How to get TEFL Certification
If you are planning to teach English abroad, a Teach English as a Foreign Language certification is highly likely to work wonders on your resume. TEFL creates thousands of work, live and travel opportunities for English speakers all over the world. Even if it is not a requirement, TEFL helps you land high paying jobs at prestigious schools, colleges and universities. In this article, we will go through all the necessary and important steps involved in choosing and receiving your TEFL certification.
Depending on the time and money you are willing to put into this endeavour, you have to options to choose from: an online course or an on-site course.
Courses and credit hours:
There are several online courses to accommodate your needs and provide you all the required course material, training, teaching methods and theories. However, since an online course is mostly a do it yourself approach, so it lacks a practicum component which is giving a high regard when you present your certification in your resume or job application. Unlike on-site courses, online courses do not equip you with all the practical skills and get feedback to initiate improvement and learning from an experienced instructor.
Practicum is extremely important for beginners, as this is their chance to learn how to interact with their students and gauge their interests from an experienced teacher. However, which course you prefer will primarily depend on the number of hours you want to invest, your financial capacity, your motives and future prospects.
The cost of a TEFL course and the course length for online courses varies from 20 to 120+ hours. If you are a beginner, 20 hours is likely to suit all your needs, however, if you are aiming to secure a higher pay scale and a reputable position at a good institution, we recommend you choose at least 120+ hours, with 100 hours of instruction and 20 hours of practicum.
If you are looking for an affordable and simple course where you can maintain flexible hours at your own convenience. However, most individuals require individual attention are not independent enough to learn something without practical guidance.
This is where on-site courses step in, to provide an extensive, interactive and practical training and learning experience that not only equips you to become a competent English teacher, but also, helps you in building connections, job networking and plenty of practicum to make you highly capable of handling all classroom situations and giving your best to your students. It is best to get certified in the country you wish to teach in, as most countries in Europe do not recognise online TEFL certifications.
The course length ranges from 20-hour weekend programs, 4 weeks full-time programs, to 6-7 months of extensive training.
TEFL Certification Cost and expenses:
If you are choosing the standard accredited TEFL course which stretches up to nearly 4 weeks, your tuition costs all over the world will vary from $1,500 – $ 2,500. On-site courses are not cheap, however, if you are looking for a good deal or a cheap course, and you come across an ad that requires you to less than half the real amount, does not provide an qualified instructor and no job placement assistance, you need to ask yourself, how will this course really benefit you?
A TEFL certification is truly an investment, the more time and money you are willing to invest, the greater your returns will be in terms of your job opportunities.
If money is a serious concern for you, then you should choose an online which tend to less expensive, however, quality online courses are not overly cheap. For instance, University of Toronto offers TEFL 120 hour course at $ 1,295, while CIEE offers TEFL 150 hour course at $ 1,000 USD.
Prices and costs will vary based on which country you give the test and which board you select for you the best TEFL certification.