Very little. If they knew enough to judge a TEFL course, they wouldn’t need to take it, would they? And just like our students, they are much more likely to remember and complain about non-teaching-related things like the accommodation, airport pick-up, air conditioning and queue for the photocopier than they are about the accuracy of the grammar explanations that they are given, let alone the actual effectiveness of the techniques that they learn. A centre getting all of those little things wrong is often a bad sign, but getting all of them right shows us nothing about how well they are training people to teach. If a bunch of 23 year olds with no teaching experience (and often little experience of studying languages) were the best people to judge TEFL courses, we wouldn’t need accreditation, would we?
So, what can you judge about the many TEFL course providers who stress their trainee feedback above all else?
I’ll let you all be the judge of that yourselves…
TEFLtastic 
That’s very true, Alex. And if anything, it often gives course providers a sense of looking much better than they actually are, which is why they use it in the first place.
What many don’t realize, is that quite often the trainees practically have a shot gun held to them while they are completing these surveys. Some are REQUIRED to complete such things or they won’t get their certificates, so who would dare say something bad? And if they need a letter of recommendation from the course provider afterwards, then what would you expect them to say? It’s often very misleading.
And look at the way we’ve caught course providers telling lies all over their websites. And they are really going to tell the truth on those? There’s no way.
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Actually, I think it is just a distraction speculating on the truth of such feedback. The point to stress is that it is often the worst course providers who spend the most time going on about their trainee feedback, perhaps thinking that it helps distract from the lack of accreditation, recognition, etc.
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A very good point, Alex, and you’re absolutely right.
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