See comments below for the eventual action on this matter.
I’ve been meaning to do a piece of TEFL International for ages, but there are so many differing accounts, including on their own multiple sites and those of their many agents, that it is difficult to make any kind of summary. And then there are their (quite often nutty) critics… So, I’ve just decided to pick one site and have a close look at it instead.
I must say that there were quite a few places where I was pleasantly surprised by their honesty, including a very good summary of your prospects (or lack of) as a TEFLer without a degree. Unfortunately, some of that honesty points out some very good reasons to choose another course, e.g.
“Some kind of overseeing body (a university or examining board) that externally controls quality Most employers are looking for certificates that meet or exceed these three criteria. Courses that do not meet these criteria will not be recognized as certificates.”
There is (presently) no university or examining board that externally controls the quality of TEFL International courses, as quite clearly explained in other parts of tefllife.com. Instead, their Board of Academic Advisors (who are not a board and don’t decide on the academic criteria, despite the name) and the presence of Dave Hopkins (see below) are supposed to be some kind of guarantee of their academic standards.
and even more importantly
“And, lets face it, any course that does not allow you multiple opportunities to put you in real-life teaching situations will have limited benefit. “
Strange, then, that they give this information about their online course:
“Your TEFL International online certificate is exactly the same as a regular TEFL International certificate; there are no differences in appearance or status. It is a less expensive way to gain your certification, while still receiving the required and authorized training “
Surely that means that as an employer you could be employing someone with no observed teaching practice (unlike the new online CELTA, which has a face to face component) without knowing it? If anyone knows if that isn’t what it means, comments below please…
and on the same topic:
“Each TEFL International course leads to an authoritatively endorsed hard copy certification that the graduate has met certain professional teaching standards and practices.”
Really? Can I also become a surgeon with an online course, then?
This being a site by “one of those TEFL courses”, there are also of course plenty of plain fibs. Ones that stand out include:
“CELTA Certification…It is a limited certification for persons wishing to teach Further, Adult and Community Education in England.”
In fact, those are some of the few places where you can’t teach with just a CELTA. All over the rest of the world, the CELTA is much more accepted than anything by TEFL International. For example, find me a single job ad that asks for teachers with “TEFL International Certificate (or equivalent)”.
“Trinity…The course runs up to a year and is recognized mainly in former Commonwealth countries. Trinity certificates are not considered valid in many countries outside of the United Kingdom and the European Union.”
Ditto for Trinity. Not sure how they made any connection between Trinity and the “former Commonwealth” [sic], let alone the confusion between the EU and the Commonwealth…
They also describe job searches for TEFLers as a wild goose chase. More like shooting fish in a barrel, I would say.
This being TEFL International, there is also plenty of information which is out of date and/ or contradicted by their other sites. Having worked with them for a long time, Dave Hopkins will not be surprised that his name is still being used to give credibility to TEFL International after he has already left. Luckily, there is his LinkedIn page to tell us that he is now “Senior English Language Fellow at US Educational Foundation”. Then there are the two different pages on that (in)famous “Board” with two totally different lists of board members.
And finally, no dodgy TEFL course site would be complete with bits where they let an SEO “expert” who doesn’t speak much English loose on a page or two and then not bother asking anyone check it:
“Courses English may not be a proper way of saying a phrase and neither is course English however as you refresh your skills, studyand paractice the natural forms of the English language will unfold into a beautiful tapestry of flowing language that you are ‘hard wired’ from birth for.”
Of course, a company that can’t be bothered updating and proofreading its website (despite the connection to English teaching), lies about its competitors and is unqualified to offer TEFL courses according to its own criteria doesn’t necessarily provide a bad educational experience. I wonder what you’d think of a university which those things were true for though…
TEFLtastic 
Thanks for the update, Alex.
I remember when they first re-branded that site amidst a sea of very bad PR they were getting. At the time their name was getting a lot of heat and I’m sure sales were slumping, and that’s when it suddenly showed up with a new name. Looking at it again makes me laugh and ask “Is that TEFLlife or TEFLlies.com ?”– they both sound the same if you say them really quickly!
I couldn’t steel myself to go through and revisit their entire website in detail , so I decided to just take a quick peak at their homepage . And sure enough, it didn’t take long before it made me cringe. For example, here’s something that I believe is a big whopper of a lie:
“Every single course is critiqued by recognized, certified, TESOL authorities in the educational field on a regular basis. These moderators are not affiliated with TEFL International; their input is completely independent and unbiased. We post it on our website”
Remember way back when that guy, Wayne Duplessis from TEFL International in Indonesia posted a comment (https://tefltastic.wordpress.com/teach-abroad/tefl-international/#comment-11640An interview with Bruce Veldhuisen of TEFL International)?
When I Googled his name at the time, it up came in the TEFL International moderation reports page, and lo and behold, there he was listed a moderator for the Indonesia course. So how is it that someone who is a TEFL Manager and a trainer at that site in Indonesia is ‘independent and unbiased’ ?
Then there there’s the example of the TI course that was run by Matt Kay in Chiang Mai . On their site, TI stated that he was the moderator for that course. Being that he doesn’t have any TESOL qualifications and that he was responsible for setting up and operating the Chiang Mai course for TI, how is it that he was a TESOL authority and ‘independent and unbiased’?
In short, it’s complete rubbish.
Someone obviously caught them out on all of this, as the current moderation reports page has one person covering 20 different centers. There’s no way that one person is actually going around and checking up on things.
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I couldn’t believe the blatant lies about the CELTA and Trinity Cert, and more.
