TEFL or TESOL certificate courses in London, England, Madrid/Barcelona Spain, Prague, Costa Rica, and even Atlanta, Georgia are very popular. However, the most popular choice by far is doing a certification program online.
Although I have an MA and 5 years classroom teaching experience, I have recently been contemplating whether to do a an online training program or not. I am not ready to spend $1000 or $1500+ flight, housing, and meals to get certified at a TEFL training center in Asia (ie Japan, Thailand, Korea), and I am certainly not going to fly to Europe or the States to do it, but I just might be willing to put down $400 for a basic online TESOL Certificate program.
I have been doing a little research about different online TEFL certificate courses and I found two that seem to be the most popular.
The first one is for www.onlinetefl.com:
It appears to be the same company as i-to-i Travel:
The other online TESOL certificate course I found is called TEFL International
and their banner looks like this:
So, I am going to do a little more research and find out what options are available and how much the various online TEFL/TESOL certificate programs cost.
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"TEFL or TESOL"
Does anyone know if the Asian EFL Journal is still running the free TESOL 120 hour program?
Yes, Mr. I, the www.i-to-i.com/tefl
seems to be a good choice.
As the industry seems to be quite unregulated and many programs are not accredited, it does well to look at quality and reputation and recognition. Of course, those programs established at accredited universities are safe. Those interested may wish to look at some sites I've come across:
www.tesall.com/international
www.dailymall.info
www.personal.leeds.ac.uk
www.tesolmax.com
www.tesol.org
www.heinle.com
www.usingenglish.com
I hope this may prove useful to those interested.
If you're looking at teaching TEFL/TESOL in Canada at any point
If you're looking at teaching TEFL/TESOL in Canada at any point, it might be worth visiting the TESL Ontario and TESL Canada websites - in Ontario you need to meet the TESL Ontario certification requirements to teach in the private academies and many online TEFL/TESOL courses do not meet the minimum requirements. (some other provinces use TESL Canada as their requirement - it's a little bit less work). Both are very specific in the number of hours that must be spent studying in particular subject areas, and the TESL Ontario certification requires a number of practicum hours as well.
ONTESOL (www.ontesol.ca)
ONTESOL (www.ontesol.ca) meets the TESL Canada requirements. It's a 250-hour course in addition to 10 hours each of teacher observation (you observe other teachers) and teaching practice with real ESL students (you are supervised teaching real students).
Chancellor Carlyle Roberts, II
(Yes, Chancellor is my first name; you may call me Chan).
i-to-i
The only problem I see with i-to-i is that it doesn't offer at least six hours of real teaching practice with real students. It offers an onsite practice but it's with a class of fellow i-to-i students.
The basic i-to-i course is 40 hours. There are additional modules ranging from a 20-hour grammar specialist course to various 5-hour modules. Taking all of the courses, including the onsite weekend, still gets you only 100 hours of training. This is less than the 120 hours that appear to be the industry standard (120 hours that includes at least six hours of practice teaching with real students).
Chancellor Carlyle Roberts, II
(Yes, Chancellor is my first name; you may call me Chan).
He
Did you find the i-to-i tefl course helpful?
Yes. Since I haven't seen
Yes. Since I haven't seen the content of other courses I can't make a comparison but i-to-i provided at least a basic understanding of TEFL.
Chancellor Carlyle Roberts, II
(Yes, Chancellor is my first name; you may call me Chan).