Bits where they don’t quite get it right in bold:
“What is it about the CELTA that makes it so special?
For one, the CELTA was one of the first standardized TEFL courses. The University of Cambridge set the bar in its creation; the format, (a 4-week, M-F course with a 6-1 teacher-student ratio and 6-8 hours of teaching practice), has become the template for other TEFL courses designed by other academic institutions.
Secondly, Cambridge is famously strict about the regulations surrounding who can teach the CELTA. Assessors from the university visit all locations where the classes are held to make sure that the trainers adhere to the curriculum and specifications set forth by Cambridge.
Combine these two things and you’ve got a course that’s recognized and respected by every institute around the world that has anything to do with TEFL.
But does that make it the best? Not necessarily. The better question is, is the CELTA required to find teaching jobs abroad?
The answer, of course, is no. While the CELTA certainly makes your resume stand out in a crowd and gives employers peace of mind knowing that your training was everything they want for their teachers, there are very few English schools around the world that would refuse to hire a teacher who didn’t have a CELTA. Equivalent courses, (those that follow the same 4 week format), are almost always accepted and can be highly-respected themselves if they have professional accreditation. Many employers around the world will accept online certifications and some even hire teachers without any training at all, just because they’re native English speakers. It’s all about where you want to go and how effective a teacher you want to be.
So if you want the most easily-recognized name-brand TEFL certification you can get, the CELTA is absolutely the way to go. But if it’s beyond your reach, don’t fret. There are countless other ways to get certified and get teaching abroad.”
First of all, Cambridge wasn’t even involved when what would later become the CELTA was set up by International House (with the later involvement of RSA) in the format they mention. More importantly, although very few employers will only hire people with the CELTA, most of them will prefer the CELTA (or possibly Trinity or a couple of others on a very short list) to other certs, and with the very best jobs to have in your first year such as International House it will really help put you at the front of the queue. And on the other side of the coin, the schools who will accept an online cert or nothing are exactly the schools you want to avoid.
Basically, they should have been emphasising that you should do your very best to ensure that you get CELTA or another of the very limited list of very well recognised four week TEFL courses (and that doesn’t include the Bridge TEFL iDELT), and if not (though I can’t see any possible reason why not) the best four week TEFL course you can find (which may include the Bridge one, don’t know enough about it to be sure). If you really want to work for a crappy school, then sure go ahead and do an online course so that you have some slight inkling of what to do when they throw you in the classroom with no additional training.
From here:
CELTA – Is it the best TEFL certification course?
Have left that as a comment on the post and will leave any replies from them on here.
Speculations on their reasons for getting it just that much right and wrong coming up soon.
TEFLtastic 
Hello, Alex. Thank you for sharing your expertise. You are right about the original formation of the CELTA, an oversight on our part, and we will edit the blog to make sure it is more accurate for future readers. We appreciate your corrections and feedback. We would like to be clear that Bridge is authorized by Cambridge ESOL to administer the CELTA at our training center in Denver, Colorado, USA and that Cambridge ESOL is currently the external moderator of the course.
We agree about what you have said about the CELTA and do not dispute its international recognition. It is obviously well-respected around the world and many times preferred, along with other high-quality TEFL courses that are similar in format, by many employers worldwide. This is one of the reasons that Bridge offers the CELTA as one TEFL certification option. However, not all of our readers have the time or the means to take the CELTA and we always have this in mind when blogging. It is our belief at Bridge that almost anyone can TEFL if the desire and motivation are present. The opportunities are out there, and we want to encourage everyone, regardless of their financial resources, free time available for a course, location, or age to live that dream of teaching abroad. Online courses are a great choice for many would-be teachers because of their flexibility and lower cost. We would never advocate working for a “crappy” TEFL school, and we are certain that there are many quality schools that hire teachers with online certifications that are legitimate and can be counted on to hold up their end of contracts, pay on-time, etc. In fact, we graduate around 4000 new TEFL teachers a year and they have found work in over 30 countries worldwide, including Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Brazil, and Turkey.
