Is an online TEFL certificate worth it?

[MrMan]

I took a university class in teaching ESL but didn't get a certificate. At the time, three courses would get you an add on to an education qualification, and I wasn't in education. A university qualification is one way to go if you are already in school. See if you can use up your electives to get a certificate.

I never got an ESL certificate. I got to the point where I could get jobs based on qualifications. Maybe I could have just barely gotten an international school job, but I'd have been marginally qualified, with a CELTA/CTEFLA certificate or something like that. But most decent paying international school jobs required one to be a teacher in their home country. Other ESL jobs would take experience without a certificate if you had a degree. For getting the job, in Korea or Indonesia, having a certificate probably won't add much if you have a couple of years of experience. If you don't have experience, unless things have changed, you can get a job in Korea with a degree in anything. The same probably goes for China. If they are choosing among multiple applicants, a certificate would help. Is it still the case that it is super easy to get a job at an English institute in Korea?

The main thing is to take something that teaches you how to teach. I hear CELTA is good for that. A cheap online degree may actually get your foot in the door if you are competing with other inexperienced teachers who don't have certificates.

As far as earning goes, I some countries, there may be some niche positions that require CELTA. Does the British council still have slightly better paying CELTA jobs overseas? Still, it's not a lot of money. You can make a US teacher's salary or maybe better at an international school overseas if you are a qualified teacher in a western country and land a job at one of those schools. If you are certified to teach ESL in the US, that's probably the best route for a real ESL career. It's best to be able to teach something else, like high school English or some other language or whatever other topic.

If you want to work for a year or two overseas, CELTA will help you know what to do, but so will other courses. Go on Dave's ESL café to the country forum of where you are interested in going to see what you actually need to have to land a job.