Job Discussion Forums

sisyphus · Joined: 20 Sep 2009 Posts: 170

Just a question to ask which qualification would be the best if I was looking at the middle east for employment. ?Delta or Trinity Diploma or are they both equally recognised ?

Ta...

veiledsentiments · Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 17644 Location: USA

CELTA is common. DELTA not so much, but would open doors at some jobs. For the best jobs (read higher pay) the best is an MA in Applied Linguistics. (ignoring the whole debate on which is better teacher prep)

The Middle East is very academic credentials oriented at university level. In the schools (K-12) the best jobs want to see teacher certification from your home country.

VS

sisyphus · Joined: 20 Sep 2009 Posts: 170

Thanks. I would really like to do an MA (I note you say in Applied Linguistics rather than Tesol ?) . I was planning to do the Trinity Diploma and then the MA Tesol at Sheffield perhaps. What I cant get a clear view on is if the Trinity Diploma or Delta is the same or one is preferred to other etc...ie I dont want to do a qual which some countries wont accept.
Also could you possibly just go straight to an MA tesol? Or would that be too ambitious? Apologies for the questions im getting too bogged down in all of this .

Pikgitina · Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Posts: 420 Location: KSA

veiledsentiments · Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 17644 Location: USA

I have no TEFL certs of any kind. I have a BA in Secondary Education from prehistoric times and never used... then went much later when I decided to get out of the office and into the classroom... and got an MA in TEFL.

I... and most employers... consider an Applied Linguistics and an ESL/EFL MA to be about the same.

I think the best prep would be a CELTA plus an MA. That would be good practical training, followed by the piece of academic paper that the employers like to see and which moves up closer to the top of the CV pile. Laughing

VS

Neil McBeath · Joined: 01 Dec 2005 Posts: 277 Location: Saudi Arabia

Sisyphus,

DELTA and Trinity are worth about the same, but Trinity demands a knowledge of phonetics. For some people that is a big point in its favour. Trinity also has the advantage that it never changed its name. DELTA went through the DTEFLA stage, and at one time there were actually competing DTEFLA and DELTA courses being run by the same agency.

The second point here is that a lot of people in the Arab Gulf have had bad experiences with CELTA.

There are two possible causes for this. First, it could honestly be that people are going in for CELTA when they don't knoe enough to qualify as teachers.

The second possibility, however, is that they could be perfectly good teachers for the students as they are in the Arab Gulf, but they are expected to teach in a style that is more suitable for Europeans. In other words, the CELTA assessors have a benchmark that makes no allowances for cultural difference.

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

littleoldlady · Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 286 Location: knitting heaven

I did both Celta and Trinity. The key difference IMHO is that Trinity provides an opportunity to do some diagnostic work i.e. select a student, analyse language difficulties and write a teaching programme to remedy those difficulties. I considered it to be more "academic" is some ways than the CELTA.

There is a greater emphasis on phonetics in the Trinity.