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Having already taken teacher preparation classes and having student taught in foreign language classes, I thought when I started this course that there wouldn't honestly be very much left for me to learn, especially from an online course. I am happy to say, however, that there is always something to learn in the teaching profession, and that no matter how much experience you have, there are always new ideas and new methods that you can incorporate into your skill set. This class was especially helpful for me in two different ways. First, the fact that I am certified to teach spanish and french does not mean that I am also qualified to teach english, even though it is my native language. Although my ability to speak english is clearly superior to that of any other language, that doesn't necessarily mean that my knowledge of how english works is sufficient to be able to teach it to non-native speakers. Therefor, it was extremely helpful to be able to take a course that prepared me to teach english specifically, and where I could learn more information about the language itself. For example, because of my knowledge of spanish and french I know how verbs change and what the passive and active voices are, etc, but there are a lot of specifics in english that I was not familiar with before I took this course, and that I now feel capable of explaining to students should they ask me. It is always easy as a native speaker to give examples of how things work, but it is not so easy to be able to explain why the language works that way and what the rules are. Secondly, this course was really helpful in giving me fun ideas for classroom activities. Languages can be hard to teach sometimes because they can seem so book oriented, but there are so many ways to get students more actively involved in the process, both in written and oral communication. If you are creative, you can come up with a wealth of ideas for activities, but in my opinion you can always use more suggestions. Plus, there are a lot of ideas that you might come up with that others have tried and adjusted to make better, and you can learn from these mistakes without having to make them yourself. I really enjoyed all of the lessons that had teaching ideas for certain topics, because even though I don't necessarily plan on using all of the activities, I always enjoy hearing about new things to do and trying them out. In addition, another interesting facet of this course was the remarks about the typical ESL class. Because english is becoming such a global language, teaching english as opposed to another language like spanish of french is a very different experience, and the students in the class can be very different from students that would take other languages, for example. It is also very important always to take into account the students' reasons for being in the class, since these reasons are diverse. Many adults, for example, might be taking a class for their own personal purposes and interest, and are therefor they are there of there own free will and will typically be more motivated than younger students who are required to be in english class in school. This is not always true, however, as some companies might make their employees take an english course, for example. There is not much that you as the teacher can do about the motivation of your students besides present them with interesting material and class activities, but it is still good to know how hard you will have to work to get students interested in the class, and what kinds of activities might be better for that particular audience.
