TEFL - Madrid

You'll find a lot of material on TEFL-related things like TEFL courses in Madrid in the following pages.

  

A post from Purvika (Niki) (transferred from Friendconnect):

Steven,

My name is Purvika (Niki) and I am currently researching on teaching English in Madrid. I am taking a Spanish language course (in Leeds, England) at the moment with the intention of moving out to Spain this year at some point to teach. The reason I have considered Madrid is because I need to live in a city where I can meet new people, have lots to do and also become fluent in Castillian Spanish which is what I am learning now. My teacher at the Intituto Cervantes where I take my classes has recommened the Madrid teachers website. I came across your profile and was intrigued by your experiences in teaching. I hope very much that you may be able to help me by answering a few questions I may have, especially as I am at the beginning stages of planning my move to Spain and think it is always useful to get an experienced persons view on the matter. I am 26 years old and want to use this experience in the hope it will allow me to find a new life in Spain. I would really really appreciate if you could stay in touch and be kind enough to provide me with some useful information. It would be great to have some guidance with my planning as at the moment I am feeling a little overwhelmed with all the information that is on the internet.

So far I am planning on doing the CELTA course either at the British Language Centre (BLC) or International House (IH). I am conscious of the fact that a lot of the early Jan-Spring courses are already full. My main concern which I would like your help with is: knowing how hard/easy it is for newly qualified teachers to find work once they have qualified and how long should I reasonably need between completion of the course and the beginning of the September school term to find a job. Should I try to get some work experience in England teaching as I don't have any at the moment? If I don't, would this be detrimental to my job applications in Spain? When is the peak time for applications and is it best to apply when I am in Spain? Which websites would you recommend for finding jobs, etc. Hopefully, I will hear from you soon. Sorry for all the questions thrown at you. Thank you in advance. Niki.

Hello Niki,

I'll take your questions or points one by one:

1) Regarding: ". . . CELTA course either at the British Language Centre (BLC) or International House (IH). . . . are already full." Either of these two are good options (I did my own CELTA at IH), but another one is Hyland. There's more information on all three of these here: CELTA / DELTA Madrid. The only thing I can add is to reserve your place right away.

2) Regarding: ". . . knowing how hard/easy it is for newly qualified teachers to find work . . . " Historically, it's been rather easy for newly qualified people to find work. There's probably no need to worry about that if you touch all your bases. It takes a year or two of experience at least, however, to get paid more than peanuts. (Oops! Sorry, that did sound rather sarcastic, didn't it?)

3) Regarding: ". . . once they have qualified and how long should I reasonably need between completion of the course and the beginning of the September school term to find a job." I think the key factors are the summer holidays which traditionally run for the entire month of August and the children's school year which runs from late September to late June. I think most new job opportunities will start up in mid-to-late September at the earliest and no later than the beginning of October. Adults and children usually just don't feel like starting back up till then.

4) Regarding: "When is the peak time for applications and is it best to apply when I am in Spain?" September is the best time to find work, but if you'll be here for a TEFL course in the Spring, you'll probably be able to do interviews and get a commitment for a job then.

5) Regarding: "Should I try to get some work experience in England teaching as I don't have any at the moment? If I don't, would this be detrimental to my job applications in Spain?" I think you should get a good orientation with a proper on-site CELTA course before you start doing anything other than private conversation classes. Having a couple of years of experience on your CV is certainly helpful, but 6 months of private classes, etc. probably won't make a big difference one way or another except with your self-confidence maybe and the size of your wallet definitely.

7) Regarding: "Which websites would you recommend for finding jobs, etc." MadridTeacher.com is currently the best site, but not the only one obviously.

By the way, I'll be happy to keep in touch.

Steven

PaininSpain.com: TEFL Courses - several articles on this.

Nov. 1, 2007 update: Here's a recent comment on the subject on another site: A TEFL Course experience. I basically agree with the author Casi Cielo.

TEFL Course Problems - on the "Pain in Spain".

April 10, 2007, Update: Windsor has cancelled their TEFL course for the time being.

Windsor Idiomas

Windsor Idiomas has been steadily building up a solid reputation in the ELT (English Language Teaching) community in Madrid.

