I completed The TEFL Academy's online Qualifi level 5 course. Anyone who has spent a little bit of time researching different English teaching courses will know already that there are a number of different pathways to becoming an EFL teacher. I had originally hoped to do the Cambridge CELTA course. I even found a school where I could complete the course 100% online without having to attend the classroom. But I really couldn’t justify spending two thousand Euros or more on a 120-hour course, and even less so when I discovered what The TEFL Academy offers for a fraction of that cost. When I first came across the TEFL Academy via a Google search, I had my doubts about whether their certificate would carry much weight in the teaching world, so I spent a lot of time researching them, looking for genuine, honest reports and feedback from students who had completed the course, reading review platforms and forums… and I discovered that The TEFL Academy's course receives consistent five-star reviews and excellent feedback across all of the trusted review platforms and I soon became confident that this course was a good choice to obtain and certify the necessary knowledge and skills to begin my career in TEFL. I finished the course just a week ago and I’m already working as an online English teacher; obviously, being newly qualified and this being my first teaching job, I’m not making fortunes yet! But at the rate I’m earning, working just three hours a day, 5 days a week, the course will have paid for itself, completely, in under three weeks so for me that’s a big success! A great start. Studying TEFL was something I'd wanted to do for over ten years but until recently hadn't had the time, energy or motivation. So it was one of the few positive things that came from the pandemic for me. I had some limited previous experience of teaching adults and so was already familiar with lesson plans, schemes of work and other procedures covered by this course. I speak Spanish as a second language and am interested in languages in general, so I had some expectations of the course being quite easy for me. It isn't. It's challenging; there's a lot to learn. Sure, you can probably brush over many parts if your main goal is to get the certificate and you're happy with achieving only the minimum required pass marks, but if you're using this as an opportunity to start a new career, all of the important things you need to be a successful EFL teacher are there in the course. If you put the effort in, you're going to get a lot out of it. When you sign-up, you're granted immediate access to the course material, so you can roll up your sleeves and dig straight in. This was a big plus for me; I'm a spontaneous person which means I can lose interest as quickly as I find it and my impatience often gets in the way of me seeing things through to completion. So to be able to begin the course straightaway was key to getting off on the right foot and ultimately to keeping me engaged all through it. After the first couple of hours of study, I began to have my doubts about whether the “168 hours” the course claimed to be was at all realistic. I felt like I was going to complete the course in half that time. I was wrong. 168 hours is indeed accurate, and that’s before you add in the optional further study. This is an excellent, in-depth course which is exactly what it claims to be. Have no doubts. The course is structured logically. It flows naturally and is broken down into manageable chunks which are quick to digest. It's easy to navigate your way around and to locate the parts you want to revisit. You’ll find short, interactive quizzes throughout the material. These check your learning as well as help you to make sense of what you've just read. They also give you a bit of a break after taking in a lot of written information. The course comprises of ten units each comprising of two to three sections. At the end of every unit there's a computer-marked test composed of multiple-choice questions / gap fills etc. I found a lot of the test questions easy, and others require some careful thought and judgement. Take your time with the tests. Read the questions and instructions carefully and think about your answers, though it doesn't matter if you don't reach the required score; you can retake the tests as many times as you need to. I made a small number of slip ups on the tests but passed them all first time with high marks. Treat them as a way to check your own learning and identify parts of the course that you need to revisit. In addition to the lessons and test, each unit has a Further Reading section where you’ll find links to resources around the internet, relevant to the topics covered in the unit. You'll want to keep these lists; they're useful. Right click anywhere on the page, click "save as" and choose somewhere to save the page. Units 5, 7 and 10 have an examiner-marked assignment in addition to the end of unit computer- marked tests. These three assignments were more detailed and demanding than I expected. I was surprised when I saw what was required for the first of these assignments. That’s when things started to get serious! The assignments provide opportunities to put what you've learnt into practice, to revise your notes and the course material and to demonstrate to yourself and to the examiner your skills and abilities. Each assignment is introduced through a short video tutorial which gives you a clear idea of what’s required. More detailed requirements and explanations are provided in written form and a check-list is also included which is a very useful tool to ensure that you have covered everything you’re required to. When I sat down to begin the first assignment, I found it overwhelming; I just didn't know where to start. The key is to read through the instructions and the templates, and just start somewhere. Start with an idea and build it up from there. You'll be flicking backwards and forwards through the various pages of the assignment and building it up step by step. It gets easier as you make progress. I spent 15 hours or more on each assignment. Marking takes 8 days. You can advance to the next units after completing the first assignment but you don't have access to the second assignment until the first one has been marked. it was a little bit frustrating not being able to look at the next assignment to start putting some ideas together but having the feedback from the first assignment is helpful before approaching the second. For each of the three assignments, you either receive the grade Pass, Merit or Distinction, or are asked to resubmit your work. Your overall grade for the course is calculated based on the grades for these. I put, what I considered, a huge amount thought and effort into the coursework. I received a Merit grade