Posts from — February 2006

The Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults, better known as the CELTA, is the mother of all TEFL Certificates, or so says a lot of its supporters. The CELTA course is considered to be a very tough course that some find just too difficult. For better or worse, other TEFL courses are benchmarked against the CELTA. I had a good hearty laugh today reading this man’s experience failing the CELTA course not once, but twice.
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How useful are TEFL courses in preparing you to teach? Are they of any use or would you be better off in the end teaching yourself how to teach? What are your thoughts on the matter? I want to know both on this page and in our discussion forum, but please don’t name anything specific providers by name. The poll will run for 10 days.

After a two weeks polls that attempted to find the best and worst teaching institute or agency in Thailand, we have our winners, our losers and honorable mentions. I was rather surprised to see the results myself. This is of course unscientific, but if a school is on the worst list, they may not be the worst, but they do have some issues to address.
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Being that Thailand is Thailand, people have requested that I extend the best and worst poll for another week, no problem. One the best list, British Council and BFits are running neck and neck. On the worst list, EF seems to be pulling ahead, but with one look left in the TEFL poll, the end winners could be anyone’s guess. Keep the comments coming in here on this blog or on the forum.

A new poll has been started in the TeflWatch Thailand forum dealing with the best and worst Institutes and Agencies to work for in Thailand. Users are encouraged to vote in the poll, if your choice isn’t listed, go ahead and write in the vote. Both the best and the worst winners will be highlighted on this page. While being named the worst school would be hardly something to brag about, I would hope that it would be an honor to be voted the Best Institute in Thailand by our users. So, hit the forum and vote with your mice. Voting will end on February 18th, 2006.

“TEACHING English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) has fast become the most popular choice among those seeking to upskill or take on a new career. ”

So says the Kingdom Newspaper in this article. I am inclined to agree but then they go on to become basically a press release for a new TEFL training program in Ireland.

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