For the most part, taking your training abroad is going to save you money on your TEFL certification courses overall. If you’re from the UK, Canada, or the U.S., TEFL programs at home are simply going to cost A LOT more for the exact same amount of training you can get in a city like Prague.
Most TEFL certification programs abroad take on the responsibility of getting newly certified teachers real ESL teaching jobs, because they literally need to in order to make the next batch of students more ept to join and positive about their job prospects upon graduation.
Aside from built-in job assistance, the chances of finding an English teaching job if you’re already in the country or region you wish to work are much higher than if you’re applying from way back home.
Most of your actual teacher skill development will be gained through in-course practice teaching hours. While home-based courses may still be able to help you find students who are learning English to practice your new skills with, it is simply not the same as teaching ESL students in another country.
If you want to teach English in Europe and you don’t have an EU passport, you’ll need a visa. Many language schools abroad, even those who hire foreign teachers frequently, will NOT handle this process for you; instead, it’ll be up to you to get the appropriate visa needed to teach abroad legally in your country of choice.
There are few bonds stronger than the ones you make while traveling, and sharing an intense, new experience. These types of bonds cannot be so easily fostered in the comfort of your own home, or home country.
What is it like to live abroad? Are you going to be able to handle the pressure of moving to a foreign country? Taking your TEFL courses abroad will help you answer these questions, without a doubt.
The English language is a fantastic worldwide language. Therefore, almost all educational institutions teach it as a second language on campuses all over the world. In 2015, over 1.7 billion individuals throughout the world were learning English. China alone accounted for 300 million individuals.
You might believe that being a native English speaker automatically qualifies you as an expert in the subject. What if a student asks you to explain the first predicate? Would you be able to recall which component it is and when you should use it?
You may have spent many years or more in school. However, teaching is not so clear. It’s not as simple as it appears. Teaching necessitates a combination of skill, finesse, and instinct. It also necessitates a significant amount of preparation and coordination.
You can get TEFL certification online or in-person without issues. You can get better salary packages. Similarly, you can get better options. If you get a TEFL qualification, you can also travel overseas for as many years as you want. It will offer an edge over others. The institutions will prefer your resume against other applicants.
One significant aspect of a TEFL certification is that it doesn’t expire. However, it doesn’t mean that your teaching skills stay sharp forever.
Spend 5 minutes searching TEFL certification on the Internet, and you will encounter a myriad of course options ranging from $39 self-taught classes on Groupon to high-quality courses taught by university instructors that may cost from $1400 - $3000 or even more.
Taking a substandard TEFL course can not only hurt your opportunities in the job market, but it can leave you with insufficient skills to teach on the professional level. For example, suppose you don’t possess sufficient skills in lesson planning, classroom management, error assessment, or teaching grammar (to name a few).
Many aspiring international English students take a TEFL class only to find themselves without the support, guidance, and resources they need to actually get an ESL teaching job abroad or online.
We strive to offer you world-class accredited TEFL certification courses, taught by university-level instructors & recognized by employers worldwide. By choosing ITA, you join a highly-engaged community of 35,000 alumni and invest in an award-winning TEFL school that invests right back in your training.
In TEFL, a Diploma is a qualification for people with at least two or three years of relevant job experience and usually an initial teaching qualification. A Diploma such as the Trinity DipTESOL or the Cambridge DELTA can get you credit for an MA in TESOL, TEFL, ELT or Applied Linguistics.
A standard length for a TEFL certificate course is 100 to 120 hours of (usually face-to-face) training with six to eight hours of observed and graded teaching practice. If a school asks for teachers with a TEFL certificate or “CELTA or equivalent”, that is what they are expecting.
Yes there are bad courses out there but also many great ones, this is nothing more than someone writing a contrary title to a blog to grab traffic.
However good the training that you get on a course, if it is only offered by that one school you will spend the rest of your TEFL career having your qualification questioned or ignored. Some course providers might be well known locally, but few people only teach in one country or area for more than a couple of years.
As well as a weekend or purely online course being almost worthless, schools which mainly offer these qualifications but also have a (less popular) four-week face-to-face course are usually to be avoided. 4. Entry requirements. In general the more difficult it is to get on a course, the better the course is.
Such a certificate cannot, however, be used to show your teaching ability or knowledge, because none of that is tested on that kind of course. The same is true for courses who do demand written work from you, but in which everyone who sends it in passes.
By “reasons to avoid a TEFL course”, I most certainly don’t mean to avoid all TEFL training. Any training is better than none, and there are well-known and well-respected courses such as the Cambridge CELTA and Trinity CertTESOL that are available and recognised all over the world. There are, however, plenty of courses that you probably should avoid, especially if you also have the option of taking a more respected one (and most people do).