Quote Originally Posted by bruceveld View Post
I spent 13 years of my life studying general subject matter with "qualified" teachers. Then I went to university and all of my teachers were apparently "unqualified" because they had never studied Education, just specialized in their field of study. That went on for the rest of my education, right through my MBA (which,according to some websites, I really do not have lol). Some of these teachers were horrible in the classroom. But they were experts in their field of study. They could have REALLY sued some teacher training, though.
University lecturers are not teachers! Studying at university should be almost entirely self-motivated and self-led. Hence they do not require teacher training in the same way that a primary school teacher would. Strewth, isn't that obvious Bruce?

Quote Originally Posted by bruceveld View Post
Now, lets take a look at the poor TEFLers you guys like to disparrage so often. All of us natie speakers are experts at the English language. Our usage level is Native and completely fluent. And if we have any kind of decent education we should be able to spell and string together a sentence or two. Believe it or not, we are experts in English language compared to the rest of the world.

Now, can we teach? Teaching language is quite different than teaching other subjects.
Are you an expert on teaching other subjects?
Quote Originally Posted by bruceveld View Post
Good teachers get a great deal of student participation. If you get some training, even as little as four weeks, will give many some basic skills that can make them successful English teachers. Will four weeks be ALL we need? Of ocurse not. Thats just a drivers permit to teaching english. All good teachers learn through their expereinces how to continually improve their teaching techniques and, obviously, more training is better than less training.
The minimum for a "drivers permit"? I beg to differ. I do not think that this four-week requirement came from being assessed as a minimum benchmark. I am sure that it came purely from the vast majority of English teachers not wanting to spend time and money on training for such a transient and poorly paid profession.