Non Native Speaker needs advice

[jesweet]

Hello everyone!

I'm a Filipino and I'm a BSN graduate. I have been teaching english in a language school in my country for 6months and just started teaching english to japanese people online too.

This sparked my interest regarding TEFL. I need some advice regarding which certification course I should take as a non-native english speaker so I would be eligible to travel and teach english too. I would prefer to teach privately, just like my current job as a tutor, not in a big school. Is there such a place where non native trainees are very welcome? Because I have heard a lot of stories about this and even on youtube, it's always the native speakers that have videos.

Thank you so much. This will be of great help!

[Pedro]

There are many different courses. If you were going to teach in a school, as a non-native speaker, I'd recommend a CELTA qualification. However, you're just going to teach privately, how about looking into a TEFL course, they are quicker, cheaper and will give you enough qualification to keep teaching.

[Azariah]

Pedro, a CELTA course and a TEFL course are the same thing. CELTA is just the most popular and in-depth TEFL course that exists, as well as the Trinity CertTesol.

Jesweet, I'd always recomment doing the CELTA course. I did this course about 5 or 6 years ago and there were non-native English speakers there who did brilliantly. :-)

[Pedro]

haha cool, i sit corrected. I'm doing a TEFL Express TEFL course now. It's going fine. Might upgrade to a CELTA later on but for now this will get me doing what I want.

[StephDB]

Hi Jesweet

I am a trainer on CELTA and DELTA courses and just want to let you know that we take non-native speakers all the time so long as they pass the criteria and they usually do a great job! (I am afraid I work in Cambridge UK so a bit far away from where you are though!) Being a potentially good teacher is the key requirement, not nationality. Actually non-native participants often do better on grammar analysis because they have learnt English as a second language themselves! So I am sure you could do well.

There are a lot of TEFL courses out there and as Pedro says - if you find one that meets your needs - that is great. But if you want to create better work opportunities I would always recommend either CELTA or Trinity TESOL. These are fully recognised qualifications (not just the most popular) and are accredited by official providers. So Azaria is right to prioritise these ones. In general - except one or two- other courses are usually not accredited or recognised in the same way so although they may get you work initially if you are thinking of pursuing teaching further then you should think about CELTA or Trinity TESOL. Alternatively you could think about doing a TKT course as well. This works well for non-native speakers (we are about to start running an online course where I work which makes it accessible). The online bit doesn't include a practical component though you can do this but you can take Cambridge ESOL exams for the other parts and these are also well recognised now.

this will show you places where you can do a CELTA all over the world:
http://www.cambridgeesol-centres.org/ce ... g/index.do

Best of luck,
Steph