A Great Program that Eases your Introduction to Prague

I took the TeflProPrague TEFL course with the intention of remaining in Prague to teach. It is also possible of course to take the certificate earned here and apply what you've learned to ESL programs worldwide. My course was a great experience, and it really starts with all the support the school provides, in addition to the (excellent) instruction of the course itself. Petra, the school coordinator, arranged accommodation for me during the program, and put me in touch with a Prague relocation-service that covered all the aspects of settling in the Czech Republic to teach. Petra is well-connected in the ESL community in Prague, and was able to provide letters of interest from employers, including contracts of employment, by the time we had completed the course. Naturally, this is great relief when trying to settle all the practical affairs of moving to a new city, a new country...!

The course itself is a bit daunting, but with focus and application on the part of the student it is manageable. I never realized just how much goes into ESL instruction, how many different facets of the enterprise there are to master! I was fortunate that I was taking the course during an off-peak period (September), since my class was scheduled for just four students, including myself. Petra's instructors set high expectations, and they also introduced me to the potential range of what ESL instruction can encompass. Sean gave us a rigorous introduction to the essential Skills & Systems methodology for conducting any class, Gwyneth took us into the field for a few practice classes & gave us a lot of great advice for refining our teaching technique, and we spent our class time with Dany surveying and sampling the myriad manner of ways we can incorporate games into our teaching practice. Finally, Stephanie was there to help us hammer out our lesson plans for our weekend teaching-practice (and to share with us some survival Czech!) Really, there was so much content that the course could have run for weeks longer - but the main focus of the course is to prepare you to go into the classroom to teach, and it is actually there, by applying everything you learn with TeflProPrague, that you can really internalize all the material that the course introduces you to.

A note about the grammar portion of the course: English language grammar is a very rich and complicated subject, and it is not possible to cover it all in a course like this. But all of the instructors devote some time to teaching grammar, and they focus their instruction on those areas (parts of speech, tenses, modals, conditionals) which are typically of the greatest usefulness in ESL instruction. For those planning to stay to teach in Prague, there is also discussion of the characteristic grammar problems that Czech native speakers have.

All told, I had a great experience getting my TEFL certificate with TeflProPrague. Everyone I worked with in the program is wonderful (and don't miss the Quiz nights hosted by Dany, at the Globe bar in the Center of Prague!), and it was the right choice for those crucial first few months that I was settling in, in Prague.