Hello,

I am from the United States. I took the TEFL/TESOL certificate course at ITTO's partner school in Cusco, Peru. Immediately after taking the course I began teaching at the same institute where I had been trained. I taught English in Cusco for 6 months to group classes of Peruvian adults. I loved teaching abroad, immersing myself in a different culture, taking salsa lessons and speaking Spanish.

After teaching, I traveled around South America and since have returned to the States. I currently teach private English classes. I recently took the ITTO online TBE course to enhance my TEFL training and portfolio.

The TBE course helped me see the distinctions between teaching a TEFL student and a TBE student. I have found the course to be helpful with my current students that work in corporations and need to improve their language skills for their job environment.

Valerie Noce
USA

Dear ITTO,

I would like to thank you for keeping me updated. Plans have changed very recently and my wife decided to pursue a doctorate degree in her current career. I have to give way. She's an ITTO TEFL Online certificate holder and is enjoying the fruits of her labor. It's so nice to share, and I'm very proud to say, that her ITTO TEFL online certificate paved the way to qualify her to teach English to foreign students in an international school in the Philippines. It's keeping her busy, teaching English to foreign students on weekdays, and studying on weekends... and she loves it.

I have decided to keep her momentum moving as she wants it. I'll keep in touch soon.

Best regards,
Rey

My new TEFL career is going very well thank you. I have been living in Beijing, China and teaching at Aihua Foreign Languages Academy for a month now and am loving every moment. I teach children between the ages of 8 and 12 on a part time basis. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures yet but will send you some and as soon as I have them.

You are more than welcome to give this e-mail address to your prospective students if they would like to contact me.

Thanks and have a great day,
Tracy Daniels

South Africa

Hello!
I live on Lamma Island, near Hong Kong, and love it. I have had no problem finding work though don't be fooled when they say NET teachers are very well paid. However the lifestyle is not expensive on Lamma; the rent is reasonable and you can buy a bag full of vegetables from the farmers for a couple of dollars.

There's a huge demand for English teachers for nursery school and I teach on the mainland (on the border of China) at the Salvation Army Schools). Though this is not what I was expecting to do the children are very clever and I love them!

I noticed that there is very little practical information to teach small children, the books available are either too "academic" too wordy, too boring, and no really interesting lesson plans, so...I wrote my own stories and lesson plans. I actually found a printer interested in finding a publisher for China and so this is what I do in my spare time - write lessons!

I could not have done this without ITTO and am very thankful to this organization. I recommend it totally for anyone who wants a TEFL certificate.

Here is the website: www.intermission.homestead.com You will find pictures of my Chinese students on the last page of "Photos".

Marisa Dalla Valle

USA

I don't regret my decision to take the online TEFL course through ITTO. I am currently teaching EFL to middle school students in South Korea. It is a public school. I also taught elementary school last semester. In Korea, a TEFL certificate is not required, so I am glad I did not spend thousands of dollars on an on-site course. Although I could have gotten my teaching job with no EFL training at all, the course gave me much more confidence and made me a better teacher. I found that the online course provided me with enough training for much less money. Besides, there is no single method or approach that will fully prepare you for any classroom, but this course gave me a solid foundation in a broad range of teaching methodologies and meaningful activities.

The course material was well organized for self study, and contained many exams that provided immediate feedback. The assignments at the end of each chapter were graded by my tutor, within a few days, who was an EFL teacher in Spain. Her comments, based on her experience as a teacher, were very meaningful.

I liked the emphasis on lesson planning. The course focuses on the sections of the plan that need to be developed in order to prepare an effective lesson, while giving you great flexibility in your plans. I didn't realize until I started teaching that a solid plan is needed to make you fully prepared for your lesson, even if you are the only one who will see it. It makes you appear more professional.

I saved all the resources I acquired through the course, and still refer to them when needed.

I hope I addressed all of your questions and concerns. If there is anything else you would like to know, please don't hesitate to ask.

Cynthia O'Brien

I am glad you decided to write to solve some of your doubts, I had a few doubts myself when I started the course, it was my first time taking a course online, and I found it hard to believe that they can teach you so much in so little time, but let me tell you that so far, I am very surprised to see that everything that I´ve learned and all the materials that I´ve gotten from my tutor are accurate and very useful in my classroom.
The lessons you will learn, will help you teach fun, interesting and affective classes. I think all the lessons are very specific and it really measures the capacity and ability a person has to teach.
I hope this will clear some of your questions and I´ll be happy to help you, if you have some questions regarding the tasks.

