Certification for teaching English

Hello everyone,

I'm currently a third year university student in Canada. When I graduate, I would love to try teaching English in Japan. Right now, I am considering making some changes to my major.

For those of you who have experience with teaching English, what do you think is the best major / certification to have for this kind of position? What do employers love to see?

My school does offer TESL certification, so I guess that is an obvious one. I could also get a minor in Education.

I would really like to get some direction. Thanks in advance for your help!

completely unnecessary in japan, if you're going to do it, do it for your own experience in helping you to teach others, but for practical purposes it will not make you any more of a competitive candidate with most english schools here.

schools here tend to look first at visa status, degree status (4 year degree), experience, age, japanese ability, then dead last whether you have an english teaching certificate.

I disagree completely with winterwolf. English teaching jobs in Japan are becoming extremely competitive, so anything you can show to prove that you are above other applicants is a plus! If your college offers a TEFL course, why shouldn't you take it?

Having the certification can help you to get experience in your country, which you can write on your application to Japan. If the certification course is in your university then it may even include experience within the course itself.

They WILL take notice if you have taken steps to distinguish yourself!

Until about 5 years ago, what winterwolf said was correct. However with the shrinking of the English conversation market, there are now far fewer jobs and a lot more applicants for every job than there used to be, so more and more schools are asking for a TEFL qualification to reduce the numbers of applicants as well as probably to decrease the amount of training they will have to do.

If you are sure that English teaching is for you, then go for it- for jobs as an ALT or conversation school teacher which qualification is not so important, but if you would like to make a long-term career out of English teaching and possibly teach at universities you will need to look into it more carefully.

disagree completely.

i recently sent my resume out (padded it up a bit to go "fishing").

i got several job offers immediately in non-urban areas.

the job market may be tightening but it is nowhere near as tight as people are saying.

we are talking about a country with 6% or less unemployment guys, during a recession. it is not hard to find a job.

english certifications are a waste of time compared to actual experience teaching in japan. look at all of the ads, nobody even lists them on the job requirements, they all want 1 - 3 years of experience not a CELTA.

Winterwolf, are you already in Japan? If so, then yes, it's not difficult to get an English-teaching job, but for those outside of Japan, companies are flooded with applicants and while some people without anything to offer still slip through, the companies are able to get more and more picky about who they choose, so certification will still show interest in the job beyond wanting a paid vacation.

I agree with Rabbityama. It is quite a different story for someone like winterwolf who is already in Japan on a valid visa with teaching experience here. Getting your foot in the door on the other hand is a lot harder these days- how could it not be, when the eikaiwa market has shrunk by 50 percent in the last decade?

I have also seen quite a number of job ads asking for CELTA or similar qualifications recently- quite different from the late 90s when I first arrived here when all you really did need to teach was a degree, a pulse, and not to be too weird...

If you can get a TESOL/TEFL certificate within your college studies, including some real classroom teaching experience, that would be good - normally people would have to pay several hundred dollars to attend an intensive TESOL/TEFL certificate course (one month full-time, for example).

If you want to pursue teaching/education as a long-term career, an education minor might help you in that, but if you want to experience teaching in Japan for a few years, then the certificate would suffice to give you the idea of what teaching a language is like :).

And I agree with Sira and Rabbityama on the difference between whether you already are in Japan on a current visa or not.