Director's Note. Not only do graduates of our course obtain excellent teaching jobs in most cases, they also may find themselves in supervisory positions with other schools owing to their expertise in teaching EFL and ESL well and successfully, and to their knowing better than other graduate teachers how to deal with and resolve the English learning problems faced by their nationality of students. Such was the case with our graduate Steven Bosley, when he got out into the real world of teaching and encountered the human products of Thailand's imitation courses and the ripped-off graduates of those 'one-week miracle courses'. We now defer to Steven to tell us about his experiences in his own way...

"As a graduate of the TEXT-AND-TALK Academy TEFL course, I was already aware of the benefits it had, in terms of providing the needed skills, to launch a successful teaching career in Asia. However, it was only when I found myself in the role of Teaching Project Supervisor that I realized just how beneficial the course had actually been, as compared to courses offered by the competition.

The position of Project Supervisor allowed me autonomy over the hiring of teachers to fill the positions available. Very soon after I began the job, it became apparent that while some teachers were coping commendably, others were just not ‘making the grade’.
 
Surprisingly, at the time, there was a very strong correlation between the relative success of a teacher and the TEFL course he or she had undertaken. In a nutshell, the best teachers were TEXT-AND-TALK graduates and the worst teachers weren’t. Upon further investigation, I discovered that though other course graduates struggled also, the teachers who were struggling most of all had gained their certificates from courses that only offered one week's worth of training, spent mainly watching videos.

I now fully realized why the TEXT-AND-TALK graduates, with their six Course Modules and their intensive and well-balanced training, were performing comparatively so much better than their colleagues.

Subsequently, in order to offer the most professional service to our students, and to make my own job easier, I introduced a policy of only recruiting TEXT-AND-TALK graduates in the future."

To summarize Steven's account bluntly: It doesn't matter in how many countries of the world a training course may be provided, or how impressive the 'perks' may be (such as food discounts, 'guaranteed jobs' at starvation-level wages, etc), or how admirable may be the claims of being a 'non-profit' organization or 'the choice' of the Ministry of Education — the bottom line is that trainees need proper, caring instruction on how to become teachers (and they need to choose that!), and legitimate TEFL/TESOL course providers do not make a large amount of money. Rather, they devote their lives to teaching and training others to the very best of their abilities to become well-paid, professional instructors of English. That describes us! A good rule to follow is...