TEFL Courses for the visually impaired

[Allison]

Hello all,

My name is Allison and I currently reside in Madrid, Spain. I am looking at online courses to take the TEFL certificate. I have read several reviews on eye-to-eye and Ical. Which one is better? I like the eye to eye 120 hours combine course with classroom experience. I know the Celta is the best way to go, but I am afraid due to the intense nature of the course. I have completed my degree in psychology and my masters in social work with little modifacations. I thought due to the nature of the Celta, I'm afraid I'd will spend more of my time inputing or scanning the textbooks in to the computer, I would choose an online course with teaching experience. Which one would you recommend? Do you know of any totally blind people who have successfully completed the Celta? Thank you for all your assistance. I plan to pursue TEFL as a career.

Sincerely,
Allison

[Alex Case]

Especially with the financial situation there now, it will be pretty hard to get a first teaching job in Spain without a qualification that has observed and graded teaching practice.

I've just googled "part time celta madrid" and there seem to be two good options (without actually clicking on the links). It might be worth you phoning the providers to ask about the possibility of doing the course as a visually-impaired person. I'm afraid I personally don't know of any visually-impaired TEFL teachers, but Cambridge are quite good generally at providing for special needs among people who take their exams. I googled "celta special needs" and it at least seems that some providers take these things into account, and even if the centres that come up in those results are not in the country you are thinking of I'm sure they'll be happy to give you more details by phone or email.

[Allison]

Hi Alex,

Thank you for your reply. I have donethe same as you and googled part-time Celta in Madrid as this is where I am now. I want to teach here as well. But the two places I found don't have courses until January or april. I did see that Cambridge is good about making accomodations on the exams. When I googled visually impaired people taken the Celta and all I can come up with is how to teach visually impaired people. I was looking at I-to-I and they have an online component with a teaching practice component. They say they are equivalent to Celta and have the same accrdeitation. What do you think>

Allison

[Briona]

Hi Allison,

i-to-i offer two types of courses. The first is an online TEFL certificate (of varying hours) with or without a classroom-based weekend element. Note that the weekend element is NOT equivalent to the teaching practice on a CELTA or Trinity CertTESOL as you 'teach' your fellow trainees as opposed to real students.

On completion of the 140hr course you can pay an additional fee to take the EDI CertTEFL, which is a Level 5 qualification and thus is equivalent to the CELTA. Despite this, the course is new to the market so it would be up to you to prove to employers that it is equivalent to the CELTA. Another consideration is location. I think that it's only available in the UK and Australia at the moment, but you would need to check that. See http://www.onlinetefl.com/tefl-courses/ ... ttefl.html for more information.

Briona

*****
Just in case anyone thinks I'm 'pushing' this course I'd like to state that I DO NOT work for i-to-i but I am a fairly regular contributor to their Chalkboard forum.

[Allison]

Hi Briona,

Thank you so much for your reply. I will look in to the 140-hour TEFL from I-to-I. Thank you for supplying the link to the Edi cert course. You are correct, they are only offered in Australia and u.K. at the moment. I cannot afford to travel back and forth from Spain to the U.K. for six Saturday sessions. I will e-mail I-to-I and ask if their course is accessible. I know the course providers that use the moodle template cannot be accessed with my screen reader which is VoiceOver. I will look in to i-to-i. Maybe I will call them for a consultation.

Allison