TEFL certification to teach and travel for under $100

I spent a couple years traveling the world while teaching online full-time, and many folks are interested in how I did it. So, here's the lowdown.
 First, I graduated from college with a BA in Linguistics. One of the very few things this prepares you to do is teach English as a foreign/second language. That worked out well! The second thing I did, which is much easier/cheaper/quicker, is I bought a Groupon for an online, accredited TEFL/TESOL course. I used a coupon code and got it for $69. Then I sat at a computer during my time off from work for a week straight and banged out the complete course.

$69 and one week later, I was a certified TEFL teacher.

Groupon now has a huge number of TEFL courses, but be careful: not all are accredited. Some are scams. I emailed them about one I mistakenly bought, and while they refunded my money, they didn't take it down. The company I used is TEFL Express, which currently has two Groupons running for different prices. You can buy the Groupon here! (I make no money off this, unfortunately.) If your course is 120+ hours, you should have no problem finding work. (A college degree helps, but is not always required.) Note that this doesn't certify you to be a classroom teacher in public US/UK schools, and it doesn't get you as far as the internationally-accepted CELTA course, but it also costs a tiny fraction of that.

Now, is the course actually good? I'd have to give that a resounding "eh, kind of." It covers a lot, including grammar, phonetics, teaching skills, and probably more things that I don't remember. My degree in linguistics made the course a breeze, but really, it doesn't ask much of you, and you may learn best by being in an actual classroom and having actual student-teacher time. There were some typos and errors, especially toward the end of the course, which made it seem unprofessional. Also, doing the whole course in a week makes it breeze by, and I forgot a lot of what I learned (but you might get quite a lot out of it if you take your time and review your notes). That said, it opened up a lot of doors. As soon as I got my certificate, I sent out my resume to a million English-teaching jobs, and I got a number of interviews and one job offer, which happened to be online and happened to allow me to travel the world. Some English-teaching jobs don't require a TEFL certification, but do prefer it, (like the one I got!) so for under $100, it's worth it to get a leg up.

Your first year of teaching will always be a challenge no matter how prepared you think you are, so if you feel like the online course isn't enough and you want some extra experience, why not take the cheap online course and then do some volunteering in your community? You'll find that many organizations or individuals are thrilled to have a certified English teacher, so you get to have your teaching experience without paying top dollar for your TEFL certification. However, if you know English teaching in English-speaking countries is what you want to do as a career, then you might be better served by taking a CELTA course or a full teacher certification course at a college. In my case, I had teaching experience and just wanted something on paper to prove it; I've only seen a handful of job listings that aren't in the US or UK that require CELTA or similar.

All in all, I definitely recommend this route if you want to get your foot in the door cheaply and quickly.


Next up: an alternate nearly-free way to get a TEFL certificate with Angloville...