5 excuses for not earning your TEFL certification and why they're wrong!
So, you’re thinking about getting TEFL qualified? Great choice! That’s the first step to a new life of excitement, travel, adventure and strange experiences, spent hopping all around the globe and making friends in exotic countries. Just so you don’t get caught up on the usual excuses on the road to such an awesome lifestyle, we thought we’d offer these rebuttals. You should be left with nothing but a conviction to sign up and get a-studying!
It takes too long
No, it doesn’t! It really, really doesn’t. A mere 120 hours of study is what’s needed to bag a TEFL certificate that schools from Colombia to Cambodia, Japan to South Africa will recognize. To put that into perspective, it’s the same as watching Godfather I over and over again 40 times. It’s the same as listening to the Fellowship of the Ring audio book five times in a row. Only, those things certainly won’t offer you a whole new career direction. It’s common to find students who nailed their whole course in a matter of weeks. Others take a month or so. The upshot? The end is always in sight!
I’m too busy
Well, thankfully, TEFL courses are split into neat modular blocks. Each lesson lasts just an hour or so, and there’s no rush for you to complete the whole shebang in a single sitting. The result is a qualification that’s easy to do alongside your current commitments. Fit a quick tutorial on classroom management into an hour after work here; drop a session on past participles and tenses into your lunchtime there – you can chop and change your schedule as you like. And when you’re all done? You won’t need that nine-to-five anyhow! A new career somewhere exciting awaits…
It’s too hard
TEFL courses are designed to be approachable, informative, and useful. They are hardly MIT finals! There’s no atomic physics or rocket science. It’s just a good, solid grounding in grammar, vocab, teaching skills, and the like; a learning package that should set you up nicely to get into the classroom. Average pass rates are around the 90% mark, which means you’re in good stead to get things done and dusted without a hitch along the way. Before you know it, you’ll be waltzing into that Thai school dreaming of white-sand beaches and spicy pad noodles!
I’m not sure I want to travel the world
That’s fine. TEFL qualified folk aren’t all globetrotters. Some just want to broaden their horizons, expand their base of professional qualifications, or test themselves on a personal level. What’s more, there’s a whole new industry that revolves around teaching English to students over the web. That will let you conduct your work from anywhere, provided you’ve got a good internet connection and headset! And if you change your mind? Well…having that 120-hour course in the bag means you will be able to jet off whenever the wanderlust starts a-flowing!
It costs too much
TEFL certificates are among the most affordable professional qualifications out there. For as little as $300 USD you can score a place on the full-frills myTEFL course with all the bells and whistles. That’s nothing compared to, say, getting a driver’s license or returning to college for a masters (at least in most countries). And that’s not even considering the financial pluses that come post-qualification! Bag yourself a job somewhere like Japan or the UAE and you could easily be banking upwards of $2,000 USD a month – perhaps even more!
So – no more excuses for not doing that TEFL certificate! If you’ve got any questions on the solutions provided here, we’d love to hear them in the comments below. Alternatively, if you think it’s time to start your TEFL course, head over to our relevant page to sign up and get going.