PAR FOR THE COURSE

Looking for that change in your career to transform your life? Or are you embarking for the first time on the long and exciting voyage to successful study and job satisfaction? Well, here goes nothing. Whether it's in the area of style, the musical arts and technology or the formal world of business and academia no work has to be forever these days.
Still, it helps to have some idea of what's out there. Here, Hot Press introduces some of the best of what's on offer.
American College Dublin is located on Merrion Square in three beautifully restored Georgian houses with additional facilities in 17 Lower Mount Street, approximately 300 metres from the main campus. Their International Student Hall of Residence is only few doors away.
"The combination of the American experience of learning with Irish validation makes for a unique educational encounter," says Frances Kelly. "Our continual assessment, semesterised approach to learning with a core curriculum to start off with is extremely progressive. It does away with the notion of cramming, produces a better quality of education as well as reducing those all too familiar and destructive peaks of stress students encounter in the more conventional system. Our evidence tells us it leads to a higher exam success rate too."
The core curriculum idea means that students begin their course with a broad and varied range of skills that produce more balanced and capable students ready for all the complexities and realities of the workplace. Thus, they may learn debating and public speaking skills alongside English composition and languages. The semesterised policy means that after each period of fourteen weeks, students move on to different subjects and gain credits for what they've achieved up to then. Contrary to popular impression, the place is not overrun by Americans, insists Frances Kelly. About ten per cent of the 400 students in the college are from the States.
American College Dublin have a unique relationship with their mother institution, Lynn University in Florida. This enables you to hop back and forth between the countries, taking credits with you as you go.
American College Dublin is small and intimate. Students are treated as individuals and receive a lot of personal attention. All the degrees are awarded by the National Council of Education Awards which is recognised throughout Europe.
If you're creative and organised with a tendency to prepare carefully all that you do, and you have an ability to communicate, then Dun Laoghaire's Language and Leisure's recognised English Language School's Association 70-hour course, Teaching English As A Foreign Language, is the thing for you. As long as you have a degree already, The R.E.L.S.A. Certificate is a passport to any place in the world. It offers flexibility and a highly unique challenge. T.E.F.L. has been focusing on the needs of the learner for years and its research into the area is years ahead of mainstream education, according to Eugene Murphy, managing director.
"We have very experienced teacher trainers at Language and Leisure," says Eugene, "and encourage real teaching practice on the course. Our international students and the variety of levels we have help enormously. We're committed to a maximum of ten per class which affords excellent individual personal attention."