TEFL Internships in China

Read this job post in its entirety here at Dave’s ESL Café.

Ok, so at first glance, everything seems good. You, the new graduate who’s just received his/ her BA in whatever, decide to go into teaching. You’re serious about it, thinking it could be a worthwhile profession. But you don’t know the first thing about teaching English. So you browse Dave’s ESL Café, where you find the posting linked above. You send your CV (resume) and interview for the internship. Lo and behold, you’ve got the internship! But you have to pay the program fees! The what? That’s right.... surprise, surprise.

If I hadn’t done some snooping on the company’s website, TEFLinternships.com, I wouldn’t have uncovered the hidden little tidbits of information they were withholding from its prospective internship applicant.

You have to pay the program fee of: $888.

On the company’s website, TEFL Internships, it touts the TEFL certificate as something worthwhile. Instead, after researching, the certificate is more worthless than the paper it’s printed on.

The TEFL online teaching website, http://teflbootcamp.com/, promotes itself as being an international member of ACTFL, IATEFL and the College of Teachers. These are worthless assertions. Anyone with a credit card can join these organizations. By placing these organizations on their webpage, it’s leading prospective consumers to believe these are accreditation bodies. This TEFL online certificate is not accredited by the British Council, University of Cambridge, Oxford, hell- not even Kaplan! 

It is, however, accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) which any company can get, but only if it honours its guidelines and pays the membership fees. The main guidelines are that members of the BBB don’t lie to consumers, disclose physical address of their company, and refund customers their money if customers aren’t satisfied. So not one – absolutely NOT ONE – educational body has accredited or endorsed the online TEFL certificate. Rubbish. Absolute rubbish.

Aside from this advertising which provides customers with an opportunity to misinterpret the institutional bodies as endorsers or accreditation bodies, the website looks so schlocky. The online 'class' was created by a single man (not the plural tutors the website would have you believe) with yes a Masters in Education and a PGCE in TEFL and with over 15 years of experience, but those qualifications alone do not warrant his ability to write meaningful teacher preparation textbooks. Instead, this fella created some e-books with little to no content inside them (I bought his TOEFL, TOEIC and IELTS test preparation textbook four years ago and found only content which could’ve been gleaned from a friggin’ Google search.)

Don’t waste your time with this company. Remember: never pay a recruiter for anything. Let alone the $888 this whack-o company is demanding to place you in an internship and give you a worthless online TEFL certificate.

And yeah you can find legit jobs on Dave's, but you have to sift through job postings like this. Don't take the job posting as absolute truth. Research by checking the companies involved websites. 

Stay far, far, far away from TEFLinternships!