ESL Scam: Globaltefl.uk.com

Oh hey there, blogopals, didn't see ya there. Let me tell you a little story about GlobalTEFL.uk.com.

As some of you know, I got my TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification through an online course I bought off of Groupon. That course, which you can read about here, was pretty comprehensive, although there were some significant typos towards the end. Before I bought that, I had accidentally purchased a non-accredited TEFL course, but I quickly realized that it wasn't accredited, and I got a refund.

Fast forward two-and-a-half years to now.
I've been putting that online TEFL certification to good use, teaching English and test prep classes ever since I got certified. I found a Groupon for an IELTS specialist course that seemed to check out: it's accredited through what seems to be a legitimate body (ACTDEC), a couple hours of Googling "GlobalTEFL.uk.com scam" didn't really come up with anything, and the site has some good reviews. So, for $19, I figured hey, why not? My TEFL course was only around $79, so it wasn't too unreasonable to think that this much shorter, non-certification course might be legitimate for $19.

Then I started the course.

First of all, I noticed after the fact that it's a little weird to have .uk.com rather than .co.uk, which makes it seem like they're pretending to be a .co.uk and hoping people won't notice. But mostly...Well, I'll let these screenshots from the first few pages speak for themselves:

This is the very first thing I saw when I started the course: the course outline. Tell me, why IS so effective about preparing for the exam?

From the section on pacing. This sounds like a non-native English speaking high school student who didn't do the reading. I'm pretty sure that when you get down to it, the crux of the "training" on pacing is that pacing is good and you should do it. Thanks, Global TEFL! Who knew?

I spent about ten minutes giving it the benefit of the doubt, watching the Youtube videos that clearly aren't theirs, before asking for a refund, which, thankfully, I got. They refunded me in Groupon bux, which for me is fine, because I like Groupon in general.


tl;dr: GlobalTEFL.uk.com is bad and the material sounds like it was written by lazy high schoolers who are scraping by with a C in English in some country where English isn't spoken and workers aren't paid a whole lot. I haven't tried any of their other courses, but I sure wouldn't trust them or their accreditor, ACTDEC.