Teaching English to police or military

Dear future language instructor: Do yourself a favour and take a recognized TESL/TEFL course. It will spare you a lot of grief in the classroom. Try to get a basic knowledge of second language acquisition, how to find great resources, how to develop lesson plans, as well as learner needs analysis, language skill level assessment, learning strategies, teaching strategies, pedagogical grammar (explicit explanation of structure), linguistic analysis (comparing languages), first language interference, phonetics and pronunciation ($$$), methodology and some basic theory. I knew a man with a doctorate in linguistics but with no TESOL training. He tried to teach English -- He was totally lost in the classroom . . . and the students knew it. I also know a lady with a doctorate in literature. She is a university professor who took a TESL/TEFL course and she is doing extremely well. It's a swim or sink profession.  People with an uncanny knack for teaching may survive if there is an organized semester with specific materials, but they fly by the seat of their pants so to speak. Some foreign language schools don't care about the kind of training that I'm talking about and only look at people's degrees. These employers know very little about language instruction and language acquisition. So, yes, with your hard earned degrees you can get employment, but will you have the tools to enjoy your profession and actually work some magic in the classroom?  If the university that you are affiliated with offers a TESL/TEFL course, I highly recommend that you take it. It's a tough course and Applied Linguistics 101 can be brutal, but in the long run you will have so much more fun. You can even design your own programs for teaching police, athletes, hospitality and tourist industry workers, etc. Good luck.   dcb

I am an overseas teaching veteran of 21 years in 10 different countries.  I concur...the TEFL/TESOL course will teach you things you need to do what we call "front line" teachiing.

Not to pee on your parade, but I'll take a good TEFLer without a degree than someone with a fistful of MAs and MSs without one.