Get TEFL Certified in Paris with iTTi
Interview with Dan Brechbiel
Hello, my name is Dan. I discovered iTTi when I was 53 years old, and purely by chance. I was ready and looking for a new direction in life. I knew that I wanted to be in Paris, France, and I knew I wanted to teach. What I didn’t know was how to make these seemingly different things happen together. One day, I googled “ESL Paris,” never expecting to get any further in my search. The first listing that popped up was for iTTi, an international organization with training schools around the globe. Around the globe? (I clicked on France) Schools in Brittany and in Paris. Without giving it a second thought, I applied and paid a deposit. Did that just happen? Was it that easy? It did, and it was. I soon received a detailed email from iTTi (international TEFL Training institute), one of the many organizations under the iTTi umbrella.
The next six months flew by, and I found myself landing in Paris in an uncommon snowstorm on April 1, 2022 (no fooling!). The instructor at the Paris school spent the next four weeks guiding myself and two other trainees through the basics of second language acquisition. We observed our instructor interacting with an established group of English learners, quickly developing the skills we would use on our own.
The most impactful part of my TEFL education was being taught that we acquire language when we receive comprehensible input in a low-anxiety setting. This method, taught by Stephen Krashen of UCLA, has proven to be the most effective way to learn a second (or third, or fourth) language. We all learned our native tongue by hearing it, practicing it, and refining it through trial and error, until we became fluent. This is the same approach I learned in my certification class.
What will I do with my certification? There are many possibilities to consider. I could travel around the
world to schools which are hungry for English teachers; I could tutor individuals or groups online or in
person; I could expand my use of my first teaching degree, allowing me to teach students for whom
English is a second or foreign language; or I could use my certification as a steppingstone toward a
master’s degree in teaching English as a Second Language. Whichever choice I make, I know that my
decision has a strong foundation in my certification through iTTi.