The school is situated in the leafy area of Mirasierra, towards the north of Madrid, has large, modern classrooms with excellent resources and technology, and prides itself on its friendly and personal atmosphere.

The people at Windsor recognise that they’re operating in a very competitive marketplace, and that professionalism and dynamism from their teachers to provide well planned lessons is essential. They are dedicated to supporting their team of teachers via a system of team leaders and offer comprehensive Teacher Training programmes.

The experience gained from their internal training programmes, and liaison with schools such as Hyland and The British Language Centre has led Windsor to develop a TEFL course with a difference, an 80 hour TEFL course.

This course offers students a tremendous amount of flexibility as it is an intensive two week or 4 week course which covers the entire syllabus normally taught in a traditional, full time one month course. By its very nature it is extremely intensive, but appeals to those teachers who are short of time. As with all reputable TEFL courses, it provides graduates with the resources and skills they need for teaching English as a second/foreign language whilst at the same time providing them with essential teaching practice. It is aimed at those teachers who may already have some teaching experience, but feel they need formal training to get the most out of their classes.

The timetable of this course has also been planned with busy teachers in mind. For most months of the year the course is held Monday to Friday from 10.30-14.30.

All the Windsor tutors are highly experienced and qualified in the ELT world, and are dedicated to teacher development. Windsor’s 80 hour TEFL course is in the process of getting accredited.

Read more: Windsor Idiomas.

EBC

This next text is an email from Jim Ross, TEFL Coordinator at EBC Servicios Lingusticos, in what I beleive to be a reasoned and articulate response to an earlier email from me.

Dear Steven,

I've recently found your reply to my post about EBC.

When I emailed you about the anonymous post about EBC, you didn't tell me the post was yours. If you felt that I wasn't addressing your post correctly, why didn't you let me know, I could have explained how I saw it and you could have told me why you regarded EBC in a negative manner.

You speak about our training centre in calle Orense having 3 rooms, it has 6 teaching/study rooms. It is centrally heated and airconditioned. We have roughly 300 reference books for students to use. EBC Madrid has graduated close to 500 students and in the years like in many growing companies, our services, facilities and resources have improved. Our original centre in calle Orense 26 did have 3 rooms. We moved in August 2005 to our new, larger centre which is in calle Orense 16.

I do not dispute that CELTA is the best known TEFL certificate around at the moment however this does not mean that other accredited certificates are not as good. Your preference for CELTA is your opinion, others may prefer Trinity, College of Teachers, SIT or any other number of accredited certificates. The fact that they are not CELTA does not make them inferior, this I believe is all subjective.

You mentioned the following at the beginning of the page:

"I just contacted the schools involved (Hyland, BLC and international-house-madrid.htm) and they were cooperative in providing me with information on their TEFL courses. This has not been so with other courses from far smaller less-recognized schools, which makes me a little bit suspicious about just how good they really are."

I do not recall being asked by you or by any other person in your company for information about our course. Regarding the complaints you say you have received from ex students of ours, don't you think it would be more productive and helpful if you told us directly about these complaints, naturally witholding the names of these ex students in that way we can do something about them? You say you are interested in providing unbiased TEFL information, wouldn't it be better then to make these complaints you receive known to us, so we can do something about them?

After every course we give our students a Satisfaction Survey Form where they tell us what they thought about the course, their learning experience and areas that they think could be improved. We place great importance on each student's comments because this is the only way that we can check their satisfaction. Our course has evolved over the last 3 years mainly because of our students comments. If you have received comments from ex EBC graduates that you feel are important to the quality of TEFL training, we would be more than happy to receive them directly from you so that we can take appropriate action. Your contributions would also be an invaluable source of information to us and would also help to generally improve TEFL training in Madrid.

As a provider of information on teaching in Spain, TEFL courses and other EFL related issues, I would like to think that you will be doing the whole industry a favour by letting us know where improvement is needed. Like yourselves we at EBC believe that English teachers should be well trained before they start teaching as this would improve the EFL teaching in Spain as a whole.

As it is clear that you want the quality of TEFL in Madrid to improve and as we at EBC share your belief in this matter, please forward any complaints you say you have heard, to us and we will take appropriate action.

