The Guardian are back to their worst TEFL advertorial tricks, only now the TEFL section has disappeared it’s moved to careers. This time possibly tops them all, with their usual advertorial writer from TEFL England (spin off from tacky marketing gurus TEFL Scotland) writing an advertorial for less than universally respected company Interac in Japan that suggests you can help the country recover from the earthquake by lining the pockets of this recruiter.

Also in Japan, a new meaning of “120 hour TEFL course” that I hadn’t come across before – you attend for just one week, do no teaching practice and then spend the rest of those hours writing an essay. Hmmmm.

Another competition for people who want to break into ELT publishing, this time from CUP and ESU. Why have publishers suddenly switched to this way of finding new writers??

TEFL International have teamed up with Disney English in China to offer free courses to some teachers before they go out. As long as you can stand having the “Disney look” and feeding the children Disney characters all day, from what I’ve read working for Disney English is no worse than most other beginning teaching jobs in China, and probably better than some other big companies like EF. If you do decide to go for it, having a bit of training can’t hurt. However, if you fail to make it to the end of the 12 to 15 month working contract I assume you will have to pay back the cost of the training, flights, etc, so make sure you know how much that will be and that you have that much in the bank or can get someone else to pay it so that you don’t feel (or actually become) trapped.

Anyone else got any news?