Job Discussion Forums

Gtomas · Joined: 03 Jun 2010 Posts: 100

If I do an online TEFL course (and considering my two-years plus teaching teaching EFL in China) do you think that would satisfy most employers who "require a TEFL certification"?

Or do they look specifically for TEFLs which weren't done online?

7969 · Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 5782 Location: Coastal Guangdong

I'd say most schools probably can't tell the difference from one to the next. They don't often verify degrees with the schools that granted them so the chance they care about where you got your TEFL cert from are even less.

Gtomas · Joined: 03 Jun 2010 Posts: 100

So now it's just a question of which online course to choose.

I was offered the job I wanted, but they want me in the city-to-be earlier than my current contract allows. Sorry to them, but it's a no-go if they want me to break what I promised to. I guess I still have some habits from America.

If the online TEFL will teach me nothing (as others have said) than it becomes an issue of how much it will cost and how much time it will take.

max81 · Joined: 26 Sep 2010 Posts: 59

darkcity · Joined: 23 Dec 2008 Posts: 54

A bit late with my 2 cents, but whenever CELTA comes up, I have to chime in.

Notice that the people who say "the CELTA is overrated" are people who haven't actually done it.

People who have done it will say that it's worth every penny (perhaps they are justifying the $3k they spent on it?)

As someone else said, you can have years and years or teaching experience, but you might still have a lot of bad habits that you're not aware of, or things you're not doing but should be doing.

The techniques taught in the CELTA are similar or the same as what you might be exposed to in a lower tier TEFL course, like concept checking, eliciting, etc. But contrary to what someone else said here, you cannot learn all of that in one day, not effectively anyway. And you don't get to practice it in front of experienced ESL teachers and your peers who mentor you throughout the process.

Another guy said that the CELTA techniques don't work on inactive Chinese students. Not true. More often than not, my students are eager to shout out answers and role play with partners.

With that said, students know nothing about ESL certificates, and other than my boss, I am the only one in my teaching staff with a CELTA. Does that make me the best? Of course not. But what I've learned arms me with a confidence and knowledge of practice that the other teachers might not have.

As one other guy in this thread said succinctly, if you're serious about your teaching methods, you can't beat the CELTA. If you just want to jump through hoops to get a job, online cert is fine. Hell, you could probably just arrive in China and find a place that prints fake certificates and save yourself the 100 hours.

Baozi man · Joined: 06 Sep 2011 Posts: 214

"Another guy said that the CELTA techniques don't work on inactive Chinese students. Not true. More often than not, my students are eager to shout out answers and role play with partners."

While your students may be happy to shout out the answers, it's difficult for students who are asleep or involved in electronic games or music to "shout out" the answers.

Just how much of CELTA can work in a high school classroom with 70 students or more, when many of them are busy studying math, requires little discussion. Why should they be motivated, when Oral English actually interferes with their ability to do well on their college placement exam? It takes up time during which they could be studying a subject upon which they are tested.

There are some environments in which CELTA might work. Many of those environments, high end training schools, for example, already have lesson plans which they want followed.

I've been through CELTA training. I reassert that the stuff which would be useful in a typical Chinese setting could be learned in a much shorter time, perhaps 3 days. It may be that I just didn't learn the material well enough to use it effectively.

Some sort of a certification is useful. The certificate I received has been valuable in job placement. CELTA wasn't an issue. English teaching certification was.

I consider translation exercises the most useful all around technique. All you need is an exercise book with Chinese dialogues and English translations. The students learn grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary in a single exercise which interests them.

It may not be the best technique but it is one that has worked well for me.

darkcity · Joined: 23 Dec 2008 Posts: 54

I don't have experience teaching in a uni or high school, but I've heard about the lack of motivation from students there, so I can imagine how eliciting would be a fruitless endeavour.

At a private language institute, however, where students are paying through the nose, they are generally eager beavers if you coax them right.

Either way, good luck OP.