Job Discussion Forums

[koreatom]

http://tefl.londonschoolbus.com/application.html

I do kind of hate being rejected from schools because I don't have TEFL. Anyone who wants to pay can get in less than a month, and I have two years of experience teaching English. I'm also an English major with good (and published) writing creds.

I'm currently in Korea and am thinking of moving to Prague or Budapest in the fall. My question is: will this TEFL certificate be accepted by schools who demand TEFL certification? It seems pretty legit, and I qualify for it... I'm hoping schools just want to see a certificate with fancy writing on it. But I'm not sure how to answer if they ask me to describe my TEFL certification process/experience... like 'um, I paid a hundred dollars and got certified.' There obviously isn't a certain amount of course hours or anything.

Anyone know much about this company??

[Chris Westergaard]

Dear Koreatom,



This questions is actually quite easy to answer.

For starters, let's lay down the facts about TEFL.

A TEFL certificate is not a license. You can teach without one. All a TEFL is, is training. That's all. Schools want and will look for people with skills. If you can do a demo correctly and represent yourself well, you'll be fine without one.
If you can't, you wont get hired. It doesn't matter what experience or credentials you have. It's all about how well you can teach. Every good school in the city has an interview process. They'll talk to you about teaching and ask you to usually do at least 1 30 minute demo. If you can do things like

Elicit
have low ttt
error correct effectively
increase stt
have a logical structure
ccq
and know how to effectively teach the 4 skills and 4 systems yada yada yada

I don't think you'll have a problem finding work.

Now, it usually takes people time to get these techniques down. In my experience (i've trained about 350 people) most people without any kind of formal training have problems. Now, if you have the skills, you shouldn't have too much of a problem landing a job.

If you are interested in working in the city, it's wise to get a TEFL, however, I'm not going to try and sell you anything. That's up to you. Remember, what is important is the training you get.

I could literally give you a two hour TEFL cert. there's nothing that says I can't do that. I could print it out and even get it accredited. Would it be worth anything...? Of course not. Get the training.

When I interview people to work at my school, I don't even ask to see their TEFL most of the time. You can tell simply by the way they conduct themselves during the process. Do they understand TEFL methodology? Can they lesson plan? are they creative or boring? CAN THEY TEACH???

Also, just because you have a TEFL doesn't mean you have these abilities. I've met dozens of teachers that took a course and obviously didn't learn very much on it. I think they must have thought that simply having a TEFL was what mattered.

I recently interviewed a guy that had 13 years of TEFL experience and an MA but couldn't teach. I've also met people fresh out of a TEFL course that were some of the best teachers I've ever seen in my life (i've observed about 2000 plus hours of other people teaching)

If I can take a teacher put them in a room and tell them that they've got 25 minutes to plan a 60 minute lesson based on the present perfect, and they have no problem with that - I know that their trained.

As I've said Koreatom, it's about the skills you have.

If you think this course will train you well, then go for it. If you're doing it just for the 'paper' then you're missing the bigger picture.

Like i mentioned earlier, I'm not trying to sell you anything. Just think about what I've said.

P.S. No one is going to hire you from abroad. If you want a job in the city, you're going to have to come over here and hit the pavement.

[Zajko]

This is yet another dubious outfit trying to con you out of money for a 'certificate' that means nothing will be accepted by nobody: it's not a 'course' at all. As a former director of schools in Prague and elsewhere, I can tell you definitively that the possession by any applicant of such a piece of paper as this would never have made the slighest difference to any application - at least not in a positive way, anyway!

Yes, there may be a case in theory for introducing a global, standardised and accepted system of TEFL certification which is universally known and recognised, but right now, it doesn't exist and this sure isn't it. It's a couple of enterprising people with an idea and a bit of technical knowledge who've put together a decent-looking website and are trying to make money out of what they see as a gap in the market. There's only one way to get a legitimate TEFL certificate, and that's by taking a course somewhere. If you've got experience and teaching references but no certification, be honest about that and in Prague, you may still be OK.

The fact that this company are asking for copies of your other documents, references and work history increases their perceived professionalism and legitimacy from the applicant's (your) point of view - let's face it, if the site just said 'send us USD 100 and we'll put your cert in the post' you wouldn't be likely to be taken in, would you? - but in the highly unlikely event that an employer has even heard of this certificate, their reaction to it is only likely to be as I've outlined above. Don't waste your money.

[Chris Westergaard]

Dear Zajko,


I agree with you 100 percent.

