What makes a TEFL certificate internationally accepted?
Minimum 100 Hours
TEFL is an English training certificate and therefore requires some theoretical work in order to equip trainers to answer questions about sentence structure, exceptions, and more.
Practical Training
Every TEFL Training organization should do at least 12 hours of practical teaching experience, minimally 4 days of peer-to-peer training, and 3 days of practical in-class training with real students. This serves to give new teachers the confidence and experience to handle their first classes. In situations where this is not possible, such as online training and training in a native English country such as the USA 5 days of peer-to-peer training, or 3 hours of teaching footage with a report on reviews of mistakes and recommendations for improvement is required practice.
Native English Trainer
The fact that TEFL and TESOL teaching is mostly conversational and not theoretical it is imperative that the teacher trainer be a fluent English speaker that has been speaking English at home from a very young age. This means that teachers are trained in a natural speaking environment.
Certain countries classify Native English Speakers to be from one of 6 countries, The USA, Canada, Australia, The UK, and New Zealand, and South Africa, with a few exceptions not including South Africa in the classification. It is therefore recommended that the Teacher trainer be at least from one of the 6 nations above, if the trainer is not from one of the above nations an IELTS test score of at least 6 is mandatory for a certificate of accreditation from TEFL Accreditation.
