FAQ's
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.

Questions and Answers from our Team of Student Advisers

The university has a large team of volunteer student advisers. They are full time ESL teachers that help the university on a non-paid basis and provide useful, up-to-date information in the world of ESL teaching, for our students.
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. This can be an expensive process and best handled by an attesting agent in the country you are from. There are many pitfalls with the attesting procedure, for example if you are from the USA, but you obtained your degree from a 'cloud based' university that provides 'distance learning' courses (like us), it may become too costly to warrant having it done, and still may fail the attesting procedure. Governmental educational departments that play a part in the attesting procedure, often don't recognize 'non-campus based' universities, and will only endorse a list of campus based universities in their countries. Since around 90% of ESL teaching positions do not require your documents to be attested, we suggest that you ignore the positions that require this, unless you have a campus-based degree in the first place and are happy to spend a large sum of money to get this done. ESL teaching salaries don't warrant the cost of spending several thousand dollars every time you move to a new teaching position!

Note: If there are countries you would like to travel to while teaching, and don't want the enormous costs and problems associated with the attesting your degree, you should consider visiting these countries on a tourist or business visa, then teach online while you are there! (this is also a great way to make an online living in the comfort of your own home!).
Online teaching companies do not require your degrees to be attested as you are not looking to get a 'work permit' or 'work visa' in that country. Our degrees are perfectly suited to this alternative method of teaching. Visit our 'Teaching Online' page for more information and a huge list of company websites where you can instantly apply for online teaching jobs!

Q. Which visa should I apply for to work abroad as an ESL teacher?
A. Good question! I currently work as an ESL teacher in Saudi Arabia (best paid jobs there!). They have two types of work visa. The first is an 'iqama' visa (residential work visa). This type of visa is the worst one to get! It requires you to get all your documents notarized/attested and requires a police clearance letter from the country you are from, a full medical and much more. This will cost you a lot of time and money, and will have to be done each year! With this visa, you also have to get an exit visa to leave the country! The other visa is a simple 'work visit' visa. This does not require you to do any of the above. The company you are going to work for submits a copy of your degrees and transcripts, a job offer and a letter to say that they intend on employing you, to their ministry of foreign affairs, and the visa is issued when you present these documents to the Saudi Arabian embassy.... easy and uncomplicated process!

Obviously, different countries have different rules and visa types and these are constantly changing. Thailand for example, changed their rules in 2016, and now require that university degrees match those on their approved 'campus based' lists, however, due to the extreme lack of ESL teachers there, many schools (especially in the poorer cities and provinces like Buriram and Issan) will employ teachers without applying for work permits through their government departments (they class them as 'volunteer' teachers) . So many teachers go to work there with a simple 12 month 'business' visa, obtained via the Thai embassy in their own country. In most South American countries, you simply turn up and get a job!

Max Diamond
Senior Student Adviser
University Admin