JB, are you f dense or something? I love guys like you. You keep me on the edge and help prove that I, along with my colleagues, know what the hell we're talking about.

I will tell folks to get a fake TESOL cert to "test drive" teaching before diving in and spending wads, and you throw a shit fit. Never mind I'm trying to make sure newbies have the info they need to help keep them from making bad decisions. You believe they will be helpless, hapless saps if they don't spend upwards of half their first year's salary on a one-month cert/diploma and plane ticket to the program. I say "get the fake", or at least "go cheap" on a cert. One will be better off.

And when I tell folks to get a master's degree in TESOL instead of a TESOL cert/diploma, you again throw a shit fit. Never mind that a master's degree will make them better teachers, more respectable teachers, more knowledgeable teachers, and better able to control their own destinies.

What gives, blowhard? I know you're trying to herd the sheep into some certificate program, but you have to know some of us out there, guys who've been in the trenches, see that a cert isn't really needed. A cert will actually tie one's hands to jobs he doesn't really want, such as teaching bratty kids at Hogwans in Korea or at high schools in Thailand where he'll make chicken scraps for pay, not to mention have to jump throw about a hundred annoying hoops.

Yes, what a TESOL teacher needs is some real credential firepower, such as a master's in TESOL. If every TESOL teacher had a master's in TESOL, he'd garner much more respect and would have to endure much less abuse. The TESOL world would be a much better place, which is the same argument interested types use to justify plopping down many hundreds for lame month-long TESOL cert programs.

Kapish?

This ICAL may be a good way to get a TESOL cert. It's cheap, and probably includes some good methodology. I dropped 1600 on a program that was a month long, required an 800-dollar plane flight, and got me a job in Thailand babysitting high school students who couldn't have cared less about learning English.

And the job I got later in South Korea didn't even require a TESOL. That job paid better, offered better housing and other benefits, and even paid for my flight to Busan. Too bad the director was a liar and tried to fix me up with a gig teaching unruly five-year-olds at his hogwan.

Yeah, I wish I could have found ICAL about three years ago. I would have saved some good money.

Rheno 747 wrote: Fake TESOL? Sure. Fake degree? No way.

Why condoning the faking of some qualifications and not others? Where do you draw the line?

Besides the moral or ethical implications, chances are that even a "fake TESOL" - as you put it, will come back to haunt you one day.

Be safe, stay true, and choose wisely!

ICAL_Pete