategies for young learners.

* How did you find it?
I found the course very beneficial for beginning teachers as there was ongoing feedback throughout the teaching sessions to improve and become more efficient/effective/reflective as a teacher. For example, the phonology/grammar sessions provided practical advice on how lexis and vocabulary could be taught, to which I have incorporated many of these techniques into my full-time teaching work.

* What advice would you give other people on the course?
Originally I had underestimated the difficulty of the course, and the work involved. Time management skills are needed efficiently juggle the demands and ongoing assessments in this course with full-time work. Time is also needed to review the work covered in the input sessions and to apply it into practice during teaching sessions. However, this time is well worth it as it equipped me with new strategies and approaches that I had not encountered before during my teaching endeavour.

* What did you benefit from the most?
I benefited the most from with input sessions and the Unknown Language project. The opportunity to learn a new language provided me with the opportunity to put myself in students' shoes, and thus develop tailored approaches to English learners in my community and some of the barriers to language acquisition, in the same way I had experienced difficulties with the new language myself. The teaching sessions also provided me with an opportunity to experiment a variety of teaching approaches, and clear and detailed feedback from tutors allowed me to reflect on the fine tuning of these ideas.