Which Groupon TEFL course is best?
Cheap and best do not usually go together. If you want cheap you go to Groupon or get another cheapo, but if you want the best online TEFL you go somewhere else.
This is kinda like asking what’s the best fast food restaurant?
So you have to consider...
Best for what?
There are many different ways you can measure ‘best’.
Here’s a question for you…
I’d say you have two reasons to take a TEFL course.
- To get a job.
- To learn how to do your job — teach.
And a cheapo will fulfill reason one (most of the time).
On paper a TEFL certificate is a TEFL certificate, so I’d say it won’t matter much what course you take as far as the brand name goes.
The cheapest course on Groupon w/ the fake TEFL accreditation, a totally fake certificate, or University of Toronto’s online course for $1200 will look the same to “many” schools.
But fulfilling reason two above is harder and I’ll talk more about that later.
Have you read that online courses are not accepted?
Based on my experience teaching in Asia…
Some schools may prefer a TEFL course with some in-class hours. But most schools in Asia don’t care. Experience tends to trump any certificate.
What about the brand? Is one company more reputable or legit than another?
I’d say only a very small fraction of the schools out there will care about the brand of TEFL you took.
If they do then they might prefer a course like CELTA. But CELTA is not that popular in Asia.
Do hours matter?
“That’s exactly why I doubt it has any relevance… it took me, maybe, 10 hours! I got in on a wowchr deal as well. Almost not even worth mentioning here I would imagine…” — atmospheric_slug
Online TEFL courses have no real class times or hours. “Hours” are a misnomer. Some people complete so-called 120 hour courses online in less than 10 hours. I completed one in 8 hours.
But despite the fact that those “hours” are totally false there are some schools out there that may want you to have a “120 hour course”.
So do hours matter?
In some schools.
Some schools in China say that and so does the EPIK program in Korea. I guess they haven’t learned yet.
Why are the courses on Groupon cheap?
The courses on Groupon are selling at cheap prices because they hope that by making their courses cheaper that they can make more money by selling in volume.
Quantity vs. quality.
It’s not cause they are trying to be nice.
They still want to make money, but just like McDonald’s they are going for volume. So for the most part these companies are trying to get you in and out in no time.
That means that these courses are usually easier, but the quality is going to be lacking.
How so?
No to little feedback from a human
“The reality with the Groupon “certifications” is that you’re basically just paying someone to do the photoshop for you — you’re not going to get any actual instructor feedback. If you’re just worried about getting the certificate, you’ll be fine (I don’t think it’s possible to fail one of those courses), but if you were hoping for actual feedback from an experienced instructor, you might want to moderate your expectations.” — CaseyjonesABC
There probably won’t be much feedback or interaction with a human because that takes time and costs money. Feedback can be helpful to show you what you are doing wrong and remind you of the things you “learned” in the course.
There probably won’t be much for assignments and if there are assignments then you probably won’t get feedback on them.
There was one lesson planning assignment with the Groupon course that I took. I had to wait like a week or so to get any feedback on it and then when I did it just appeared to be an automated generic response.
ESLinsider’s course has 4 lesson planning assignments + 1 classroom management assignment and the feedback is given within 24 hours. There are also forum posts, commenting and blog posts.
It’s specific and you can get ideas for how to better plan your lesson.
People don’t remember much of what they read or are told
It will probably be mostly multiple choice questions where you read and then answer.
Reading black and white text is boring for most people.
You can learn this way, but…
Nobody reads much and nobody remembers much of what they read. People tend to only read 20–28% of a page.
“All I have is an online TEFL that I forget most of.” — thedan633
“I finished the entire program in 3 days and retained like 5% of the information.” -woobv
Lack of visuals
The cheaper courses like the one I took on Groupon are probably going to lack good visuals. You are going to learn about teaching by reading about it and probably not by watching other teachers teach which is the best way to learn.
And as mentioned above reading is not so good of a way to commit ideas to memory.
Visuals help commit ideas to memory. Words are going to go in one ear and out the other. A good online course will include classroom based instructional videos.
Visuals improve memory
- http://www.pnas.org/content/95/5/2703.full
- http://www.sas.upenn.edu/psych/rust-lab/publications/standing_73.pdf
Hidden fees
While Groupon courses are cheap there are some added fees that are not immediately apparent — at least in the one I took.
