Would you trust this company?

[AaronNolan]

I was reading up on this company and I noticed they give face-to-face courses in a variety of locations as well as online. Well because I work full time I probably wouldn't be able to get down to London to complete the face-to-face course. I am however near Cambridge. I'm actually a native speaker of American English rather than British English. I'm contemplating doing the online course due to the convenience factor and perhaps its the only option.

Here's the site, I checked the accreditation and they are accredited by a couple different agencies. Anyone heard anything bad or good about them?

tesolcourse.com

[Jo]

1. If you are near Cambridge why do you even mention face-to-face courses in London? There are several very reputable TEFL course providers in Cambridge. (It is after all the seat of one of the most respected and probably most well known TEFL course accreditation bodies in the world. It is highly unlikely that anyone would be running dodgy CELTA courses right under their noses.)

2. The website you reference is not important. What is important is the course provider. The course provider in this case is ITTT aka TEFL International et al. and like certain other course providers they have many mirror websites that are not under their name. In such cases, you should ask yourself "Why?"

3. The other vitally important issue is accreditation. The referenced accreditation in the case you mention is "Board of Academic Advisors (BOAA)". Most Google searches for "Board of Academic Advisors" or "BOAA" point back to the TEFL site you mention or its mirrors or some other TEFL sites. Google does not seem to point to an organization called Board of Academic Advisors (BOAA). In such cases, you should ask yourself "Why?" (And even if you did find a site for "Board of Academic Advisors" you would be well advised to do your usual due diligence.)

You may find the following helpful:
http://www.tefl.net/teacher-training/faq.htm

[systematic]

The course provider in question does not appear to have any accreditation - but apart from one or two governments that recognise courses that take place in their own country, there is no such thing as global accreditation anyway. The Board of Advisoes appears to be an ad hoc entity made up mainly of people who have been appointed by the course provider, and therefore might not be entirely independent. Some of those advisers may have done little more than given an ad hoc lecture to students on a course, or simply read a summary of the course content and muttered something like "Seems all right to me" . In a worst case scenario, some of those board members may not even know that their names are being used. Anything is possible in the world of TEFL, and such cases have been known.