How Important Is A Tefl Deploma?

[maccaroni man]

in 1996 when i arrived in s.e. asia many of the long term travelers i met suggested that if i was ever low on cash go to bkk and get a teaching job. even though at age 40 i had a positve history in business, i also had a sister with a masters degree in english and i knew i was nothing close to being the student she was so i found the teaching option an odd choice but everyone said: "hey you are a native speaker and thats all they need, they already understand grammer from the thai teachers and probably know it better than most native speakers so just go up there and teach them how to communicate." So i did and quite frankly i did a pretty good job of finding private students and i managed to earn more than 50k a month, granted i did focus on getting work and would go where ever i could to get paid which meant a lot of travel time i.e. leave my house at 6 to return at 21:00 sometimes with only 3 hrs of teaching.

around this time i noticed several of the schools began offering tefl courses so when i would join up with other teachers we would have round tables about this and for the most part, one teacher who had been teaching for more than 15 years wrote it off as just another way for the language schools to make money much like paddy did in the dive industry. He spoke of times when people could go to a dive shop take a small physical and get in the water and he believed that the paddy system was just a tool to allow the dive shops to make money. He also made the final call that at the end of the day the only thing that will make a good teacher better is experience and that a real english teacher would have taken the time to get at min. university degree with a post graduate degree to teach because those would be the only qualifications that would get you into an international school.

Well if we roll the clock forward to 2009 we see tefl as some sort of standard to reach before being able to teach but i question does a tefl degree really make a teacher out of someone who has never taught before? or is it like paddy just an other way for schools to make money?

[Loaded]

It's not a degree, but it is vocational skills training.

You should obtain a TEFL/TESOL certificate and gain some experience before thinking of obtaining a Diploma in TEFL/TESOL.

[cdnvic]

Learning to spell "Diploma" should be a prerequisite.

[PeaceBlondie]

A 4-week TEFL course won't cure you of interminably long run-on sentences. It might, however, teach a few things about punctuation. I think Paddy is Irish for Patrick. I live in the little house on the rice paddy; my friend has a Ph.D. from Rice University... .

[jasreeve17]

Mr Macca was having a laugh wasn't he - Shirley?

Training skills are always welcome. TEFL / TESOL certificate is probably of basic / limited use, whereas CELTA / DELTA would be tougher to gain, but well worth the effort in respect to skills learnt and job options.

[Loaded]

Mr Macca was having a laugh wasn't he - Shirley?

Training skills are always welcome. TEFL / TESOL certificate is probably of basic / limited use, whereas CELTA / DELTA would be tougher to gain, but well worth the effort in respect to skills learnt and job options.

From The British Council's website:

Cambridge

CELTA

Whom and where you could teach

Adults in private language schools or colleges in the UK or abroad. In some state colleges in the UK or abroad

Source: http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-inf...sh-teaching.pdf

page 2

Most work in Thailand is teaching children at formal schools.

Edited August 17, 2009 by Loaded

[jasreeve17]

In my humble opinion: a TESOL / TEFL certificate is a pretty short introductory course for teachers that haven't taught before: the CELTA and especially the DELTA teach further skills that any Thai establishment would be very impressed with.

If you wanted to teach elsewhere, for example a Japanese Uni (I'd like to...) or in Taiwan (I'd like to go there too...) a DELTA would be very beneficial (I've often seen it written as a requirement).

Also, from your quote the CELTA enables teaching at private language schools and colleges in the UK and some places abroad (I suggest that Thailand is one of those places - though with the application of rules here???) - this is a huuuuuge are of business in Thailand; half of the foreigners in Bangkok seem to make their living solely in this area.

But, I work in the universities where CELTA's & DELTA's may be more applicable - the skills learnt could never hurt wherever you teach.

If you solely want to teach kids in Thailand for the rest of your life then; yes, a TESOL / TEFL will tick the box without developing your teaching skills too far...

[PeaceBlondie]

Please, no CELTA-TEFL course wars here. DELTA is in a class of its own. My friend (CELTA and DELTA, 20 years) discovered that Thai schools didn't know CELTA from a paddy license.

From sub-forum guidelines: "7. You may discuss and ask questions about TEFL courses and course providers, but TEFL course comparison threads are considered flamebait and will be closely watched and probably closed.

8. Topics on the question of degrees/no degrees for teaching English or other subjects are currently restricted as they have been over-discussed and Thai government policy is not currently clear."

[Scott]

It may not help you a lot, but it will definitely not hurt you. It doesn't carry much weight at our school, but as far as I am concerned, people with the qualification can at least be turned loose in the classroom without being constantly watched. It also shows some committment to teaching--something that some applicants don't have.

[Ijustwannateach]

As this thread invites acrimony and is almost certainly a troll, and violates several teacher's forum guidelines including those against trolling, those against TEFL-flame-war-inciting, and those against suspiciously-incompetent-spelling-errors-in-posting, I am closing it.