Where to get TEFL Certified?

[msinglynx]

Apparently I need this to get a visa & work in Shenzhen. Anybody know a relatively cheap place I can do this as quickly as possible?

[Al the Dead]

Whoever told you that TEFL/TESOL is needed for visa, lied.

Though many vacancies do have it as a req. But there is no way to get it “fast”. Online course with teacher support will take you about a month (if you study every day) and you still need to pass an exam too. Any course less than 100 hours is worthless for job purposes.

I was able to substitute it easily with my diploma + work experience no matter job reqs, while getting it at my own leisure pace.

http://www.teflonline.com/ is the one i took, but if you wanna try other, take special care to see who will authorize your cert. That does matter and directly connected to the difficulty of last exam you will take.

[Charlie]

Al is right, this isn’t a national requirement for acquiring a visa. If the school told you that it was, I wouldn’t trust them.

Google “TEFL Certification” and you’ll find a lot of online “schools” which are incredibly easy. You might want to ask the job your’e applying to what kind of criteria they’re looking for in certification. I’m inclined to think that they’re  just looking for a useless piece of paper to file rather than where the certification comes from or what it actually means.

[msinglynx]

Well, I’ve been teaching for 5 years so I thought they would just waive that but apparently it is required by the local government to work in pubic schools there, which sucks. The place offering me a job is apparently one of only 2 companies/agencies (?) allowed to get visas directly so apparently they actually follow the rules. They said I dont need it to work in training schools but the public school jobs are just tooo sweet: ~20 hours (or less) per week, no office hours, apartment (already available, no waiting), visa, and 11K before tax. All the training schools have similar pay & benefits but for 30-40 hours a week.

My friend suggested I just get a fake one but I’m kind of conflicted. The company seems like a good,legit company so I do kind of want to work with them instead of just taking any job that will lie to get me there.

[Charlie]

msinglynx wrote:

Well, I’ve been teaching for 5 years so I thought they would just waive that but apparently it is required by the local government to work in pubic schools there, which sucks. The place offering me a job is apparently one of only 2 companies/agencies (?) allowed to get visas directly so apparently they actually follow the rules.

Sounds sketchy to me. Which is exactly what I’d expect of Shenzhen based on my experiences there. But anyway, just complete the online course if you don’t want to get a fake. It’ll take a few weeks and then you’ll be done with it.

[msinglynx]

Sketchy? Sigh…. I feel like everything is sketchy… I’m just slowly drawing out my eventual giving up on China :/

[Charlie]

msinglynx wrote:

Sketchy? Sigh…. I feel like everything is sketchy… I’m just slowly drawing out my eventual giving up on China :/

After searching for about a minute I found this job listing for a public school in Shenzhen that offers TEFL for free as a benefit. Here’s another job listing that says TEFL Certification is not a requirement (but is preferred).

Have you researched this online and done due diligence or are you basing everything off what they told you? If you expect everything to be straight forward, honest and easy going in China, you are definitely going to have a hard time.

Good luck!

[msinglynx]

I’ve been using Dave’s (esl cafe) forum & asked. Seems to be a requirement for public schools because so far every ad I have seen has asked for it (I mean through echinacities & esl cafe, etc). I also learned I cant teach on a student visa there, which rather sucks. Here you can do up to 20 hours a week and the uni will fill out a form.
I’m going to check out the ads you linked to.
OK, So the echinacities one also requests a tesol/tefl or teaching certificate, as does the other one, they just give you a “training” before school starts so the can give it to you themselves. I’m going to apply for that first one though (even though it requests a teaching certificate which I dont have) cuz saving money is never a bad thing. 😛 thanks charlie.

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