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cmk317
Joined: 11 Jun 2009
Posts: 2
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 Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:58 am Post subject: Online TEFL |
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| I want to teach in SE Asia - I'm looking into either Thailand or Indonesia currently. I have a BS but am now trying to figure out if I should take the time to do a TEFL/TESOL/CELTA and if I did do a TEFL if an online course would suffice .. I don't want to invest a ton of money in this as I only plan on doing this for a year. Any tips would be great! Thanks!! |
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Chancellor
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 1337
Location: Ji'an, China - if you're willing to send me cigars, I accept donations :)
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| Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 5:07 pm Post subject: Re: Online TEFL |
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| cmk317 wrote: |
| I want to teach in SE Asia - I'm looking into either Thailand or Indonesia currently. I have a BS but am now trying to figure out if I should take the time to do a TEFL/TESOL/CELTA and if I did do a TEFL if an online course would suffice .. I don't want to invest a ton of money in this as I only plan on doing this for a year. Any tips would be great! Thanks!! |
If you want to be taken seriously by most employers, the only online TEFL courses that might suffice are those that are at least 100-120 course hours and include at least six hours of supervised on-site teaching practice with real ESL/EFL students (not fellow prospective teachers like i-to-i does).
If you can take four weeks out of your life to go do a course entirely on-site, that would be the best way to go. If your work schedule or whatever doesn't allow for that then consider something like this: www.ontesol.ca and plan to take a two-week vacation to go do the teaching practicum in Toronto after completing the 250 hours of coursework online.
If you want to go the cheap route, you can take a substandard online course through an organization like i-to-i (http://www.onlinetefl.com/) but the available jobs for people with such certification will be few and far between and won't pay very much.
If you insist that you only want to do TEFL for a year, keep in mind that most TEFL jobs require you to commit to at least a one-year contract. I'm inclined to think that you should consider trying a short volunteer opportunity first to see if TEFL is something you really want to commit a year of your life to.
It amazes me that there are still people who seem to think that teaching English to people who speak other languages is still just some fly-by-night thing to try out before going on to getting a real job. |
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GambateBingBangBOOM
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 2021
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 9:24 am Post subject: Re: Online TEFL |
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| Chancellor wrote: |
It amazes me that there are still people who seem to think that teaching English to people who speak other languages is still just some fly-by-night thing to try out before going on to getting a real job. |
I consider myself a career English language teacher, but I can understand where people get the idea. University career centre/ guidance offices **TELL** soon to graduate undergrads that that's what it is. Newspaper articles (at least in Canada say the same thing). People read about becoming TESOL certified at the Y over the weekend and teaching all over the world 'job guaranteed'. These people see conversation schools in Asia that accept pretty much anybody with a degree, blond hair and blue eyes to 'teach' their courses. In regular high schools (junior and senior), English education, or more specifically the time in which a native English speaker shows up to the class, is about happy-fun-time, not learning (you can't blame the regular local teachers. They know that the ALT usually has no training). The fact that in many countries students cannot fail regardless of how little they work and how little they progress makes it seem like a joke (made worse when the class with the foreigner doesn't count for grades at all), but people forget that it isn't just their English class that is like that, it's ALL of their classes that are like that (which means that not having grades for classes with foreigners doesn't matter all that much- the grades don't actually mean anything). |
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