I lost more sleep trying to pick a course for ESL teaching wannabes than I did deciding to replant myself in China in the first place. The options seem endless — in person, online or a combination of the two, 40 hours for a certificate or 60 hours or 120 or 250, work at your own pace or join a group class, pay $250 or $2,500, with or without actual teaching practice, take a seminar closest to home or study in Prague.
Sheesh. TEFL Course Review has a site with links to about 60 better-known institutions that offer training for teachers, as well as reviews by students. TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Other acronyms that mean basically the same thing: TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). TEFL.net also provides some decent information.
Many overseas schools require some form of TEFL or TESOL certification with a minimum number of hours. Mine did not. (Even those schools in China willing to hire someone without a certificate generally consider only native English speakers with a college degree.)
The first two organizations on the TEFL Course Review site give you an idea of how varied they can be. ONTESOL offers a 100-hour, online course with a tutor for $265. Teaching House New York is a CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults) training center in downtown Manhattan, with all course instructors approved by Cambridge University in England. The CELTA is sort of the Mercedes of TESOL certificates. It’s $2,495 for a four-week course, not counting accommodations and the $200 enrollment fee, assuming you get in.
I needed something a little more modest, flexible and that I could finish before leaving — just so I don’t walk into that first class cold. After 30-plus years of writing and copy editing, I’m confident I know my way around the English language well enough, but it’s like giving directions. I know how to get there. I can’t necessarily tell you how I did it.
Finally, I decided on a 100-hour TEFL “diploma” course from TEFLOnline.com, which is affiliated with BridgeTEFL. It’s reasonable ($329); the syllabus sounds useful; and they accommodated my request for a specific tutor who is from Shanghai. I figure if I’m going to have a tutor, better to work with one who’s been there.
Will let you know how it goes.
The China Rog-ect 