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It interesting how they slag off Trinity. On a different TI website based out of the UK, they say this:
“TEFL International began as a Trinity course… until December of 1999 when we became independent. As a result, the course content of the Trinity and TEFL International courses are quite similar.”
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So they appear to be saying that Trinity is a bad course and that they are just like them. And one has to really wonder about that new found ‘independence’. Sometimes such wording is code for ‘asked to leave’ or got kicked out. Most likely, though, it probably just meant that they really didn’t want to pay for some outside type of quality control and have other people scrutinize their courses. I guess we now know why that could be. Anyway, their take on it all is certainly a nutty one.
One final thing I noticed in my 60 second gloss over of their homepage, was their recent expansion of course locations in Thailand. They have more than doubled these this year and it’s a definitely a case of more not being better. All of this is coming via their latest new affiliate, UniTEFL, which got its start by being tossed out a major university for dubious business practices:
https://tefltastic.wordpress.com/tefl/t-training/qualifications/cert/tefl-int/unitefl-thailand/
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I find it humorous that there is such an issue with our “online course”. TEFL International does not offer, nor have we EVER offered, an online TESOL Certificate course.
It would have been great if Alex had shared this with me by Email (he has my personal Email address) months ago. He did not. Nor did he bother to give me the links of where some of this very odd information can be found. It must be on some rarely-visited page as none of us is even aware of its existence.
I have asked a member of staff to search our website and make any necessary corrections. If we find the text we apologize for the inaccuracies and will make changes as soon as possible.
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“Our affordable online courses can be taken at your convenience in the comfort of your own home. Attend our virtual classes from anywhere in the world and participate in live sessions with our trainers via webcam while interacting with your fellow classmates. Becoming certified online is the perfect option for students who plan to teach English virtually.”
From that obscure and difficult to find page known as the main/ first page on tefllife.com
All the other information also came directly through links from easily accessible pages. Some of the pages I mentioned about the UniTEFL site were indeed “orphan pages”, but none of the ones quoted above were. Even if they were, they’d still be easy to find on Google. Heard of “Google” Bruce?
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I was asked to review and change any inaccurate information found on the TEFL International website and to discover how these inaccuracies occurred.
I discovered the texts as mentioned in this blog and made appropriate changes. I will note that these changes could have been made months ago if Mr. Chase has informed us of the inaccuracies at the time they were discovered.
I also discovered the author of these inaccuracies. Our former SEO expert apparently added text to these pages to increase keyword rankings. These changes were made without approval. We are sorry for these errors and will certainly endeavor not to allow these errors to reoccur.
I am compelled but choose not to respond to the rest of Mr. Case’s posts. He deserves no response. I post here only because I was asked to report my findings and offer an apology by my employer.
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Duly noted. More detailed response coming, but have to plan my lessons now so probably this evening. In the meantime, would you care to tell us when these “SEO changes” were made?
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I have some problems with this account, but even assuming it is true it hardly shows this organisation in a good light.
– They employed an SEO expert with limited English (because of course there is a shortage of English speaking ex-IT guys in Thailand) and in other ways incompetent
– He or she changed the site at least a year (or two??) ago, and no one bothered to check.
– Since that time, while the head trainer has left and other major changes have happened, no one has updated the site or checked it.
– When a blogger mentions them, they fail to notice because they don’t even have an RSS feeder, Twitter tag finder or Google alert to check for such things
– When the blogger does point that out to their CEO while he is insulting said blogger on another thread, he is blamed for the lies being there. That despite the fact that inaccuracies on the websites were pointed out in general terms when Bruce was first interviewed here years ago.
– Bruce then claims not to be able to find direct quotes from his own site, despite me managing to do so with the first Google search I try. He also expresses doubt whether those things are even there, as if anyone would make such things up, and is if his websites are famous for being accurate and regularly updated
– The webmaster then corrects those mistakes, presumably meaning he or she didn’t bother checking any other parts of the site either (pointed out by his or her surprise at what the website says about online courses), nor checking any of the many many other sites and pages on agents’s sites that they have. Instead, he joins in the criticism and childish insults for the blogger who managed to find the information that they apparently could not.
– All apologies sandwiched with blame for others, and no apology for basically claiming that I’d made these things up
It’s a familiar TEFL International story, unfortunately.
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Post updated to mention the changes.
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In case it isn’t clear from my comments above, I’m not claiming that they have a purely online course without knowing about it or while claiming that they don’t. However, that quote in my comment above and the fact that I spent all that time on the website and came away without having any idea that it was a blended course suggests that there is yet another problem with the website. I haven’t had time to go back to the website to check whether they have thoroughly polished it up or only changed the few bits I pointed out as the comments from Admin would suggest. I’ll give them a decent amount of time to sort out TEFLlife and their other websites, and then do another piece on them.
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The bottomline for Americans with all of that is, that it is next to impossible to work leagally in Italy with an American passport. And even if one could, British English and the CELTA are much preferred, so your CV would go straight to the bottom of the stack.
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Very funny, the way they’ve left Thailand in and how many “Coming Soon” sections there are. Starting with a page you have is a sensible way of working on pages for other countries, but publishing it at this stage is a good sign of the complete lack of standards of professionalism in this organisation.
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Forgot to give a link when I did eventually check how much they’d improved the site:
https://tefltastic.wordpress.com/tefl/t-training/qualifications/cert/tefl-int/www-tefllife-com/
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Yeah, I can appreciate them using an existing page to make sure the design’s consistent; but as you say, just publishing the incomplete pages is unprofessional.
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