Toward an Undergraduate Degree in Tesol: Preparing Non-Native Speakers for Teaching Positions in Higher Education

There are many paths for the preparation of TESOL instructors, although the most common are certificate programs, such as CELTA, and graduate programs, often involving a master’s degree. Regardless of the kind of preparation a TESOL instructor undergoes, the curriculum is similar – involving coursework in linguistics, second language acquisition, methods of TESOL, curriculum, classroom assessment, and a practicum experience. While preparation programs do, for the most part, meet the standards suggested by the major professional organization in the field, the TESOL International Association, they are limited in important ways. Most importantly, none target the particular audience on which we focus in this article: students in countries that are part of either the outer or external circles, who are not themselves native speakers of English, who wish to teach English at the university level. These students pose a unique challenge for teacher educators in their home societies, and are often left unprepared for the pedagogical and institutional challenges that they will meet. In this article, we offer an outline of a teacher preparation program that is intended to serve non-native speakers of English entering university with the goal of becoming English language instructors at the university level. Article visualizations: