Yes… but when it comes to the choice of cheapest places to do a CELTA… it kinda wins… Especially if you mostly stay away from the FUN places…
Cheers!
Daryl
Daryl_ks, my school used to be involved with a local ECE group that got together every few months to do workshops or presentations based on early childhood education. Mostly seemed run by Taipei American School and there haven’t been any meetings so far this year. Jdsmith and bassman et al have run some informal meetings for language teachers.
All it takes is someone to say, “Hey!” and a place to meet. Something like that is totally needed for those who take their job of teaching seriously and want to grow as educators, even if they don’t wish to pursue it as a permanent career.
Hartley, how’s it coming on the CELTA/CELTYL/DELTA front? Inquiring minds want to know.
Language schools in North-east Asia don’t recognize any form of professional TEFL training.
You don’t make any more money than someone who has no degree or prior experience.
You won’t end up with a better job, necessarily.
The only reason you would do a CELTA or other courses like is for personal developement reasons. Reasons that are related to an interest in becoming a better teacher and a better person.
If you’re motivated for more money or a better job, you’re not really necessarily going to get it with a CELTA.
And that’s why, I think, most people don’t spend their own $2,500 on the course.
Bottom line - to get a normal EFL job in East Asian countries you don’t need a TEFL cert or even a degree.
In terms of DELTA, I’m now a DELTA local tutor, and already working with one candidate here who is doing it by distance. In terms of CELTA/CELTYL my boss still needs more convincing that it’s viable in Taiwan - worth all the paperwork etc. I’m still working on it.
Yes, the timing of seminars is spectacularly bad - we do sometimes have weekend workshops, though there haven’t been any for a while due to the fact that most of us here work a Tues-Sat or Sun-Thur week and so are busy. Will discuss with Mr Boss and keep you posted.
Hartley,
I’m very interested in the DELTA distance course and would like to discuss it further with you. Can we meet?
Paul
As Shimokitizawa stated… we are not gonna get better pay out of this, especially in Taiwan… (and other areas around SE Asia…)
But my reasons are personal, working in Taiwan I make more than I would in Europe or other places (with only a CELTA)… I have a decent job that has excellent benefits, a great working environment, but no prof. devt… I am in Taichung BTW…
I would also be interested in meeting to discuss DELTA, although I have to wait 2 years post-CELTA to apply (and only just finished my CELTA)… As such, I was kinda concerned about the work-experience in Taiwan and how it would set one up for the DELTA… my point being that it wouldn’t set one up very well as most schools here have no professional development and do not encourage their teacher’s to grow as professionals…
I would love to do the CELTYL as soon as possible… As such would love to meeti and talk about possibilities on that. Would even go as far as trying to canvass opinion of people in Taichung who might be interested in doing a course run by the BC in Taipei…
Anyhow, please keep us abreast of the situation…
Cheers!
Daryl
[quote=“viba”]Hartley,
I’m very interested in the DELTA distance course and would like to discuss it further with you. Can we meet?
Paul[/quote]
A couple of co-workers of mine were interested in doing the distance DELTA a while back. When they enquired with British Council Hong Kong and Cambridge ESOL, they were told that it is usually only available to British Council teachers. It seems that the main reason that Cambridge ESOL set up the distance program was because there was good demand from the Council. It may sound a bit discriminatory to only allow BC teachers to do it by distance, but in reality I think it would be hard to run a decent program if it were open to just anybody as it would be pretty hard to organize tutors. Hartley, is it still policy that the DELTA is only offered in house?
I’ve been generally impressed with the DELTA teachers I work with [I don’t have one, so I have no interest in promoting it]. I work with a good number of folks who have MAs but no practical training, so the DELTA/Trinity Dip folks are a breath of fresh air. They’re usually better at articulating their ideas on teaching than the MA without practicum people. However, an MA will get you more jobs. In this part of the world, it’s mostly just BC that appreciates and actively recruits DELTA/Trinity Dip people. If I already had a cert level qualification that included a rigorous teaching practice component and my circumstances limited me to only distance courses, I would lean more toward doing a distance MA. I would lean even further that way if I planned to stay in Asia for the long term. The DELTA is still a solid course, though.
I am not in Taiwan and I did my CELTA many years ago. I would just like to make a few comments.
Obviously there is a need for more training and certification of teachers in Taiwan but why does it have to be CELTA? Why not just write your own curriculum for the Taiwan TEFL certificate? That way you could get things set up easier without having to pay a lot of money to UCLES to get them to approve the course. Also you could make the content more relevant to teachers in Taiwan. e.g. more focus on teaching children and learning problems specific to Taiwanese students.
Also I don’t think a full time course would attract many participants in Taiwan. There are quite a few full time courses offered in Thailand. However, this is because of low living costs in Thailand and many people go there for extended vacations.
I would like to suggest the following model that might work better in Taiwan. I suggest setting up a TEFL Training centre that doesn’t offer TEFL certificates as its primary and sole product. Instead it would offer TEFL training. Teachers that complete a set number of hours or credits at the school would then be awarded a TEFL certificate. This would benefit both the school and the teachers. Teachers would be encouraged to continue studying to get the certificate while they wouldn’t have to commit to a full time course.
As mentioned above a four week full time course is unlikely to work in Taiwan. What you could offer is a week full time introductory course. This would be targeted at teachers newly arrived in Taiwan. They would then find a job teaching. Over the following year they would complete additional courses and have their teaching observed. For teachers already in Taiwan they could skip the introductory course but enrol in the additional courses offered and have their teaching observed in their school.
Hopefully schools would appreciate the value of the training and allow their teachers to be observed. OVer time schools might also send their teachers there for training. Perhaps there could also be tailor made orientation or introduction course for schools to train their new teachers.
The thing about the CELTA/DELTA course, Wix, is that the name has a high reputation and therefore they have to have high standards in order to maintain that. By throwing together a course, there would be no one to put any kind of official stamp to know whether or not it was quality, be it potential candidates or their employers. I think the CELTA has a lot of relevance to teaching in Taiwan, even in teaching children.
Sure, right now, there aren’t a whole lot of places who may appreciate the effort put in by a candidate in undertaking this course, but as these certificates and diplomas get more exposure and schools see the higher effectiveness and dedication of those teachers who have gone through the program, they will sit up and take notice.
And where are you people getting the figure of $2499 for a CELTA course from? I paid 799 GBP in 2003 which is about $1410 USD. For places in Asia, I suspect the price would be even lower.
I honestly can’t see how improving the quality of English teaching in Taiwan is a bad thing, that is except maybe for the low-lifes who are only doing it for the money with no vested interest in improving themselves as educators and fear that they might actually have to put some effort in order to secure a job once standards are driven up by those who are more dedicated to their job. People pay more money for economy class plane tickets home for Christmas for one week than the cost of doing the CELTA for one month.
Hartley, I think if you offered a part-time CELTA course with a CETYL add-on, you’d get traffic from not only Taiwan, but from Korea and Japan (maybe?). And ask your boss, who is questioning the marketability of having a CETYL course here, to compare the number of schools for adults to the number of schools for children. I think common sense might win there. 
I recently completed my CELTA in Bangkok and paid $1,400 US… I did a bit of searching around before I went and that seemed to be the cheapest…
I chose the CELTA because it was just about the mostly highly respected standard ELT cert. That and because I want to go on to do DELTA…
But as a serious (or wanting to be serious) language teacher it seems pretty difficult.
I currently have a very good job, but their idea of professional development is to have the current teachers do a once a month workshop and teach ourselves to teach… or else hire some guy from HESS to do an hour’s worth of training…
I guess (or at least hope) that the British Council is a good place to work and they offer decent professional development for their staff… However, places like the British Council seem few and far between in Taiwan…
I love Taiwan, my wife is from here, and we have strong family ties to this place… But as we are both serious ELT’s we cannot seriously see ourselves in Taiwan for the long-term… It is a good place to earn money and save (though maybe not as good as the mid-east)… but I see it becoming harder and harder to stay here for any length of time if the current situation does not change… that and Europe does beckon (although the cost of living does not)…
CHeers!
Daryl
As the hunt for jobs in Taiwan becomes more competitive, those of us who love Taiwan have to increase our credentials in teaching in order to keep up. More and more schools are requiring that people have language teaching credentials in order to be employed here.
Unfortunately, there is no CELTA training program in Taiwan. 
As Taiwan’s English test scores are well below other nations in the region, it seems raise the requirements of teachers here. I have a modest proposal. I think the government should require all language teachers here to have certification. They could offer a CELTA program here. Those teachers already here without the certification would be required to take it and learn as they work. They could have two years to finish their certificates. If a program were offered here, I think it would be a popular option for many teachers looking to improve their resumes 
. I think we need to find a way to get the ball rolling on this. C’mon! Who’s with me 
?
I understand that the British Council have looked into this on a number of occasions and came to the conclusion it ain’t worth it.
You need to be aheerful.
Local market sees no value in having a CELTA and therefore won’t pay extra to those who have. Therefore there’s no demand from EFL teachers here to take a CELTA. It’s a crying shame, but it’s the way it is.
