[dropcap]D[/dropcap]CU Students’ Union announced extended TEFL services across DCU campuses and to the larger student population earlier this week.
SU president Niall Behan delivered on one of his campaign promises when he announced TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course eligibility to all students.
Although the SU has been providing TEFL services for the past few years to students in the school of education, this year, for the first time, there will be two options available for students. The first aimed at primary and secondary level teachers in training and the second, an introductory course, open to all students no matter what course they are studying.
Niall said he found there was a huge demand for TEFL courses when he was campaigning last year.
“While I was in the humanities faculty, a lot of people came up saying there was no TEFL course for all students just teaching courses. Essentially they felt, because of the amount of time that humanities students especially would have outside the classroom, it would be a great use of their time to do a TEFL course.”
The SU are working with the TEFL Training Institute to provide affordable courses to students. Usually a TEFL course can cost hundreds of euro, however, the courses provided in DCU cost €250 for the introductory course and €285 for the ACELS prep cert available to education students only.
“The new introductory course gives people a flavour of a TEFL course, its still very valuable to you. It is massively important for students to be able to try something out but at the same time, this still means you can teach in a non-English speaking country” Behan said. “The value of it to your own education is massive, especially because it gives you a skill you can earn money from.”
Already the courses have proved to be hugely popular with over 300 people emailing the company for further information. “Last year they had roughly about 60 people signed up and now they’re already looking at about 150 people, so there’s a huge increase of people applying for these TEFL courses and hopefully we can get that up again in the second semester.”
The courses will be taking place Mondays and Wednesdays at 6pm – 9.20pm from November 6th to December 6th on St. Pat’s Campus, DCU.
Amy Murphy