How long does it take to complete a 120 or 140+ hour TEFL course?

3 min readMar 3, 2018

So are you wondering what all these TEFL course hours mean? Great! You should. This is a short version of the original on how long does online TEFL take?

You’d think you’d be going to college or something because these “hours” sound so official.

But the truth is that it is not that “official” most of the time!

Sure there are courses out there that are called 120 hour TEFL courses that actually take a 120 hours like an in-class CELTA. These courses will last a month and be 40 hours a week sitting in a classroom.

But…

There are many more that say they are 100 or 120 or 160 hours, but won’t take anything near that long to complete as you will soon see.

This is especially the case with online courses. Although it’s not only online it can happen in a classroom too.

I have done both.

Neither one took close to as many hours as they said.

But don’t take my word for it.

Look what these folks on Reddit had to say:

“I finished a 150 hour course in about 20ish hours. And I actually read/did most of the stuff. If you just rushed through one it might take you 10 hours, maybe less.” — Zoidburg747

“I believe the course I’m taking is considered a 120 hour course, but I feel like I’m FLYING through it. I’ve been at it for 3 days in my free time, maybe for a maximum of 7 or 8 hours, and I’m supposedly already 60% finished. Note that this course has no in-person classroom component.” — curryo

Honnggkkk…

Looks like I am sleeping or a zombie, hmmm.

Oh, and by the way I took one of those Groupon TEFL courses out of curiosity and finished a 120 hour online TEFL course there in 8 hours!

What sort of course should you take?

The one that’s going to train you to do your job.

Sounds basic right?

But the problem is many courses — like the classes you took in high school and college are not very practical and they tend to focus on adults.

Those can be good if you like theory, jargon, grammar study and teaching adults.

But what if you teach mostly kids?

In my experience with those 2 courses they were not very helpful or practical enough.

So here’s a possible solution to your problems.

This course is especially geared towards teaching kids (because that’s who you’ll probably teach) in Asia

No.

You don’t have to teach kids, but that’s where most of the jobs are and if you are going to be teaching kids then I recommend a specialized course like this one.

Most TEFL courses focus on teaching adults (like CELTA) which is good if you teach adults, but if you teach kids then it’s not so good because you won’t be prepared to teach them.

Kids are challenging because:

They are high energy.
They have a short attention span.
They are not tame.

That’s quite a combination to work with.

I wouldn’t take a boring online course that’s going to go in one ear and out the other. Instead I would take a visually engaging online course targeted towards teaching mostly children that you will remember more of.

And…

You’ll feel more confident and have a better experience abroad.

Related:

How quickly can you complete a TEFL course online? What’s the fastest course?
TEFLies — This is what the TEFL industry is like: lies, half-truths and other tactics to get you to buy and…

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Written by Ian@ESLinsider

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