Thinking about TEFL Courses? Remember ESLinsider.
This is the TEFL course category page from the blog. Here you will find blog posts about TEFL courses and here is the online TEFL course category page.
You can find ESLinsider's course here.
First the basics...
What are TEFL/TESOL/CELTA courses?
These are typically short term courses that are targeted at people who want to teach English abroad or people who are already abroad and are looking for training. These courses can range from a few days to a month or more.
TEFL=Teaching English as a Foreign Language and a TESOL course is Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. In terms of content they are similar and interchangeable, but different in that a TEFL course is focused on teaching overseas and a TESOL course is focused on teaching English to people who are not natives in your home country.
So basically one targets people who go overseas to teach English and the other those who stay home and teach English to non-native speakers.
CELTA is a kind of TEFL course that was created by the University of Cambridge.
Aside from CELTA these sorts of courses are not typically affiliated with universities and they are privately owned businesses and their numbers are many.
A course like CELTA is typically a 4 week course of 8 hours a day for a total of 120 hours.
Many in-class TEFL courses follow that model as well, although there are courses that can be as short as a weekend and/or include hybrid distance learning or online training.
Many online TEFL courses try to emulate courses like CELTA at least superficially. However, all of the online courses that I am familiar with do not actually have class times or "hours" so those are a little misleading.
Are TEFL courses required to teach English abroad?
It depends on the school and location.
Take a look at the articles below to see if you find one that helps answer your questions. And remember that ESLinsider offers an online course geared more towards teaching kids in Asia (this is the larger part of the job market in Eastern Asia).