15 easy ways to spot a TEFL course to avoid

Posted on 19/01/2011 by alexcase

… is my new article for TEFL.net, although I’ve gone for this less catchy but more serious-sounding official title:

15 reasons to avoid a TEFL course – LINK FIXED

Many thanks to TEFLista, whose dedication to fighting the dodgier side of TEFL courses inspired me to write that article. Google “Teflista” or “TEFL Course Rip Off” to see TEFLista’s great pieces on the topic. And if anyone else wants to join in with fighting the good fight, guest pieces always wanted here on TEFLtastic and in TEFL.net articles.

There’s also this great new piece on UsingEnglish on the topic:

Some qualifications are more equal than others

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4 Responses to 15 easy ways to spot a TEFL course to avoid

  1. TEFL Jobs London's avatar TEFL Jobs London says:
    19/01/2011 at 12:37

    Good article. It’s particularly relevant in the UK where schools are accredited by the British Council which stipulates that teachers must have a CELTA or Trinity TESOL qualification. Those spending money on online courses hoping to get EFL teaching jobs in the UK are just wasting their time.

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  2. TEFLista's avatar TEFLista says:
    19/01/2011 at 18:30

    Well done, Alex. Getting all of that into one concise article isn’t an easy thing to do.

    The ‘Some qualifications are more equal than others’ piece is very interesting, too. It’s very clear that the CELTA is often the preferred qualification and it’s great to see some statistics that back that up.

    One thing that I noticed in that piece, was that it said that TEFL International is ‘the largest training organisation.’ While they would certainly like for people to think that, I believe that the actual words they use are ” the largest course provider”, meaning that they offer the most amount of courses (and who knows how many people actually take them?). I think that there is a distinction to be made there, because many of their courses are, in fact, online courses that many employers won’t accept. If you visit their website, they state this:

    “Choose from more than 320 courses available in 24 countries”

    And if you visit the CELTA website:

    “available at over 286 approved centres in 54 countries, providing almost 900 CELTA courses every year.”

    TEFL International currently has 30 centers and not all of them are active. In terms of face-to-face courses, most of their centers advertise 11 courses per year. In order to be bigger than the CELTA, they would have to offer more than 30 courses per year each, so the math just doesn’t add up.

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  3. Tdol's avatar Tdol says:
    20/01/2011 at 13:33

    TEFLista, thanks for pointing that out; I have changed it to “says it is the largest TESOL course provider”.

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  4. TEFLista's avatar TEFLista says:
    20/01/2011 at 14:43

    You’re welcome and thanks for your piece — it’s a very good one. The above is yet another example of TEFL International using a bit of ‘slippery language’ on their website. There seems to be no end…

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