FAQ's
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We hope this section of the website answers any questions you may have. If the answer you are looking for is not listed here, feel free to send us an email, using the 'contact form' in the website menu above. We are here to help you in any way we can!
Q. Is this an online course?
A. None of our courses are completed online. For our degree courses we provide a full correspondence course. This is completed by the student in their own time and returned to us, via an online drop-box, for marking and grading. Students simply download 'editable' MS Word documents (one for each module) and complete their assignments by adding their essays and coursework to each module document, after-which they save and return each completed module document back to us, via the drop-box. With regard to our 120 Hour TEFL Course, the 'editable' MS Word exam document is downloaded by the student and they have 48 hours to complete it and return it to us, via the drop-box. It's as easy as that, and can be done from anywhere in the world, in the comfort of your own home! Q. If I have any questions or difficulties during the course, is it OK to ask for help? A. We always have student advisers on hand, to help students with any problems they may have. Q. Does The TEFL University offer any other courses? A. No. We are a 'specialist' niche university, dealing only with TEFL related courses, which is why we are good at what we do! Q. Is The TEFL University accredited? A. Yes. We are internationally accredited by Tecca.org for all our courses and certification. Tecca are universally renown for the quality of their international accreditation and therefore, to obtain this accreditation, is indeed an honour for us. Q. You have several TEFL courses on offer. Do I need to take all of them to get a job? A. The standard 120 Hour TEFL course is OK for many countries, however some schools, agencies and governments require teachers to have a degree of some sort or another. The reason for this is that the schools in many countries have difficulty in applying for teacher 'work permits' from their governments, unless the teacher has a degree. Q. Is there an exam with the BA, MA or PhD Degree TEFL Courses A. The BA, MA and PhD TEFL Courses are based on essay's and other projects. When you complete them, they are each marked, and a grade awarded. The grade you get will determine what 'honours' are awarded with your degree. The 'honour' system is as follows: Degree with First Class Honours Degree with Upper Second Class Honours Degree with Second Class Honours Degree with Lower Second Class honours Degree with Third Class honours Degree We rarely have students complete the course and not be awarded a degree, however, it is important that you read and understand the course projects, before you start each essay. It is also important to check your grammar, punctuation and sentence structure when submitting completed essays, as this is also 'scored' when marking and grading essays. Researching the essays on the Internet is easy, however, we always look for originality, and that you have a complete understanding of each essay project. Q. How long will it take me to study the 120 hour TEFL course? A. Generally, it takes students around one month to study the course book, however, you may take as much time as you need, until you feel confident enough, to take the exam. Q. Are The TEFL University certificates and courses, recognised by employers and governments around the world? A. All our courses and certificates are recognised worldwide, by employers and government agencies. We pride ourselves on the quality of the courses that we provide to students. These courses and exams are above the industry standard. Q. Do you help students to find work? A. Sorry, we are educators, and not an employment agency, however, we do get approached by such organizations and help students and employers, when we can. The truth is that there are so many excellent TEFL employment agencies out there. Students never have any difficulty in finding employment, as the world is screaming out for ESL teachers! Q. Do you have a payment plan? A. Since our courses are already highly subsidized by our sponsors, we simply cannot offer payment plans. The small course fee's we charge are used to cover the posting of certificates and the marking of exams. We do not profit from our courses! Q. With the BA, MA and PhD TEFL Courses, do you provide a 'student transcripts' with the degree certificates? A. Yes, we provide transcripts, and we also provide students with a 'License to Teach International English', as part of the certification package Q. Is The TEFL University based in the UK? A. Though we were initially established in the United Kingdom, we are an internationally accredited 'cloud based' university with no allegiance to any country. We do not have a student campus since we only provide 'distance learning' correspondence courses. We also have an agency office in Thailand that provides 'live' in-class training and observation services for those that request or require them. Our management and student advisory team is made up of British and American staff, based in several countries around the world. Q. I have seen many 'fake' and 'life' degrees on the Internet, are your courses and certificates the same? A. NO. We do however understand student concerns due to the vast number of these 'fake' universities and companies out there offering ready made certificates for a fee. These 'businesses' damage the education