CELTA, DELTA, MA? When is the best career moment for extra qualifications?

CELTA, DELTA, Trinity Dip, M.A. in Applied Linguistics… there is an increasing number of courses on offer for the aspiring English language teacher.  Navigating the opportunities and understanding the realities of what each brings is key if you are to make it all worth your while.  Many will start off their career attempting the CELTA or Trinity TESOL (also known as TEFL-I qualifications), the two most popular entry-level courses on offer in TEFL.  Ironically, what most teachers end up doing for their first jobs is nothing like the small groups of adult learners neatly grouped into levels, and so why the expectation and desire to put ourselves through it?  Well, obviously, in order to get a job.  Not to say that it is essential for your first teaching position.  In fact, most countries require a 120-hour teaching qualification, with only the UK, USA and Saudi Arabia actually stipulating that a CELTA/TESOL is required (Deady, 2019).  These shorter courses can be done...

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The Surge to Online Teaching

There is a mini-crisis looming in the world of English Language teaching. Most companies which play in this area are still operating on the traditional business model. They have very expensive training centres filled with very expensive teaching staff, delivering very expensively designed and created training courses – always run on a very expensive computer network and displayed on different sizes and shapes of displays, some small and basic, some large and interactive, but...

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