The link doesn't work for me though:(

[Zajko]

Site seems to be down now: was working the other day. They're advertising here on the site, though, on

http://www.eslcafe.com/joblist/index.cgi?read=16659

..but it appears to be your typical misleading ad from another self-accrediting dodgy certificate factory, although operating under a thin veneer of respectability and professionalism. They're using all the standard broad, meaningless phrases to describe themselves, such as a 'global provider of Teacher Training Solutions' (= we post the certificates to anywhere in the world, so long as you pay) and 'a leading think-tank in the field of education' (= no-one's thinking harder right now about how to sell certs than the two guys in our office)...

[merlin]

Yeah, send me $100 and I'll send you an "internationally reecognized" certificate - I'll recognize it no matter what country I'm in - that's international, right? I'll even include a cool looking gold ribbon on it that "guarantees authenticity". Overall cost to me is $5 - so $95 profit isn't that bad, eh?

[spiral78]

Koreatom wrote "...I'm hoping schools just want to see a certificate with fancy writing on it. But I'm not sure how to answer if they ask me to describe my TEFL certification process/experience..."

No. Not in the Czech Rep. There are too many legit training courses based in Prague for school directors to fall for fancy writing without backup substance.

[koreatom]

Interestingly, they rejected my application! Makes me think they might be legitimate after all... they said no to my hundred dollars.

[ecocks]

That is interesting Tom.

And you're right, it does make you wonder what their standards are if you have the degree, 2 years experience and the money on the table.

The TEFL school I went to (which was great) did require an application and a couple of essays BEFORE sending the money as well. At least one person in the class mentioned that he had to do his application two or three times before they accepted him.

[spiral78]

On my training course in Prague, only four out of ten of us passed.

The group was something of an anomaly - lots of the class either just really weren't cut out for it, or weren't that interested and essentialy dropped out in terms of preparation.

The normal fail rate for courses isn't anything like this high - but the point is that Prague courses generally really do try to make sure that the newbies they certify aren't going to be an embarassment to the course providers when they start work in the city, or elsewhere.

This really raises the ante somewhat for newbies in Prague overall.

[andrewB]

These certs are exactly what they say: nothing other than guarantees to employers that the holders have what they claim, i.e. a degree and experience and it helped me get a real teaching job at a university in Berlin. They did check all my references and degrees and it took me 6 months to get it.

Unfortunately, the truth of TEFL certificates is that they are worthless to serious employers (I have a CELTA) and more and more companies offering such guarantees to employers are going to be the norm from now on.

Certificate farms, including Trinity etc, have led to a situation where to all but the tiny language schools, and employers after backpacker teachers, the certs are worth nothing.

All they say to serious employers is that you have no experience, no vocation (otherwise you would have taken a PGCE or done a BEd) and are gullible to boot - having paid a thousand odd dollares for the privillege.

The teacher from Prague who wrote before is obviously one of these career teflists i.e. earning less than 1000USD in some rubbish school because he couldn't get a proper teaching job in the UK or in TEFL accross the world.

If you look into the real world of TEFL and linguistics and International Schools you will see that your six weeks certificate from Trinity or Cambridge are a professional joke - unless you are a backpacker teacher.

Sorry guys, but this is the truth and you all know it. Get yourself a PGCE or serious company like this that can vouch for your experience.

[ecocks]

in fact truly hilarious. At least in the Ukraine market.

Lets see, I know about 3 dozen native speaker teachers and none of them have a PGCE. Several have CELTAs, a couple of Trinity TESOLs, most with the simple 100-120 hour cert programs and, of course, a few who just show up wanting to teach. OJT and financial realities usually seem to weed out about 50-70% of the last group. The only ones who have MA's were teacher trainers in Prague and one here in Kyiv. Most earn in the $1200 to $2000 range and a couple are hitting close to $3000+. That doesn't count any owners or DOS's. None work at International schools but a couple do work in Universities around town. Most are on second careers or in it for an interesting life and new experience. However, I wouldn't consider them backpackers since they seem to enjoy finding places where they can stay for 2 to 3 years before deciding to check out a new area of the world.

Obviously there are some differences in the positions in the ME. Their higher wages lets them set a higher qualifications bar. Certainly most of their positions prefer an MA so that establishes some valdity for that degree. Then again, there are a couple of drawbacks to those positions as well.

So, if you plan on working a few years in TEFL, getting some interesting experience check into the schools there in Prague. If you want to be a teacher trainier, work in the ME, write textbooks or eventually fall back into your home country school system, consider either a bachelors or masters in Education or Applied Linguistics.

[spiral78]

Lots of us with MAs started out with the basic certs, then worked in the 'backpacker' sector for a few years. It's a legitimate step.