Carolina

Guatemala

There are several reasons why I am motivated to enroll with the ITTO Online course and teach English as a foreign language. Having worked at a desk job as a loan officer as well as in the lab as a chemist, I am looking for a different experience that is both challenging and rewarding.

link: See a testimonial from a trainee before & after taking our Online TEFL course

Michael P. Thompson
ITTO TEFL Trainee 2007

I think the amount of feedback I am getting is great. I've attended large college lectures where you don't get any individual attention so I'm enjoying the customized and frequent feedback from doing the tasks. You respond quite promptly, which is very nice for an impatient person like me! I truly did enjoy the course, and your feedback and guidance were very helpful.

Thank you very much for returning my task so quickly and for all the helpful information with it. It is great to get more ideas for explaining vocabulary and all the sources where to look up more information and ideas! It is very kind of you to provide me with quick feedback and all these websites, which will certainly come in handy and I will try to check them out as time goes by! I appreciate any extra input from what I'm currently reading or checking (so far mostly books). I'm glad I did the course and thank you once more for all your help - you certainly made it worthwhile for me and a great experience and they are lucky to have your service as online tutor! It's a shame you don't live closer, it would have been nice to meet.

God blessed me by giving me such a caring tutor. I am lucky to have you. You are so insightful and supportive. You were very helpful and patient with me and I appreciate it. Thanks again for your support and prompt feedback - not all co-workers taking this course are as fortunate as I have been in having you. The article on discipline was very useful to me. As far as future students to assist, don't change a thing. It gave me quite a boost when I received your reference letter. Thank you so much for all you help and interest. Once again I am grateful that I have you. I have gone on to 3 other on line courses and have more than once wished you were with me still.

Thank you so much for your feedback. You have great teaching strategies and insights. I love the warm support you give me. Thank you once again. The attachments you have sent are so fun. Even though you are in another continent altogether, the time difference has never made any impact, to times when I have reached out for advice, as you have been there faster to respond than people living in my own country!!!

My tutor was always very fast with her response and the feedback was most of the times very useful. She helped me a lot. She also was very enthusiastic and motivated me a lot! Because of all the good reactions I had from my teacher it made me do the course more intensively and better. I was really into it! Thanks for always the good and positive remarks. I would recommend her to anyone. She was a good help and a good motivator with good and adequate feedback! She did a great job, as a motivator, a good feedbacker and a good corrector! An excellent teacher who sees things the student doesn't see.

Yes I would recommend her! I have been teaching English with Berlitz© for more than 10 years but all her feedbacks helped me to increase more knowledge on teaching. Gave me great ideas, and makes the course a real learning experience.

Thank you very much for the course and the grade that I got from ITTO. It was great working with Pav and Maribel.  Thank you, too, for the very comprehensive, very organized and very systematic course.

I would highly recommend this course to anyone who needs to get skills and a job fast. I got a job before I finished the program. What else can I say? It doesn’t get any better than that.

The practical training was great. I’m glad I had the opportunity to teach 10 different classes

Hola ITTO! Thank you for your time in finding work information for India. I am so happy with ITTO's post course help! Take care! (After a year and a half).

Job placement was great and the staff, on whole, was friendly and great to work with. Thank you.

Thanks so much for all of your help, I look forward to seeing you soon!! Take care.

I would first thank ITTO for their courses which I had. In fact, though I am a teacher, I found out during the training that I still lacked some knowledge. But now I have acquired that from this training. Everything was useful, no exceptions. And I wish to recommend others who wish to get their tefl online to sign up with your institution. They will never regret any money spent. I am fully enlightened by the training and more confident in my future teaching. Once more, thanks very much. I love you guys ....thumbs up..

I thought the entire course was well planned, interesting and useful, and my instructor was very friendly and approachable. Creating the lesson plans was the most challenging but probably also the most useful tasks. I also found the Grammar and Pronunciation and Grammar Mentor sections really helpful, since they had a lot of specific examples of common problems and topics. And I enjoyed all the evaluation methods: the multiple choice tests and fill-in the blank questions and the variety of the tasks.

The course was harder than I expected but after completing it; I understand why.