Bringing the World Closer

First Assignment

Hello everyone!

Congratulations on completing your first task: successfully logging in to the MyTeachingHouse.com site!

We are presently developing Generation 2 of the MyTeachingHouse site. It’s a great resource both on the course and after the course (in finding work and keeping up with friends you’ve made during the course). As this site is under development, we’d appreciate any feedback or suggestions that you have.

I have a few more tasks for you to complete—it may take about an hour or two. Please read the instructions below and complete it before next Monday.

Directions: All written answers must be posted on this thread (First Assignment) within the discussion forum in your course group. Since there are many of you, it's important to post only on this thread (click "Reply to This" at the bottom) so that we can keep the forum from getting full and messy-looking. However, if you have any other comments or questions you are welcome to start a new thread.

1. If you haven’t already, edit your profile with your current location, status and photo

2. Browse through our international directory of English language schools (hover over "RESOURCES" in the toolbar at the top of the page and click "SCHOOL DIRECTORY" ). Post the name of a school that you think you might be interested in applying to after the course, and (briefly) why you liked that school.

3. Go to Course Forms and find a word from one of the glossaries that you do not know.

4. Post one idea or recommendation for MyTeachingHouse.com.

5. Post a personal goal related to taking our Teaching House CELTA course.

6. Post a comment about someone else’s comments, for example, “Lizzy, I agree with your comment about the job listings section…” or “Abby, I saw that you wanted to work in Paris. I was thinking about that myself—is it hard to find work in France?” If you're one of the first people to post, come back later with a comment after your peers have caught up.

Good luck and keep coming back to our site! You can email me at christen@teachinghouse.com with any questions.

All the best,

Christen

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Wilson Dunlap on February 13, 2011 at 2:34pm

2. International House’s office in District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, looks promising. Of the four or cities to choose from in Vietnam, HCMC is the only one in the former South, making it the best jumping-off point for visits to the various sites relevant to the “American War”: the tunnels of Cu Chi, the Mekong Delta, Da Nang, and so forth. District 1 is the neatest part of the city itself, where the future of the country is most obvious. International House’s website not only exists, but is in English, which speaks well of them, and means that I can read it.
3. Realia—this is the actual object to which a word refers, used as a prop to illustrate that word. So, if one is teaching the word “chair,” they would have an actual chair.
4. When looking through the directory of schools that Teaching House supplies, many of the links supplied for the schools are dead, and if not, tend to be available only in that country's language. The dead links could be pruned, and the other links could be accompanied by an indication of what languages they are in, as on Wikipedia.
5. My personal goal is to teach in either Vietnam or South Korea my first year, and after having built up the requisite year of work-experience, to teach in Saudi Arabia. Once I’ve done those two, I might consider teaching in Germany or the Czech Republic.
6. Where are everyone else’s responses?

Permalink Reply by Andrea Whinnery on February 13, 2011 at 11:36pm

2. I have a strong desire to find work in Spain and so there is where I focused my school search. Many of schools based in Spain do not seem to actually focus on teaching English. However I found myself liking Idiomaster Language Centres. It is located in Cordoba, Spain and does seem to focus on teaching English. They are affiliated with Trinity as well. Their website is in Spanish, I understood a fair bit but I would love to learn more about them.
3. I had never heard the term “Back-chaining” before. I now know that it is a useful technique for drilling longer sentences. I hope to see the technique in practice so that I can get a further grasp of it.
4. I was reading some other suggestions and I do agree with all of them. One thing I noticed was that navigating is a bit difficult. I found myself in older groups accidentally and then not being quite sure how to back track. I think it is a great tool for all of us though and I know I will find it useful.
*Haha! Ok, so my suggestion had to do with ending up in older groups. Well, it's pretty funny because I accidentally posted this in January 31st forum. I guess my first hint should have been that it asked me to join the group (which admitedly puzzled me). Ha. Silly.
5. My personal goal in completing this CELTA course is to obtain a strong set of skill sets that will help to make me an effective and fun ESL teacher. I hope that this in turn will allow me to help others pursue their dreams.
6. Zofia- I think that is really funny what you said about Cuisenaire Rods. I, as well, was immediately in the kitchen when I saw that definition. Ha!
Cintia, Ben, Crystal- I also have no formal work experience teaching. I’m really happy to know that I’m not alone so I thought maybe you would be as well!

So, Wilson, since you are in my group; I think it is great that you want to work in Vietnam. Why is that you want to work there? Also, have you ever taught before?