Which TEFL course do I need to teach English in China or Taiwan?

[Beelzebro]

Hi,

 

I see that there are many different TEFL courses ranging from 50 hours online material to 140 hours combined classroom teaching. Many job adverts I see have "TEFL licence required" or similar. I'm just wondering which TEFL course they are referring to? Is there a standard minimum requirement or do they not care, can I just do the minimum 50 hour one and be ok? 

 

Thanks in advance.

[ChTTay]

When they refer to hours they’re usually making reference to how long the course takes. More specifically, some (better) employers stipulate this is also contact hours with course providers in person. 

 

Way back when I did a “120 hour” course that was all online apart from one weekend. The certificate simply said “120 hours” on it. 

 

Lots of schools won’t care what the course is or where. They just need the certificate in order to get you the visa. Some better schools obviously do care which course provider ran the course, if it was online or in person, etc.

 

Also, from a personal point of view, if you just plan on teaching for a year or as part of “travel” then maybe you wouldn’t want to invest that much.  

 

If you do feel like doing it for it for a while or becoming a teacher then do a CELTA. 

[roddy]

A Cambridge Celta or Trinity Tesol won’t be essential for China (and tell me if I’m wrong here, ChTTay) but it has the advantages of being globally recognized if you want to move on, opens up better jobs or (if you negotiate right) higher pay, and makes your teaching a lot more effective and therefore rewarding. 

[ChTTay]

Yeah a lot of places still just want the piece of paper to get the visa. You can go to Jonny TEFl school online for 12 hours, they then add a zero to the certificate and no one will care or check.

 

You can work somewhere a bit better (perhaps!) if you’ve got a CELTA but it’s not a necessary prerequisite here. 

 

It really depens what you personally want out of it. The general TEFL course just for the paper is worth about as much as a piece of paper. It just lets you jump that hurdle with regard to the visa. 

 

And yes, that’s why I mention the CELTA if you’re looking for a career. Even if you don’t want to be an English teacher, but you do want to be a teacher, then it will be useful. This is both in practice and on your CV when applying for international school jobs or jobs at home where they have multiple languages in classrooms. 

[tefl online pro]

You can really take any TEFL certificate course program as the main requirement for teaching English in China is to have a college degree (in any subject).

[matteo]

Has any of you guys got a TEFL while in China, such as one of those advertised here for example https://www.goabroad.com/articles/tefl-courses/best-tefl-courses-china.

 

Do you know if price wise, and/or quality wise is a good idea?

It sounds like an attractive option for someone planning to be there mainly for study who then decides to stay and teach...

 

[DavyJonesLocker]

Also worth noting that you must be a native English speaker if you legally want to teach in China. 

[matteo]

Does having a passport from an English speaking country qualify one as a native speaker - in the eyes of the chines law at least ?

[ChTTay]

On 1/23/2020 at 9:21 AM, matteo said:

Do you know if price wise, and/or quality wise is a good idea?

Refer to my above comment. 
 

If you’re going to study (study visa) and teach on the side then just get any TEFL certificate. If you’re going to work as a teacher (work visa) but don’t actually care or want to be a teacher then just get any TEFl cert. They don’t care and it doesn’t matter. An online one before you could would be fine. Likely the only benefit of doing an in person one in China is they’ll be able to give you a bunch of games and some basic ideas. If you work at a half decent school with an induction they’d likely give you this for free anyway. 

If you’re not a native speaker with 2 years of any work experience then forget it. The only work you’d get would be illegal and they care even less about TEFL certs (even if they pretend to when talking about salary). 

[matteo]

Well, the focus of my question was more on the difference in quality, cost and availability of a TEFL course in China versus a TEFL course outside of China.

 

It's not all black and white so I'm sure there are lots of people out there than would like to give a good try to a teaching career without having a previous chance at doing it seriously. 

China is a good place to do that because it has more demand and less requirement than most other places, and that doesn't necessarily mean that paople necessarily don't care or do it as a last desperate resort. 

 

And, from the job offers I can see online it looks like the most important discriminant is having a passport from an English-speaking country rather than actually being a native speaker, hence my question. 

 

[ChTTay]

4 hours ago, matteo said:

Well, the focus of my question was more on the difference in quality, cost and availability of a TEFL course in China versus a TEFL course outside of China.

The best course you can do is a CELTA. It’s the most expensive and most useful for teaching English. Second to that the most useful course would be one in person. I’ve seen in-person 2 week courses advertised before, as an example. These will be useful because you actually get to do some practice - either on your fellow learners or real students. Finally online or blended TEFLs (with a weekend face to face or something) will have the least quality and be the least useful. 
 

It doesn’t really matter where you do the course. It would likely be cheaper in China and potentially be more useful/targeted for working in China. As for quality, a “TEFL” course is a vague term so you can’t really be sure what you’ll get unless you do a real accredited course like a CELTA. A generic TEFl won’t have meaningful accreditation so the best you’d do is find reviews of courses online or speak to ex-students.

 

4 hours ago, matteo said:

It's not all black and white so I'm sure there are lots of people out there than would like to give a good try to a teaching career without having a previous chance at doing it seriously.

Yes, I did the same. I did an online TEFL a lifetime ago. It was pretty worthless and didn’t really help with my teaching when I started either. I worked at Aston English, they’re still going and it was easy looking back. They had some kind of deal with a built in 2 week TEFL at the start of contracts at some point.

 

Finally... it’s all about the passport.