Answers to Your Questions About Online TEFL Courses

5 min readJul 31, 2019

Here you will find detailed answers here to common questions about online TEFL/TESOL courses. Some of these cover whether they are valid, good enough, how they compare to classroom courses or if they are worth it.

Are any online CELTA/TEFL courses worth it?

It depends on the course.

Worth it for what? Will it help you get a job or help you teach?

It depends on the school, but in Asia I’d say most schools don’t recognize a difference between online and in-class courses. However, some (a small number) schools may not accept them.

Ultimately it depends on the course. Many online TEFL courses may be low quality as you will have no observation or feedback. Not being able to see teaching in action and not getting any feedback or doing any writing online won’t be good for learning because you won’t remember anything. More on those things later.

The low quality courses will be mostly text-based. So from my point of view they are not worth it.

It also depends on you.

If you aren’t self motivated then online is probably not the way to go.

CELTA isn’t totally online. As far as I know they only have one course that is partly online.

Are online TEFL courses worth it? Not if this happens.

Are online TEFL courses legit?

It depends on the school. In my experience in Asia I’d say most schools won’t care if it’s in-class or online. But experience trumps any CELTA/TEFL certificate.

Many online courses have a bad reputation and many may be poor, but it depends on the course.

Is this heavily discounted online TESOL course worth doing?

Some people say you get what you pay for. If you are taking a course to actually learn then I’d say there are definitely better courses out there. But if you are just taking a course to get a piece of paper then it might be worth it to you…

Now anyways…

However, when you get abroad and start teaching you might think differently. And then you might start saying that “all online TEFL courses are worthless” like the others who do that.

But the problem might have been with the course you chose. Will that $8 or $16 course be much worse than that $39 course? Maybe not. I can’t say price always determines the actual quality.

But chances are there are some things that you won’t get with a cheap course.

Teaching was hard for me (especially my first year). Oh and I took a TESOL course prior to doing so and that course wasn’t helpful or worth the $1000 I spent.

Why not?

It wasn’t practical or useful and it wasn’t focused on teaching the students I taught which were mostly kids. Most TEFL courses are general and focus more on adults than kids. But many positions in Asia are for teaching kids.

That’s part of the reason why I started my own courses.

Choose wisely.

Online TEFL courses vs. classroom?

I’ve taken both and I’ve created my own online courses. The short answer is that it depends on the course and you. Many online courses are low quality, but some may be o.k.

If you are a traditional learner then online is probably not for you. Many online courses are low quality. In these low quality courses you read chapters of text and then answer multiple choice.

That is boring and you won’t remember much so the solution is if you take an online course then it has to have instructional videos and they should be of real classes.

That is a problem with classroom based courses. Although they can be a little closer to the real thing the problem is they are usually done with pretend students and they are adult students like you. That probably won’t be like the environment you will end up in.

Are online TESOL/TEFL courses considered valid for EPIK’s requirements?

Usually unless you are applying to Busan where they require 20 or 60 classroom hours. Outside of Busan then you probably are o.k. but there is no course that guarantees anything.

EPIK and online TEFL

What are the reputable online TEFL courses in Asia?

“Reputable”?

If you care about “reputation” then you are just looking for a piece of paper that supposedly makes it look like you know something.

And you will soon find out when you start teaching that you don’t. So instead of doing it for proof try doing it for what you will learn. Getting a job is just the beginning.

My next point is in Asia I’d say most schools don’t care about where you got your certificate from. Schools care more about experience than certificates and they are in a different country and they just don’t know or keep track of the brands so it usually doesn’t matter which certificate you get as far as getting the job goes, but what you learn in the course matters more.

If you really care about reputation then you should take a CELTA, but in Asia many schools don’t know what a CELTA is.

TEKA is a course that focuses especially on teaching children in Asia.

What’s the most reputable online TEFL?

How good are online TEFL courses?

It depends on the course.

I think many might be low quality. The cheap one that I took on Groupon as a test and to see what I would get for my money was pretty low quality. It was basically just reading and doing multiple choice.

If you really want to learn online then you need visuals — like classroom instructional videos, you need feedback from a real human, it needs to be targeted towards teaching the students you are going to teach and writing helps.

The course that I created includes these things.

How much do online TEFL courses cost?

I’ve seen prices ranging from $8–1200.

It depends.

How much does an online TEFL course cost?

Are there really no legitimate online TEFL courses?

What do you mean by legitimate?

They are not all low quality, but many are. Most claim to have course “hours” but that is lie. These online courses are asynchronous which means you can work on them when you want.

I completed one “120 hour online course” in 8 hours and I’ve heard many others do the same. Many pretend to be legitimate or try to look official by labeling their courses like this, but they are not really.

Lots of things with TEFL courses are done for show.

Claims like “internationally recognized” TEFL and “we’re accredited” don’t necessarily mean much.

Related to TEFL courses (here on Medium):