We have observed that online TEFL certification courses, and e-learning courses in general, are becoming more and more popular around the world. We would never dispute the value of on-site training; however, we maintain that online training can provide a great foundation for new teachers as well. The IDELT Online, one of our e-learning TEFL courses, can be taken for 3 graduate-level university credits. Our four-week, onsite TEFL course can be taken for 6 graduate-level university credits. Bridge as an institution is accredited by ACCET, an entity recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, and all of our TEFL programs, including the online ones, have been approved by our accrediting body. We are proud to offer a wide range of options, both onsite and online, for future TEFLers and do our best to ensure that we have training options that can meet everyone’s needs.
Finally, the question posed and answered in the blog (Is CELTA the best TEFL certification course?) is necessarily subjective. While we think the CELTA is an excellent course, (again, which is why Bridge offers it) it is not necessarily the best for everyone. Students have different needs and are looking for different things from their TEFL courses. This blog post was setting out to make that clear and to encourage people to do the course that works for them, rather than get stuck thinking they could never teach abroad because they don’t have the time or resources to get the CELTA. I hope that is something you’ll consider agreeing with us about!
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Hi Scott
Thanks for putting my comment up on your site and for replying in detail here and there.
I’m afraid your answer does reveal a major disagreement, most clearly in this sentence.
“It is our belief at Bridge that almost anyone can TEFL if the desire and motivation are present.”
TEFL is not a verb. The verb is “teach”. So, let’s change that to “It is our belief that almost anyone can teach (our) children” shall we, and see how ridiculous it sounds. It is true that there are jobs for anyone with a white face in some places, but schools that take people’s money (usually a lot of it) to stick them or their children in a classroom with a random native speaker who has never been observed teaching are by definition crappy, whatever their policy on paying on time. The vast majority of schools who have a policy of accepting teachers with just online qualifications also accept teachers with no qualifications at all.
As educators, our job is to improve the standard of education, and that includes pushing the general standards of the industry as well as our own teaching. Therefore the message must always be “If you haven’t been observed teaching before you are first paid to step into the classroom, you can’t do your job properly” (and you should think twice about flying halfway round the world to work if you don’t have 1000 dollars for a four week course) with online training saved for “Well, if we really can’t persuade you, then for goodness sakes at least do some online training first”. University credits don’t change that, because they prove “you can learn something on this course” not “you can become a teacher by doing this course”.
Or to answer your last question, if you don’t have the time and money to do a CELTA or equivalent then you probably shouldn’t attempt to teach abroad. However, you can still get paid for whatever random attempt at teaching you can produce.
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PS Can you think of any other industry in which people would seriously suggest that it is a good thing that people who couldn’t pass the most basic entry requirements (and the CELTA really is the most basic entry requirements, we aren’t talking a PGCE here) can find an easier way to just do the same job anyway?
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If we believe that ‘teaching’ is a merely mechanical process, than I suppose it’s alright to claim that a Celta will make you a teacher. But the truth is that a Celta does little more than prepare people to be an instructor, as the Celta approach to teaching involves little more than just following the right steps. And that ain’t teaching!
It’s a bit like doing a First Aid certificate and claiming you’re a doctor – quite fraudulent really.
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I’ve been considering a TEFL course online and I have to say, yes, I would like some in-class experience teaching English, however I do have some assistant teaching experience, as well as a bachelors degree in theatre and a bachelors degree in communications, AND am just finishing an intensive language program to learn Italian and quite frankly, I am not sure that for the extra $600-$1000 dollars and a month of not being able to work is worth taking a CELTA in person course just to get the 20 hours of classroom time. I don’t think you can really be taught to be a good teacher. The certificate and training gives you the tools that you need but YOU have to be the teacher. No one can truly tell you how to do that.
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You might not be able to teach everyone how to be a great teacher, but you can:
– Make everyone a better teacher
– Have good enough standards that people who can’t teach can’t get your qualification
And on the other side, if you don’t get decent lesson observations at the right point, you can quite happily spend your whole life being a very crap teacher.
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