World TESOL Academy covers the fundamentals and supporting concepts/practices for teaching English to students, both in the classroom and online. It supplies approachable lessons that are easy to reference at any point during your studies through nicely articulated definitions and examples (written, pictures, and videos).
The fact you can take the quizzes over (not the final test) is a powerful tool that shouldn't be overlooked. Try not to think of it as simply going for 100%, but use that objective as a way to study. Whenever you answer the question, it reinforces the knowledge you know or need to work on.
In conclusion, this is a great program and covers material in a way that is sometimes clearer than the writings you can find online.
What would you improve about this program?
It would be nice if there were practice quizzes for each page to help with the study material. The quiz could be much smaller (maybe call it a study guide of sorts) and maybe with a photo or other visual aid to help aspiring teachers with their learning. Of course, someone who wants to be a teacher should know how to study. Regardless, it would be a nice quality-of-life improvement to the curriculum.
I did come across a of couple examples on the quizzes where they were technically correct. I have a tendency to see too many scenarios at once in my head. I think I was tired one day when taking one of the quizzes and it asked a question about whether we should take the student's age into consideration when teaching or not. Of course, the answer is yes, because of a variety of reasons (ex: method of teaching, course material, etc). However, that day when I was tired, I looked at the question from the perspective that age shouldn't influence the lesson material at a basic level - as in, if I'm teaching the different pronunciations of the "ed" suffix, their age won't change the fundamentals of English ("ed" is always /id/, /d/, /t/). However, I must have been very tired that day because age does matter in how you approach the English fundamentals and it can also affect what real world examples can be used (keep things child safe, for example).
Pros
- Great Video Examples
- Nice written Presentation divided in readable sections (sometimes even tabs)
- I really enjoy how the tenses were written and the activity suggestions.
Cons
- Though extremely minimal, and it likely is only because of how I think, it would be nice if some sentences on the quizzes had a little more perspective written with the question (ex: what aspect of age in relation to the question)..
- Because I knew a lot about the topic already, even though I have a lot of good things to say, some of the reading was difficult to push through. I hesitate to write this con, because I don't have a solution other than optional study quizzes per page.
- Some video content feels like it could have been edited better or a better example could have been made. However, it is also good to not see a perfect classroom.