system, as people can simply buy a degree or certificate without learning anything. Students from The TEFL University must successfully complete our courses and exams to be issued certificates. You cannot simply buy a degree from us! Q. If a potential employer or agency contacts The TEFL University to validate a certificate, can you provide this service? A. We provide a full validation service to schools, employment agencies and employers. They can find a link on the website to do this, and by entering the certificate ID number (located on every certificate we issue) we can inform them if the certificate is genuine or fake and the full details of whom it was issued to! Q. I started the 120 Hour TEFL Course, but found a couple of the website links in the free course book, did not work? A. We do our best to keep the 120 Hour TEFL Course Book up to date, however, if a link is not working, you should visit the 'Free Resources' page on our website, where you will find all the website and book links contained in our book. This is where we 'update' links with new links when old links become unavailable, so check there when you find a link not working in the book! Q. I understand the certificates are sent to us by courier, but can you also provide a downloadable copy of the originals A. We do indeed provide students with a PDF copy of each certificate to instantly download, as well as the originals, which are sent, anywhere in the world, via International courier service (delivery takes 10 working days or less). The PDF copies enable students to add these files to a free hosting service or website, in order that potential employers can quickly and easily download them. Q. How do I get my degree notarized? A. This is a simple procedure. The original copies of your degree and transcripts must be given to a notary public, a lawyer or a solicitor. They will then make a copy of the documents and stamp/notarize these as copies of the original documents. If you are currently teaching in a foreign country, you can either send your documents back to your own country via an agent who will arrange the notarization of your documents and return the originals and notarized copies back to you, or you may also be able to have them notarized at your embassy in the country you are currently working in. Q. What do I have to do to get my degree attested? A. If you currently have a degree which was obtained at a campus based university in the country you are from, then attesting your certificates will not be a problem, although we do suggest that you use an 'apostille service' in your country to complete the process, as it is easy to make an error and have it rejected by your government. Unfortunately, at this time, it is simply not possible to have our certification attested (notarization is not a problem). We are a ‘cloud based’ university, not a ‘campus based’ university. In most countries, government attesting of certificates is reserved for universities that have a campus and are based there. This is primarily a monetary issue and largely due to the taxation each government receives from their campus based universities, and the interest they make by providing student loans. Students use our service because they can neither afford the time or money to take a course in a campus based university. Graduates have no problem finding work with our certification, but jobs that require the attesting of our certification for residential work visa applications, are unfortunately out of reach. We have graduates that work in Saudi Arabia for example, however, they only look for positions that offer a 'work visit visa' there, which does not require the attesting of certificates, rather than their residential 'iqama' work visa which does require certificates to be attested. Good news for teaching in China! In September 2017, China decided to make it compulsory that all foreign teachers must have their degree certificates attested. This resulted in thousands of teachers leaving the country as they were unwilling to pay the high cost's plus all the stress and drama it takes to get this done. China has now backed down on this and has put a new and simple system in place. Teachers travel to China on a tourist visa (as before), then take a picture (or use a PDF copy) of their degree and upload it to the Chinese government website and pay the $50.00 charge (the staff at the school will help you do this as the website is mostly in Chinese!, and will probably use their credit/debit card to make the payment). The link to the government site for this process is: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/xmUwR3tgYYiKghiJ1D9vNw. Once this is done, the school will send you to Hong Kong, where you present your original certificate and collect your working visa. Our certification is also ideal for teaching Chinese students online. You will find a large selection of schools around the world, looking for online teachers, on our ‘Teaching Online’ page. The good news is that most ESL teaching positions around the world do not require you to have your certification attested, so you will always find work! The future of education is changing at a rapid pace and we hope that one day, governmental departments will soon realize that online education is quickly becoming the norm in the 21st century, and they will need to make way for it, especially when you consider that online or correspondence courses, such as ours, are identical to those offered by ‘campus based’ universities. 
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