Which certificate?

[Hannahb]

I am a qualified secondary school geography teacher with 7 years experience working in a British school. I am thinking of taking a one year sabbatical to move over seas and teach EFL. I will need to get some form of TEFL qualification and initially thought moving to Asia (possibly Vietnam) to do a CELTA qualification would be the most sensible option. I have since read on this forum that I may not need such an advance qualification if I am not considering a career in TEFL and just want to support myself for a year as a form of career break.

Can anyone who is currently working in the industry confirm if this is the case and if so what qualification would be sufficient so that I could find work and be confident in my skills in the classroom. I am familiar with current teaching strategy and technique for delivering successful lessons but would want to be employable if I were to make the move.

Thanks for your help in advance

[katemarie]

Hi, I taught in Prague for about two years after getting my TEFL certification, and I remember when looking at jobs ads that a CELTA qualification wasn't generally asked for exclusively. Generally, companies post that they are looking for someone with a CELTA/Trinity, TEFL, TESOL, or the equivalent. I think the only place that may want a CELTA or Trinity certificate exclusively is the UK.

If you're looking to get certified in Europe though, I can definitely recommend my TEFL course to you in Prague. I went through TEFL Worldwide (teflworldwideprague.com) and was extremely satisfied. Terry was an amazing instructor and prepared me for any teaching environment! Overall it was a valuable experiene and I think that beacuse it was a continuous 4-week course it really made it easy to grasp all of the concepts and methods of teaching. I had no experience with teaching prior to the course, yet by the end I felt confident to instruct any class size of any skill and ability level. And I've known many people from my course and the courses after that went onto to teach in Asia, Europe, and Latin America with success.

Good luck!