“I came to Costa Rica TEFL with many years of teaching experience but really no idea how to teach English as a foreign language. The training I received was unlike anything I had known as a teacher and I found my interest in teaching reignited by the creative, dynamic approach offered. Within one week of graduation, I accepted a job offer and am now teaching at Intercultura language centre in Heredia, near San Jose.
The atmosphere at Intercultura is unlike anything I´d experienced in traditional schools. In addition to the local students who come here to learn or improve their English, there are many international students who come to learn English, Spanish, or Portuguese. At any given time, the reception area is brimming with multi-lingual conversations generated by native and non-native speakers. As a lover of language, I have indeed found my happy place!
Both Costa Rica TEFL and Intercultura emphasize a conversational approach to language learning, so I am using the tools I acquired in my training on a daily basis. It is a somewhat unbelievable process to be part of a beginner English class in which students arrive unsure of what they have gotten themselves into, only to leave a few hours later smiling, having had genuine conversations in English. Or to teach an intermediate class a new idiom, and hear them beautifully work it into conversation later that same day. It is life in the learning curve. And if ever the curve gets too steep, the staff here are so supportive and generous that ideas and possible solutions are always within reach.
This month, I have also been given the opportunity to pay it forward by volunteering in a program here at Intercultura, in which single mothers come to learn English and by doing so, are given the chance improve their employability and hopefully their family´s future.
And who knows what opportunities await me in the future? It´s just all so delicious!”
-Marianne Collins, November/December 2014 graduate