Which points out, in my opinion, why Taiwan is ranking far behind other asian countries in English ability. Poorer countries than Taiwan are holding CELTA certification programs. 
[quote=“tomthorne”]Catch 22 situation. Local market sees no value in having a CELTA and therefore won’t pay extra to those who have. Therefore there’s no demand from EFL teachers here to take a CELTA. It’s a crying shame, but it’s the way it is.[/quote]
It’s not down to the government to offer uldn’t really be an acceptable use of people’s taxes.
Switzerland?
Come on, bc, we can all figure out why Taiwanese students struggle to acquire English. One of the few areas the govt. has easy control over is the qualifications of foreigners teaching English. They don’t have to pay for it, just add it to the visa requirements. Job done. Small slice of the pie sorted overnight.
A criminal background check from the home country would be a nice touch, too.
Switzerland is near the top of the ‘league’ in tests such as IELTS.
That won’t happen. Would you have got a CRB check at your own expense to teach at Shane? I certainly wouldn’t have bothered.
Students levels of English wouldn’t rise with higher bars for English teaching: it would just further elitify cram school learning. Or leave all the good jobs for JFR … ah!
Regulation of cramschools (private businesses) is undertaken by the government. The OP was suggesting that the government get involved in provision of a CELTA course. If the government were to spend extra tax yuan, it’d better off getting behind TKT or something for school teachers. shrug smily
Having a pool of short term transient teachers with CELTAs working in elective after-school / work English class providers isn’t going to make Taiwan surge up the league tables. It’ll still be hovering around the bottom with China, Japan, Korea, and Arabic speaking countries.
A bunch of waiguoren who did a few sessions on whether zero is a real conditional and how to PPP 'em while not getting yer OHT film upside down is a fart in a typhoon.
It’s absolutely natural for teachers to think they are the main variable in a class, simply because they are the only controllable variable, and nobody would suggest that that variable be not ‘controlled’ in any way. But Taiwan is what it is in terms of testing. It ain’t moving up the league tables.
Exactly.
The government isn’t going to do anything that is not in the business interest of it’s citizens, and cram schools are big business. The more experience and qualifications a person has, the higher the wage they will expect. To increase the pool of more highly qualified teachers would increase the cost, something that NO business wants. Wages for native English speaking teachers haven’t increased in 15+ years. Businesses like it that way. Cram schools like the steady supply of people willing to work for low wages. Can you imagine how they’d scream if that dried up?
Aside from personal development, there is no financial incentive to get a CELTA for teaching in Taiwan. It is not going to increase wages and it’s debatable whether it would improve the speaking ability of the locals (I agree with Buttercup).
If the government was sincerely interested in improving the English ability of it’s citizens, the changes would start in the primary and secondary schools where students get 6 years of daily, sometimes twice-daily English classes. The emphasis would have to be taken off test results and put on speaking ability. More English would be used in teaching English, first of all. Stop teaching English grammar in Chinese like it was some be-all-end-all mathematical formula. The purpose of language is to communicate, not spout grammar rules and all their exceptions. Second, students would be divided into classes according to their ability and not their age, allowing people to progress at their own pace. Putting all levels together means the lower level students are overwhelmed and shut down and higher level students are bored to tears. But, that would be discrimination and parents here would never allow someone else’s kid get more “opportunity” than theirs.
I’d be more interested in learning how to better motivate students to WANT to learn English. How to make it more interesting, relevant to their lives and personal interests and fun. They certainly don’t get cranked about learning grammar rules.
Don’t forget there are many native-born Taiwanese graduates of linguistics/TESOL/English programs who are in the market. (n.b. I’m not saying anything about the quality of their education or their English-language communication skills) In general, they are not going to make as much as we are (in terms of an hourly basis). So if School-x is wondering whether or not to hire a foreigner with a CELTA, well now there is even less of a reason for it to do so - the business is determined by the bottom line and we’re already expensive enough as it is. Although more schools are asking for some sort of certification, I don’t think they’re willing to pay much extra for that.
For example, I was offered an extra NT$50 per hour because I held a CELTA. I also hold a Master’s degree. That was also an extra NT$50. But ‘the rules’ stipulated I could only receive one of the two pay bumps. A certificate acquired in a month of full-time study and a graduate degree acquired after one or two years of full-time study are worth the same thing. Lovely.
Do the CELTA for yourself. As a novice I found it rather useful. But don’t expect a pay bump because you have one. And as other posters have mentioned, the numbers in Taiwan don’t justify the expense in setting up a full-time CELTA program.