I'm glad we agree.

It'd be great if more teachers took these qualifications especially if they plan to spend at least a few years working in ESL. There is the prospect that they can lead to higher paid jobs although unfortunately in China many employers still don't know how to discriminate or choose not to discriminate between the various qualifications that are out there. At the very least they tend to make a teacher's job easier by introducing simple teaching methodology. It's my observation that those teachers who don't understand the basic principles of lesson planning (setting aims and objectives, anticipating learner difficulties, etc.) take much longer over the whole process with ultimately poorer results. Such teachers are generally just seeking ways of filling the time which is not always easy to do in a classroom.