TEFL courses

[scifisam]

Not strictly true. One of my best mates has been teaching EFL for bout 15 years with no formal qualifications - in London, Budapest and Madrid now. He's very good at it too (altho it's probably best to get the qualification if you're starting out)

Like your last sentence implies, he can do it partly because he's been teaching for 15 years - there was a lot less competition then. More and more people want to do it now.

It's well worth doing a proper TEFL course because, although you can get a job without one, you won't have as much choice of job, so you'll be more likely to end up working 50 hours a week in a shithole with no social or cultural life, 100 miles from the nearest city. You might get lucky, but you're more likely to get 'lucky' if you take the course.

Experience helps somewhat, and if you're a charismatic, garrulous person who can get students engaged even without them understanding all you're saying, as well having decent knowledge of grammar, then you'll probably be OK without any qualifications. (I was!) Still, you might not be.

A good course should make you a better teacher too, which, apart from being morally right, makes your job a lot more pleasant.

 

[BlackSpecs]

I've just started working for one of the worlds largest language institutes and they made it very clear that they don't give a flying f**k about TEFL since you can get them fairly easy online or in Asia etc.

 

[scifisam]

I've just started working for one of the worlds largest language institutes and they made it very clear that they don't give a flying f**k about TEFL since you can get them fairly easy online or in Asia etc.

Yes, you can get some shitty courses online, but you can't get a CELTA or Trinity TESOL Cert purely online.

 

[Yu_Gi_Oh]

Yes, you can get some shitty courses online, but you can't get a CELTA or Trinity TESOL Cert purely online.

It's also quite easy to spot the teachers who didn't do a CELTA or Trinity Cert, they're the ones who still don't know a fucking thing about their language and get the tenses confused. I nearly wept when I found a collegue had been teaching the 'going to future' as if it was the present continuous.

If you care about doing a good job and you don't just want to doss about in another country then the least you can do is try and become a bit better at understanding the language you're teaching. A CELTA or Trinity will help you with that.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Another case for not working for EF, from the ESL cafe::

Even though I wasn't really in the job market at the time, I was directly approached by EF Guangzhou, by one Ian something-or-other and by one Jackie Wu (the area manager) about teaching children in one of their centers.

In spite of all of the warnings about this place all over this Board, and in spite of the specific warnings regarding EF Urumqui (where this Ian-something-or-other was the DOS in the midst of all the turmoil), I went on the interview.

I had several lengthy interviews with them and they offered me -- in writing -- a job with lots and lots of money involved. I accepted the job, gave my employer notice, put a down payment on an apartment, and secured the necessary early termination / letter of release, etc., etc. They told me that on the Friday before I was to start they would give me my schedule for the following week.

On that Friday, no schedule at all. Instead, this Ian-something-or-other sent me a message on my mobile saying that the Shanghai Head Office had decided that there wasn't enough money to pay me and that they unilaterally rescinded everything....what a f*cking mess.

But, folks, the psycho ward didn't end there...this Ian-something-or-other continued to send me messages on my mobile asking if I were interested in a job at a future point in time....when I tried to contact him, he wouldn't take my calls and he wouldn't answer my messages.

This little psycho ward behavior cost me a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of face.

Lies, lies, and more lies. Anyone EVER considering working at EF Guangzhou in any of its branches would be well advised to run away as fast as possible to another job.

Avoid this Ian-character and this Jackie Wu character as you would avoid the plague.

 

[gaijingirl]

I too agree that getting a TEFL is generally a good idea. Even though I have managed over the years without one, ideally I still would like to do one at some point (although to be honest, it's fairly unlikely to happen now that I've done my PGCE). Whilst as a linguist I probably have a better grasp of English grammar than your average Joe, I am well aware that it would not be good enough to teach higher level EFL students - if for nothing else I'd like to have a better understanding of the finer points of English grammar too. People I know who have done TEFL courses have generally said it was money well spent.

 

[Allan]

Back in the early 90s I was living in Bournemouth and was into all things Japanese, especially the cute Japanese girl language students that went to all the TEFL schools there. Anyway, I taught myself basic Japanese, saved up £6k and decided I wanted to move to Japan. I figured the best and most fun way to support myself was to teach English so I enrolled in an intensive TEFL course at one of the local foreign student schools.

I had never been to university, not even to college and I had left school with no exam passes at all although I'm by no means a dunce. I found it really, really tough and not as fun as I thought it would be. I hated it and I was the only person in our group to fail. Disillusioned, I ended up offering conversation lessons for a fiver, bought a PC to cheer myself up (£2k each in those days!) and lent the rest of my money to my brother to help his failing business. It saved it but he could only afford to pay me back a little at a time. Sayonara, dreams of living in Japan.

That was a real Back To The Future / Butterfly Effect moment in my timeline. If I had passed I could have had it all by now. But I'm not academically minded, not intelligent enough to make the grade so here I am, years later, penniless on a road to nowhere and getting there fast.

Oh well.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Couldn't you go back into Higher Education? If you went back and got a Degree now you could quite easily go into TEFL. From your post it sounds as if you can write a lot better than some of the illiterates I've come across in China. I've met people here who write stuff like "should of"!

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

I have to add - the course is bloody hard. I found it more stressful than my Uni finals!

 

[Allan]

I do pride myself on my grammar and spelling but I have neither the heart nor the money to do anything about it now. I'm a film extra these days - not well paid but totally stress-free and easy. And no responsibilities, either.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Fair enough. You could get a tefl job in China without a Degree - I've met plenty of teachers who haven't got one...

 

[Argonia]

Are there any updates to this thread seven or eight years on?

 

[Argonia]

So are the best two to go for a Trinity on the one hand or a CELTA on the other?

Is the following one neither of those two and so should it be avoided?

http://www.i-to-i.com/tefl-courses/professional-tefl-certificate-140-hours-preview/

 

[moppetz]

Doesn't look like either if those. I recommend practical training - how can you learn classroom management skills, how to interact with students etc when it's all online? I did a 4 week Trinity course (5 days a week, 9-5) which is the toughest thing I've ever done, but I highly recommend it. I got a job with a very reputable EFL school in London before I'd even started the course because the boss knew how good it was.

 

[Argonia]

Thanks for the advice

 

[dessiato]

As previous posts have said get Trinity or CELTA. It is better to have a recognised and reputable qualification. Beware of i-2-i they seem to charge a lot of money to work as a volunteer for them.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

Oh no, another ancient thread revived for no good reason. It is so confusing to read such threads.

This one was so short that it could have been ignored if someone wanted to deal with this topic anew.

I blame pogofish.