My life is about to veer off in a new direction: I am undertaking a major professional development course.I have been teaching English as a Foreign Language for over 15 years now, but I don't actually have formal training in it.
Sure, I have a diploma in English literature from here, and a post-Bachelor teaching certificate from here, and, for 8 years, I taught French to high school students here.
Plus I have plenty of experience, which does count for something -- thank heaven!
But last fall, after having spent a few years haunting the ESL/EFL Twitterverse and blogosphere, I started to realize that something was missing, or at least I was missing something: formal training and a theoretical background in exactly what I do. Not just teaching, not just English, but teaching English as a foreign language.
So, starting next week, I will be hitting the books, preparing Module One of the Cambridge DELTA qualification.
This first part of the 3-module course is all online learning. A wiki will be involved, but so will old-fashioned reading and writing, with an official exam to take in Paris in December 2012.
As part of this experience, I hope to revive this blog, but it may take an educational bent...or I might end up publishing my teaching reflections on another online space.
So, I'm going back to school at 52, in a way that I never could have imagined even 10 years ago.
Wish me luck...
