Vicky - USA
A couple of months ago I heard on the ESOL grapevine that the Refugee Programme was looking for a tutor for their one and only Somali Bantu interpreter. In the last 6 months, a small but steady stream of Somali Bantu families have been ‘resettled’ in our small Vermont town. Their interpreter, a refugee herself, was a busy woman, spending her days with newly arrived families, helping them navigate the maze of settling into a new country. She had pretty good English I was told, but needed some help with her English reading and writing skills. Today we had our first session together.
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Study a TEFL course with TEFL Zorritos in Peru, South America and travel the world, live abroad and enrich people's lives by teaching them English. A TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Certificate is an internationally accredited and accepted qualification to teach English to people from non-English speaking countries. More questions? Head to our What is TEFL? page
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We meet at her apartment and sit on her bed on top of her pink flowered duvet. There are lots of women and children in the apartment, beds and toys everywhere, but here in Fatuma’s room there is a sense of calm; a little oasis away from all the life going on outside her room. One of the benefits of being a volunteer ESL teacher/ tutor is that I get to choose the projects and students I work with and am often given an insight into their whole culture and life outside of the traditional classroom. As the smells of African food permeate the air I am conscious that this is one of those insights you wouldn’t get in the classroom.
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Our TEFL Certificate course is held at the gorgeous Sunset Club in Zorritos. Sunset Club is a private club and hotel where you will study surrounded by palm trees and overlooking their stunning private beach. Our training site is located within metres of the ocean which provides a lovely breeze and a breathtaking view. The club has various swimming pools, bars, a restaurant, tennis courts, a soccer pitch and a playground.
Included in your TEFL course fee is lunch daily at Sunset Club for the duration of the course, as well as a private taxi twice daily from your accommodation to the club, as it is located approximately 15 minutes from the centre of Zorritos. You can also choose to stay at the club for the duration of course, which we offer in our Course Packages.
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One of the drawbacks of being that same volunteer is that I have few resources and often rely on materials that are old and often dubiously appropriate for the students I work with. The books that Fatuma and I had been given were printed in the 1980s and were geared to adult American learners who have a basic awareness of American culture. They are not geared to ESOL learners and I was unsure how they were going to work. Fatuma had taken my advice (given when we had been introduced and given our materials), and had read one of the pieces in the book, entitled ‘ It don’t hurt much Ma’am’. She had some questions about the vocabulary.
“What does this word mean?” She points to the word ‘caliber’ on the vocabulary list. We practice the word’s pronunciation and while I try to work out just how I am going to explain the measure of a person, I ask Fatuma to find the word in a sentence for me, to put it in its context. I start to read the sentence she is pointing at, “the bullet caliber…..”, I don’t need to read anymore to realise we are talking about a different caliber altogether.
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GUARANTEED TEACHING POSITION IN CHINA FOR PARADISE TEFL GRADUATES:
- Round-trip airfare
- Accommodations
- Complete visa assistance
- Support network in place to help you get settled
- Competitive salary teaching oral English
- Positions starting in February & August each year
- Graduates must be at least 18 years old with no upper age limit
- Bachelor Degree NOT required
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I scan the article and see it is about the unrealistic portrayal of bullet injuries in Wild West movies. I glance at some of the other words on the vocabulary list - “Wild Bill Hickok”, “Jesse James”. I do my best to describe the diameter of a bullet, and as I do so, I squirm inwardly at the complete inappropriateness of this piece of writing. Fatuma asks about “vessels”, “abdomen” and “victim”, the latter word I am particularly loathe to describe. Fatuma suggests a sentence, “There are victims in my village” and her face betrays nothing but eagerness to have captured the meaning correctly. Fatuma has spent the last 14 years of her life in a refugee camp in Kenya. The irony of her describing the word victim is almost unbearable; her concept of the word is surely more hideously rich than mine will ever be.
We continue with the article as Fatuma has prepared for it and has a good grasp of its meaning; her comprehension skills are excellent and her writing is neat and tidy. She is also very apologetic when she announces that she will have to leave early due to attending Ramadan prayers at the Mosque. As we both don our coats before going outside into the cold October night we chat about movies. When I explain to her that the movies we’ve been reading about depict a time in American history that was over a hundred years ago she looks surprised and a little relieved. We say our farewells and as I drive home I try to imagine what has been going through Fatuma’s head as we’ve been studying. Perhaps she had pictured Wild Bill Hickok riding through the streets of Vermont on his horse alongside all the buses and cars. Next week there will be no cowboys and bullet wounds. I will make sure that I am armed with some linguistically challenging work rather than culturally confusing pieces about cowboy mythology.
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TEFL Zorritos: What could be better? Study in a beautiful Peruvian beach town, great accommodations available, including delicious local food. Fully accredited 160 Hour TEFL course with a practical approach that provides you with 5 advanced certifications at absolutely no extra cost! And guaranteed job search assistance in whatever city/country you want to work, waiting for you when you complete the course.
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