You stated in your reply, "I have made an effort to get into contact with many of these other "TEFL - course" academies for interviews and photos and that they have not responded.", but you have never contacted EBC to ask us for information about the course, interviews or photos. Before passing judgement on EBC I would respectfully suggest that you do contact us first.

I'd like to ask that you remove your prior post and also (if you think it is appropriate) my reply to your original post, or maybe post this one as a reply from EBC.

Regards,

Jim

January 2006 update

As Madrid Spain seems to be the number 1 destination for first-time English teacher/tourists going abroad, there are all sorts of TEFL courses (Teaching English as a Foreign Language Courses) in Madrid. I've already done a bit of work on this at CELTA DELTA - Madrid and writing that article was really simple. I just contacted the schools involved (Hyland, BLC and International House Madrid) and they were cooperative in providing me with information on their TEFL courses.

This has not been so with other courses from far smaller less-recognized schools, which makes me a little bit suspicious about just how good they really are. What's more is that I think that any discerning consummer should, in fact, be more than just a bit suspicious about Madrid when it comes to any sort of courses at all, whether they are TEFL-related or not. (It's just the nature of the beast.)

That's not to say that you should immediately elimate any TEFL course from your list of possibilities just because it's got big problems in some areas. The fact is that its problems may not affect you in the least in the end because of your own particular needs, but that you should at least make an effort to "read between the lines," lift the veil of secrecy," "see through the marketing hoopla" or however you want to say it.

To begin with, nobody in Spain trusts any certifying organizations anywhere because they think they're usually corrupt. In fact, I don't even think they trust worthwhile certifications from England or the U.S., and after fiascos like Enron and Worldcon, who could blame them?

However, despite this fact, I think that in lieu of experience, you should take a course and get a TEFL certificate, but on the other hand, many of the people whom I've talked to who are running small and medium-sized academies could care less if it's certified or not. (And in my experience and from many of the interviews that I've done, some of them wouldn't even know a "Communicative Approach" from their own behind, so they definitely wouldn't have any idea at all of whether a certificate was worthwhile in the first place. Heck, you could probably even make one up and they'd fall for it, at least until you actually started teaching that is.)

I've had a look at many other TEFL course in Madrid and, for the moment, I can only recommend the 3 linked at the top of the page. If you are looking at TEFL courses in Madrid you should know that I have made an effort to get into contact with many of these other "TEFL - course" academies for interviews and photos and that they have not responded. (And it doesn't seem to me that there's much point in even mentioning them except in response to someone else's posts like in the ones below.)

Given that this relatively new page, for example, has received 1,089 visits since I uploaded it in March (till Dec. 31) and that CELTA DELTA - Madrid got 3,160 visits in 2005, you would think these other academies would be jumping at the chance for some free publicity, wouldn't you? However, this is not the case, which makes one wonder, doesn't it? I'm not saying that the top three TEFL academies are god's perfect gift to Madrid (hey, nobody's perfect!), but given the current circumstances, I would say you're a lot better off going with any of the three of them. In fact, as I've said repeatedly time-and-time-again, if I had to put my money on any one of those courses, I'd bet it all on BLC.
- end of post -

BLC or EBC - an old post in response to someone else's worried questions about TEFL courses.

Without going to deeply into a negative analysis of EBC, I would say that I would definitely prefer to do the September CELTA at BLC than at EBC. Take it from an old salt, you won't need any help getting a job - it'll likely just be a matter of opening the EL Pais daily and taking your pick.
When I first got here I made the mistake of thinking that there would be a problem getting a job so I obsessively sent out a lot of CVs and was really surprised when just about everybody called back. Try to clear up some time on your schedule in September for job searching by preparing really well before hand. Why don't you spend 150-200 hours in August loading up on your grammar (what's the difference between "must" and "have to", "first", "second" and "third" conditional? etc.) and doing online research, etc?
Do a lot of walking or exercise too because it's part of the package here. It'll really help to take the load off what's probably going to be a pretty hefty schedule during your CELTA. There are some places that will need teachers for October, but they're going to want to interview you in September and you'll be running around like crazy from place to place while trying to stay awake at night and on weekends prepping your next session. (Recovered from forum.)