There was a 10 business day wait for the certificate after I completed the course. And that was just for a download. If I wanted it sooner I had to pay.
If I wanted a hardcopy of the certificate I also had to pay extra. The waiting part seemed kind of silly to me.
Shorter access times
Cheaper courses and even some of the more popular courses have a short access duration of 2–3 months.
Is that enough?
It might be, but I would think flexibility would be important to you.
Also if you take a course that only allows 3 months access then by the time you actually get abroad and teach your access will be discontinued.
So if you want to review the material which is advisable then you won’t be able to because you will be locked out.
Read more about the criticism on Groupon TEFL.
So what’s the best TEFL course on Groupon?
You are probably not going to find the “best” there. You can find the cheapest and that may seem like the best now, but after you start teaching will you think it’s the best?
It might be the best for “ticking the box” as some say, but getting a job is just the beginning. Teaching is around the corner and it is not easy. If you want to have a good year I would invest more in your teaching early on.
You can read books, watch videos of other teachers, take a better course and/or attend workshops.
Because if you don’t know what you are doing in the classroom it’s not going to be fun.
I think the best course for you is going to be focused on teaching the students you teach. If you teach kids then take a course focused on that. Most courses focus more on teaching adults.
If you take it online then make sure it’s multi-media and shows classroom instructional videos. But how are you going to know that?
If you ask the provider then most will say yes, some are like that, but that is just part of the TEFL business — lies.
Anways…
If you don’t care about what you learn in your course and you just want a TEFL certificate then take a Groupon course or another fast and easy online course. And if that is you then take the cheapest one, but remember some people say you get what you pay for.
And if you don’t learn much from that course then teaching is going to be hard and before you know it you will be looking for a new job. I did take a TESOL course way back in 2004 before I taught in Taiwan (my first country) and it wasn’t online and it wasn’t very helpful.
But if I was to do it again I would invest early on in training because teaching is hard. If you work a full time job then roughly 33% of your time will be spent in classroom and if you don’t like it neither will your students which means your experience teaching in ____ (insert country) won’t be that good.
If you are looking for a cheap course on Groupon then that might mean you aren’t committed and you are just looking for the easy way out, but if you really want to have a good experience abroad then you have to invest in learning how to teach because that’s where you are going to be spending most of your time.
But “learning” sounds hard you might think.
Personally I don’t make it hard for the sake of it. Like the lessons you will be teaching in your near future you don’t want to make it hard. You want your students to enjoy your lessons and you want to challenge them, but not too much.
So I took the same approach to creating ESLinsider’s TEKA course.
“I downloaded the first assignment for one of the cheaper courses, and was welcomed with a pretty dense and boring academic article. While educational philosophy is nice, I was looking for practical skills that can immediately be utilized in the classroom.” — Dwayne M.
Dwayne switched from a cheaper course to one of ESLinsider’s courses now called TEKA and he left this review.
This course was excellent. Ian presented information in a very straightforward manner that made it fast and easy to use in a classroom. Instead of boring you with tons of theory, this course shows you what you can, how you can do it, and why you should do it.
In this course, students learn with easy to follow videos with demos.I also really appreciated how active Ian was on the messaging boards. I could always rely on him to help answer a question to an issue or to give me feedback on my assignments.
Related:
Related to TEFL courses (here on Medium):
- TEFL accreditation
- Online TEFL course reviews (fake ones are widespread)
- Online TEFL course reviews (red pill vs. blue)
- Best TEFL course for Korea?
- Reviews on ESLinsider’s courses
- Which TEFL course should you take?
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- An accredited 120 hour TEFL certificate isn’t going to solve your problems
- Answers to your questions about online TEFL courses
- Top 3 TEFL courses to teach in Asia
- Learn TEFL online with a specialized course
- Which Groupon TEFL course is best?
- A legitimate, reputable, accredited, internationally recognized, 120 hour online TEFL course, that’s cheap with a guaranteed job!
- Welcome to TEFL! Do you know these tricks courses use to get you to buy?
- Are online TEFL courses worth it?
- Is a TEFL course worth it?
