Teaching English is a craft that we all have to learn. We all know that you are not automatically a good English teacher just because you are a native speaker. Having a Bachelor’s or a Master’s degree won’t make you one either except if one of these involved  substantial, observed teaching practice, in which case you’d be off to a great start. Likewise those with a PGCE or equivalent teacher training.

There are also teachers who although unqualified, have made it their business to read, experiment, learn from colleagues,  peer observe, ask for feedback and develop from an ingrained sense of personal and professional pride. These are to be admired.

In any event, what English teachers need, is proper teacher training - hard training in effective classroom techniques and methods. Why does this simple fact not register with so many employers in Korea and especially Korean Universities for whom a Masters (in anything!) is often seen as the badge of competence? Don’t people know that even most TESOL MAs are completely theoretical without any practical teacher training? Also, why do so many foreign teachers in Korea not bother to get trained or train themselves in ESL/EFL teaching methods? The obvious answer is they don’t need it to get a job here and once appointed, there is little real quality control after the fact in all but a few select schools.

Every year, Korea is importing hundreds of foreigners to teach English. Graduates? Yes. Smart? Definitely. Good teachers? Often not. Why?

Most are unqualified and untrained and once they get comfortable and get a few years’ experience behind them, they rather complacently assume that what they are subjecting their students to on a daily basis is effective teaching. In many cases, it is far from! They become like old dogs who won’t learn new tricks and often say “I have X years teaching experience” but in reality it is more like one year plus X years repetition/stagnation.

To enter Korea as an English teacher, you must have a university degree to comply with immigration laws and that is very good. You now have people who are more than just native speakers but those who in addition are likely (although not always!) to be pretty articulate in speech and capable of good academic writing since these two skills will certainly be developed over the course of a 3 or 4 year academic degree. Their own English skills are of a high standard. They will, more often than not, be good communicators too.

You get other good things with graduates too, like the ability to express themselves clearly, mount and find flaws in arguments etc. In short they are smart, proud people and certainly capable of understanding very well what they are taught and what they read. The MA takes it a little further and these skills are further refined. Now you have someone who can deal with complex academic argumentation and who is capable of quality research. Still won’t make you an English teacher though.

This critique doesn’t just apply to all the native speaker “teachers” Korea receives by the plane load every year. It’s the same for Korean English “teachers” too. Even if they can actually speak English fluently (around 50% according to a 2005 study) they still won’t be giving their students much more than boring lectures if they haven’t learned how to teach a second language properly. In this respect foreigners should be very careful when scoffing at the seemingly outdated methods of Korean teachers. The message is: “Physician, heal thyself!”

So where can you get this teacher training from? Well, you won’t get it from an online TESOL certificate that’s for sure! Many other initial TESOL/TEFL certificates aren’t worth the paper they are written on either, simply because success in these amounts to reading and writing assignments - meat and drink to any smart graduate. Sadly, the current fad in TESOL courses for Koreans is focused mostly on reading and writing assignments too.

The best teacher training courses available at the moment are the Cambridge DELTA or the Trinity Diploma. Some universities also offer a postgraduate diploma or MA in TESOL where you must undergo a lengthy and rigorous period of teacher training and observed teaching practice. As mentioned before, some schools are committed to teacher development with regular observations and some have experienced and helpful senior staff. They offer training of high quality as an ongoing and not just pre-service commitment. These are the best ways to get on the road to becoming a good teacher.

Unfortunately in Korea, we have the situation where untrained graduates arrive and end up in front of 30 or 40 unruly kids (in public schools) and don’t know what they are doing. The stress levels must be enormous! If they are smart/lucky, they might choose a kids hagwon where the class sizes will be much smaller and where the owners probably don’t care what they do so long as there are no great complaints. In either of these 2 cases, unless they are really keen to learn and  have the luxury of experienced and dedicated colleagues to guide them, they won’t develop.

Then there are the university English instructors - a separate breed who often think their MA and “professor” status should speak for itself. In many cases though, what they are doing is not good teaching.

The problem with many of these guys is that, having been around teaching and teachers for years and concluding that EFL isn’t exactly rocket science, assume that they, by virtue of having written an academic thesis, are of course, qualified to teach English.

We all must realize though, that EFL/ESL teaching is a unique set of skills and methods altogether. In this post, I want to encourage teachers out there to find out what they are and begin practising them. Better still, when finances and opportunity permit - go and get yourself properly trained!