Teaching English Abroad

October 9, 2009 - Thirty years ago, a GSE student held a single weekend workshop for local TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) teachers.

That was then. Now, the TESOL workshops are widely known and well-regarded, training and certifying TESOL professionals both in the States and overseas. The graduate student, Tere Pica, is a tenured professor in the Language and Literacy in Education division of GSE. And the need for TESOL classes keeps growing.

2008 marked a major expansion of the TESOL program. For the first time, the workshop was given abroad, in Taiwan and South Korea. GSE doctoral students Elaine Allard and Julia Deak trained over 100 teachers.

In South Korea, the Ministry of Education plans to transition all primary and secondary classes to English-language instruction over the next two years. To support this, Pica and the TESOL team are strengthening ties and forging new ones. New partners include Ewha University, Catholic University of Daegu, and Yonsei University, all of which will host TESOL summer internship programs. Pica is also talking with the Spanish Ministry of Education about TESOL needs in that country.

"Our approach to TESOL isn't exclusive," explains Pica, "but in the school, there is always a strong theoretical foundation, a research component, and a practical side to everything we do. So every course that we teach has some proportion of linguistics (our theoretical grounding), research skills (analyzing others' research as well as doing our own), and practice (our people go out into the community — every course that I teach involves going into the community and helping people learn another language)." In other words, the TESOL program, though directed towards professional practice, places a powerful emphasis on theory and research.

While GSE's approach to TESOL may not be unique, the program's circumstances are: Penn is alone among Ivy League universities in its level of support for professionals as well as for academics. It is, in fact, the only Ivy League school that offers TESOL certification.

The decades-old program has helped to make GSE a leader in the field of TESOL instruction. Now, as more and more countries are introducing English instruction in primary and secondary schools, many international teacher education programs are requiring TESOL certification. Penn's "huge track record of success," combined with its long relationships with overseas institutions, make it the go-to school for nations bringing English instruction into the classroom.

One reason for the weekend workshop's continued success is its adaptability; it is constantly being revised and expanded by the doctoral students who teach it. And instead of relying on lectures, it focuses on hands-on, dynamic materials and activities.

TESOL partnerships take other forms as well. Some programs allow students to get a TESOL certificate from Penn and a degree from their home universities. PennGSE has developed these programs at a number of South Korean universities, including Sookmyung Women’s University, Pusan University of Foreign Studies, Korea University, Tamna University (Jeju Island), Hanyang University, and Kosin University.

In addition, Pica and Tony Powells (Wharton) have developed a competitive week-long business communications institute, which is now in its fifteenth year. GSE also maintains partnerships with East China Normal University in China, Kings College in the UK, and Kyoritsu University in Japan.

To learn more about GSE's TESOL programs and international partnerships, click here.