My 3 takeaways from doing the International House Certificate in Online Tutoring (IH COLT)

I enrolled on this course in January 2021 and finished it a month or so later. I should have done this course earlier in my career because of the urgent transition to online work that occured thanks to the global pandemic, but better late than never. Given how important online teaching was during this pandemic era, the main thing I wanted to gain from this course was to see how capable I was at teaching online. Jen and Lucie, the course tutors, over at International House are amazing and they gave me the confidence I needed to keep on keeping on in this online game. I would recommend this course to anyone who feels the same as I did. If you are interested in doing this course, you can find out more here.

Here are three major takeaways I got after reflecting on the work I done on the course:

Plethora of synchronous and asynchronous tools

Throughout the course, my coursemates and I were inundated with handy tech tools which we could use inside and outside of the classroom to help boost learning. I was very grateful and blessed to have met some great teachers around the world who were ready to offer up what they had been using online with their students during the pandemic era. Our course tutors, also, demoed a lot of tools and we as a class dissected each one to see what ones could be of real use and benefit to our students online. Here is a list of tools we used throughout the course, hopefully there will be a few that you haven’t used yet:

Bamboozle – really fun, interactive, ready-to-use games

Bookwidgets – similar to Wordwall

Buzzin.live – students can ‘buzz in’ with their answers

Different and similar skills and techniques I learnt from my German language teachers

I took a 4-week online German course with the German Language School (GLS) in Berlin to try and prepare myself for an immersive experience when I move to Berlin later this year. 

I wrote about my experiences which you can read by clicking on the links below:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

10 things I learnt being a student on a language course

I was blessed with having four amazing teachers who enabled me to speak confidently in the language, understand the grammar structures, and informed me of life in Berlin as a whole. 

From language teacher to language student – 10 things I learnt being a student on a language course

After coming off a 4-week online German course with the German Language School (GLS) in Berlin, it gave me a unique perspective on what life is like for a language learner. Here are ten things that I learnt and will remember going forward in my career as a teacher.

Speaking and listening practice is paramount

Completing tasks in the coursebook or online tasks from websites are really satisfying when you get it right. It’s a nice dopamine hit. But nothing compares to the level of satisfaction you get when you perform well during a speaking or listening task. The opportunities to practice and develop speaking and listening in the classroom is really important for learners, and sometimes they are criminally marginalised with grammar and vocabulary exercises taking up a lot of the time. A majority of the tasks prescribed in your coursebook can be completed outside of the classroom in your own time, but the practice of speaking cannot realistically be done without a partner or group of the same level, and the immediate feedback you get from your teacher. When these tasks are set up in a safe and scaffolded manner it allows learners to throw caution to the wind in the construction of their sentences and meaning; something that isn’t always available outside the classroom when talking with native speakers who can often be impatient and unforgiving.