Cambridge Offers CELTA Courses Online

In September, 2011, Cambridge started offering CELTA courses online. Sort of.

The practicum component of the course must still be done at the center offering the certification.

If you opt for the online CELTA course, you can earn the same certificate as if you did the course entirely at a center. There is no difference to the award you will receive.

The online option allows a student to take longer to obtain the certificate and to work at his or her own pace. According to the Cambridge site, "courses run over a minimum of 10 weeks and a maximum of an academic year."

The online materials achieve the same objectives as face-to-face instruction, according to Cambridge.

Unfortunately, as of this date, there are no centers offering online CELTA in the United States.

If you need a completely online TESOL certificate, then you will need to consider a different type of certificate. See TEFL or CELTA: Which is Best? for further discussion.

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CELTA Offered Online This Year

It looks like Cambridge is moving into education of the 20th century (maybe even the 21st). According to the Cambridge ESOL website, CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) will be available online starting in September 2011. Currently, it is only available in person at over 200 centers around the world (eight, in the United States, at this time). Here's a list of all CELTA course locations around the world.

The online CELTA course will have the same requirements as the face-to-face course (without attendance, of course). The only thing that will not be able to be done online is the teaching practicum. Six hours of assessed hands-on teaching practice will still be required.

I wonder if this opening up of the strict CELTA course requirements will raise the value of other TEFL/TESOL certification courses in the minds of those who favor CELTA over other certificates.

What do you think?

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Should You Get a CELTA or a TEFL Certificate?

If you're considering getting a certificate to start teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), you've probably come across the TEFL vs. CELTA debate. Which certification is better? Which courses are better? Which prepare you to teach adults ESL/EFL and which prepare you to teach children? Which certificate do employers prefer?

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions take a lot of research and then most of the answers you find are subjective. If you ask someone with a CELTA, they're likely to say CELTA is better. If you ask someone with a TEFL certificate, they're likely to say TEFL is better. This is, of course, also dependent upon the student teacher's particular experiences at their particular TESOL certification course.

When potential EFL/ESL teachers write and ask me which I recommend, I cannot give a strong recommendation about which is best. (I can recommend my particular program, as I feel it did everything it promised and more.) I can only suggest factors to consider when making the TEFL or CELTA decision. You can read more about what to consider on my main website TEFL or CELTA page.

The one thing I strongly recommend is that after you've done your research, bite the bullet and just do choose a certificate and choose a course. Don't let the "paralysis by analysis" bug keep you from moving forward.

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Choosing the Best TESOL Certificate

A TESOL certificate is one of the quickest and easiest ways to start a career teaching English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language. But with so many TESOL certificate programs to choose from, how do you choose the best one?

What type of certification is right for you? TESOL, TEFL, TESL, or CELTA? On-site or online?

Visit my Finding the Best TESOL Certificate page for tips on finding the right program for you and characteristics of the best TESOL certificate programs.

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CELTA and TESOL Comments

Over a year ago I wrote an article called CELTA or TESOL for Private Tutoring. To this day, I continue to get comments from readers criticizing CELTA teaching centers and CELTA in general. Some of the emails have been quite strong and people have taken a significant amount of time to write their lengthy comments.

This blog and my site, Teaching ESL to Adults, are primarily for the benefit of ESL/EFL teachers and tutors, so I suppose this information from people who have studied for CELTA certification is useful to pass on to others. And the decision between CELTA and TESOL certification is an important one for the potential new ESOL teacher.

While the comments submitted have been critical of CELTA courses, I'm certain that there are many, many people who have had good experiences with their CELTA training. However, it seems to be human nature (or at least MY nature) that we take less time to praise something and more time to criticize.

Noteworthy to me is that there have been no complaints submitted against any TESOL certificate training programs. I know for myself, my TESOL training was some of the best training I've ever had and it thoroughly prepared me to start teaching English to speakers of other languages.

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CELTA or TESOL for Private Tutoring

Really, anyone can call themselves an ESL tutor or teacher and find private clients. There are no licensing requirements (that I'm aware of) as there are, for example, lawyers. Of course, it is certainly a better selling point to actually have some training in teaching ESL.

One way to get training to teach ESL to adults or to children is to take a certification course. When you start to look into certification courses, you find that there are two main certifications: CELTA and TESOL.

CELTA stands for Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults. TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Possession of either of these certificates shows that the ESL teacher has been through a certificate training program and has been taught the necessary "tools" to teach English.

So which certificate is right for you? Personally, I have a TESOL certificate. Although I had the option of studying for either certificate, I chose the TESOL because that was the ESOL certificate that was more popular in the area in which I planned to teach.

Thinking about where you want to teach and inquiring about the preferred certificate in the area is the approach I would take (and did) to determine which certificate to earn.

I don't have a convenient list of all the TESOL training locations, but here's a thorough list of the CELTA course locations.

How to Start Teaching ESL

Teaching ESL to adults or children is a great profession for a lot of people. For me, it was a career change and a great one. If you’re thinking about teaching ESL, you’ll have to think about where you want to teach, who you want to teach and what setting you would like to teach in.

If you live and teach in an English-speaking country, then you are teaching ESL. If you live and work in a non-English speaking country, then you are teaching EFL. You can teach in many different settings: private language schools, universities, public schools, or a coffee shop (with private students). The setting you decide to teach in will determine what kind of qualifications you need. You may need a Masters’ degree or only a CELTA or TESOL certificate. Sometimes, you may not need any additional training.

If you want to get a feel for teaching ESL before you make any big decisions, you could also become a volunteer tutor.

Go here to learn more about how to start teaching ESL.