Where to do a TEFL Course

Years ago when I first arrived in Madrid an English teacher tried to persuade me that he was a TEFL expert (he was writing a book, or so he said) and that he would teach me how to teach English (I didn’t ask him for his rates). In fact, it would be a really good business if you could get 10 students together per month.

At the low-end average of 800 euros a head, that’s 8,000 euros. Unfortunately, these numbers could attract a few fly-by-nights into the business, and Madrid can be a fly-by-night heaven, let me tell you. Put together any-old flashy website and a half-decent looking program and people around the world could think you’re really something. (It gives one something to think about, don’t it? – nudge, nudge, wink, wink.)

Yet, every HR department in Madrid has their pet peeves even about one or two major universities, whose employee-candidates they regularly reject (they even state so in their employment ads in the local press). This outright rejection is rarer in TEFL in Madrid, but it happens in at least two of the biggest agencies in Spain. Here is some more information on the business related side of TEFL at: TEFL Madrid.

Also, here is a Certified TEFL school which has permitted me to scrutinize them for the site: CELTA / DELTA Madrid.

This brings me down to the “why” of doing TEFL courses. What I mainly want to talk about in this section of the site is about the important things you learn on these courses that makes them such a required part of your CV/résumé. If I were a Director of Studies, I would require you to have one so I obviously consider them worthwhile. The reason why is that I think there are some extremely important areas in TEFL which you must understand in order to be an effective teacher. Not only that, but some of these points must be practiced with an actual class of students in order to be able to assimilate them. (As a school owner or DOS, I would discriminate against all distance TEFL-course certificate holders.)