Job Discussion Forums

[Omeo]

I was wondering if there are any reputable and well recommended TEFL or TESL courses available overseas; preferably ones with job placement. I've looked at a few of the ones on the drop-down list above. Is it safe to assume those are reputable if they're on this site? Thank you.

[Omeo]

I did some looking around and, unless someone has a better idea, I thought I'd go with CELTA since they seem to offer courses around the world. They don't seem to have a central homepage, though. Does anyone know where I can get a list of the fees for the various locations?

[ls650]

My suggestion would be to choose an area of the world you wish to work in, and search for courses there. If you want to teach in Asia, it makes more sense to take a course at a school there than elsewhere.

[Chelsea Cakes]

I myself am also looking for courses abroad and have come across a company called Intesol wich have schools in Barcelona, Prague, Crete and Peru not sure how good a company they are but if anyone has heard of them keep me posted. Your advice is very much needed.

[Guy Courchesne]

[phis]

TBI (The British Institute), Jakarta, (Indonesia) offer the official CELTA course. You can then choose to apply to work in any of their schools in Indonesia. If you are accepted in one of the schools, they will sponsor you for 50% of the course fee.

Whether you decide to work for them, or another school in Indonesia or any other country, is up to you. The CELTA course is recognized worldwide.

Check out their website. They are a very reputable organization.

[Cdaniels]

From the front page of http://www.intesoltesoltraining.com/ :
Please note: Employers requiring TESOL/TEFL Certification will not consider candidates with non-accredited courses that are less than 150 hours in length.

While this might be ideal, I don't think its true. It seems to be a sneaky way of getting potential sutdents to eliminate the better established, more widely recognized CELTA and Trinity Certifications. If its cheaper than CELTA or Trinity it might be worth a try, though.

[CharlesTESOL]

One set of guidelines that would be useful to include when considering a course are those used by the British Council, which I believe are that a course must contain at least 6 hours of supervised teaching practice, must contain at least 100 hours of ELT/TESOL input and must be externally validated by a reputable examination body -- e.g., a recognized examination board or an accredited university.

Good luck,

[London10]

[Omeo]

There's a lotta possibilities to sift through here. Does anyone know how much they tend to cost and where I'd be staying? It looks like they're anywhere from four weeks full-tim to three months to a year part time; it that right? I sorta thought I'd be staying with a host family. Will I have to stay in dorms? What about placement afterward? I'll keep looking. I just wanted to ask if anyone knew so I could save some time. Thanx everybody.

[Aramas]

The fees for a CELTA course vary from around $1000USD in Brazil and parts of Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland) to well over $2000USD in a lot of places. I saw one advertised in Hong Kong a year or two ago for $3600USD. I wasn't aware that crack was so popular in that part of the world.

The average CELTA/Trinity course cost seems to be around $1500USD. Strangely enough, generic courses seem to cost about the same.

Recently a number of schools seem to have raised their fees by several hundred dollars, while most of those who quote their fees in GBP or EUR have not. Funny, that.

[Omeo]

What about job placement? How good do they tend to be at helping you find jobs when your training is complete?

[spiral78]

Omeo, maybe I've missed something, but if you'll tell us where you think you want to go, you'll get more directly useful info.

In terms of job 'placement' a well-established reputable training course will have contacts at language schools, and should be able to help you line up interviews. They may also help you to fine-tune your C.V. But no training course can guarantee that an autonomous language school will hire a particular grad.

It's just like the real world - you have to go to interviews, looking and acting professional, with your credentials in hand. You may be required to teach (or at least present) a sample lesson.

The exception are those very few courses that are attached to language schools; they still hire only successful grads, of course, but they can say that they'll 'guarantee' jobs.

[Cdaniels]

Omeo, Omeo, wherefore art thou Omeo?

"It's just like the real world..." Except it's a surreal world!

[Omeo]

I'm primarily interested in working in Western Europe, Japan, and Brazil, in that order. I'm looking at the Bridge-Linguatec course but I don't see a lot of testimonials on these boards so I'm not sure if it's as good as it sounds or not. Thanx for the replies.