TESOL providing undergraduate program for students to teach abroad

The TESOL program is offering a new undergraduate certificate program. 

Previously, TESOL certification has only been available for graduate students. However, through the new program, undergraduates may now earn certification as well. 

The program is open to juniors and seniors from all majors who have a 3.0 GPA and an interest in teaching English to non-native speakers. 

The program consists of 18 credit hours, and upon completion, students will be given a certificate.

The classes are offered both on campus and via livestream. 

Dr. Ally Zhou, director of TESOL, said the program may interest people who want to travel abroad. 

“I’ve seen more and more people interested in teaching abroad,” Zhou said. “In particular, people who travel abroad sometimes want to fund their own trips, so this is one of the ways that they can do so. While they travel overseas, they can also teach English to people in the countries that they travel to, so this would help them fund their trips while they are traveling.” 

The program makes students more employable, Zhou said. 

“In most non-English speaking countries now, they require English teachers to have a certificate in TESOL,” Zhou said. “This would just add to a student’s credentials and increase their chances of being hired.” 

Students from a wide variety of backgrounds are encouraged to join the program, Zhou said. 

“They don’t have to be education majors or English majors. They can be from any background,” Zhou said. “We don’t just teach English in general. We now teach English for specific purposes and those specific purposes can be anything. For instance, there’s teaching English for business, for nursing, for music, and for engineering. So TESOL students can be from any discipline.”

Johanna Beathard, exercise science junior, is currently in the program. She said she first became interested in the program after studying abroad. 

“I went to Costa Rica to study abroad last summer and I found it really interesting,” Beathard said. “Some of my classmates were doing that certification so I researched it and wanted to know if OCU had it and so I contacted Dr. Zhou and she got me set up.” 

There are a few advantages to doing the program as an undergraduate, Beathard said. 

“I think it’s a little bit cheaper, and my undergraduate scholarships will cover it even though those are graduate classes,” Bethard said. “And I thinks it’s good to be around older classmates because they all actually really want to be there.”

For more information, students can contact Zhou at azhou@okcu.edu or (405) 208-5668.