for the first assignment – I had obviously aimed and hoped for a Distinction but was happy enough with Merit. For the second assignment, I pushed myself even harder, determined to get a Distinction, did additional research to make sure I was giving my best, and when I submitted it, I was confident that everything was excellent and worthy of a Distinction. I got another Merit! A Merit is a fantastic grade of course, considering that I’d not had any experience of teaching English but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little bit disheartened. The markers gave me very detailed feedback and drew to my attention the points that I could improve. The feedback is fair, accurate and helpful. This is the first level 5 course I’ve studied – the bar is set high for these assignments so don’t feel disappointed if you don’t achieve the grade you hoped for – and remember that there are students on this course who already have a high-level study experience, who already have English teaching experience and are familiar with a lot of the concepts, students with university degrees (level 7) and with polished study skills, so even completing and passing this course is a massive achievement. But remember to aim as high as you can – the markers are looking for a very significant level of understanding. My overall grade was a Merit which I’m of course very happy about! I've seen, in a very small number of reviews of this course, that some students haven't been happy that the material can't be downloaded and kept. I imagine the academy does this to prevent the course being freely shared around. The course material contains excellent, well-written content and if it was easy to find for free elsewhere, the course, for me, would feel less valuable. Tip: I use the free version of Dropbox which has a really handy feature of saving screenshots automatically when you press the "print screen" button on your keyboard. At the end of each section, I went back to page 1 and worked through the pages again, pressing "print screen" on each page, then moved all of those screenshots into a folder identified by the unit’s name. This takes just a couple of minutes for each section and means I can look back at anything whenever I want; not just for the six months the course is available to me. Even so, do get into the habit of making your own detailed notes as you work through the course. After each paragraph, I wrote a summary of it in my own words in my notebook, (or rather notebooks; it's a lot of information), and at the end of the unit, typed up my notes for the whole unit. It might seem like a lot of work. It is. But for me it was a great way to properly process what I'd learnt. And it means I now have ten Word documents, each with all of the information from each unit, written in my own words i.e. in a way which I understand easily. So anything I want to look back on is readily available whenever I need it, and will be there forever. The course covers all of the main areas that you need to begin your teaching career. It provides specific training for teaching each of the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) as well as for teaching grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. It also covers classroom management, materials / resources and a wide range of other relevant aspects of TEFL. You'll learn a lot about English language which you'll find harder or easier depending on your prior knowledge. In the units on grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation study, If you’re a native English speaker, you’ll learn the theory behind a language that you already speak, so this part is similar to learning a foreign language but with the advantage of already being nine tenths of the way there. A couple of things I'd change about the course: The format is largely focussed on you reading through the material to learn it. I would have liked for some of the sections to have been taught through different methods, such as video presentations, podcasts etc. I'd have liked to have had a way to interact with other students; some kind of forum, organised by course unit, so that students could help each other make sense of the course material and the tutors can give guidance on specific issues, with this being available for all students, present and future, to refer to. I'd also have liked to have seen other kinds of live interaction between tutors and students, such as a webinar. In fact, The TEFL Academy does offer a ten-hour teaching practice webinar as a separate product, but I would have liked to have seen a little bit of this type of interaction on the course itself. It would have made it feel a little bit more authentic and complete. There were around four instances throughout the course when I needed some help with the material or assignments. The academy uses a support ticket system; you fill in your details and your issue and a tutor replies to you by email. In all cases the tutor got back to me in a reasonable timeframe and with the help I needed. When I signed up to the course, a free 30-hour top-up course was offered. I could choose between three different courses. This added value to the course and meant I could get some additional knowledge and skills in my choice of area. I certainly recommend the course as a way to get a good knowledge of TEFL. The online course doesn't provide any supervised teaching practice so you'll need to be prepared to jump in at the deep end when you begin teaching (or pay for the teaching practice webinar if you want some hands-on practice first). Cambridge's CELTA course is a requirement for a lot of teaching jobs (and for many others it isn't). A university degree is sometimes another requirement for teaching jobs in certain countries or with certain employers. Some employers don't specify that you have to have the CELTA but do specify that your course has to have included a certain amount of practical work / supervised teaching practice, so it's important that you realise the potential limitations of an online course in relation to which direction you're planning to steer your career towards. I did this course to learn TEFL in order to work for myself; to teach from home and online, and perhaps in the future I'll want my own language school to work from. I've seen many examples of people working in language schools around the world after completing this course so it's apparent that you don't necessarily need a university degree or CELTA qualification to fulfil your career dream. What you do most definitely need is a solid grounding in TEFL and a commitment to lifelong learning. So this course is an excellent place to begin your journey. The course represents tremendous value for money and it will unlock the door to your highly rewarding new career as an EFL teacher.