Description
Established in 1992, Oxford Seminars is a leading provider of TESOL/TESL/TEFL certification in the US and Canada. Join the 70,000+ graduates of Oxford Seminars by getting certified and starting your adventure teaching English abroad. If you would like more information about the 120-hour course, teaching overseas, or the unrivaled Job Placement Service, attend an information session with an experienced course instructor.
With Oxford Seminars you get:
- Convenient Course Locations
- Comprehensive 120-hour Course Curriculum
- Limited Class Size
- Experienced Course Instructors
- Extensive Course Materials
- Unparalleled Job Placement Service
- 25+ Years of Industry Experience
Oxford Seminars graduates explore the world, collect experiences of a lifetime, and find themselves in high demand. Get certified to teach English abroad with Oxford Seminars, a leading provider of TESOL/TESL/TEFL certification courses, and join thousands teaching English around the globe.
Courses
Course Types
Combined TEFL Courses
Online TEFL Courses
Course Lengths
Standard (120-140 hours)
Certifications
TEFL / TESL / TESOL
Locations
Canada
Abbotsford BC
Barrie ON
Brandon MB
Brantford ON
Burnaby BC
Calgary AB
Coquitlam BC
Edmonton AB
Fredericton NB
Guelph ON
Halifax NS
Hamilton ON
Kamloops BC
Kelowna BC
Kingston ON
Lethbridge AB
London ON
Mississauga ON
Moncton NB
Montreal QC
Nanaimo BC
North Bay ON
North Vancouver BC
Oshawa ON
Ottawa ON
Peterborough ON
Red Deer AB
Regina SK
Saint John NB
Sarnia ON
Saskatoon SK
Scarborough ON
St John's NL
St. Catharines ON
Sudbury ON
Surrey BC
Thunder Bay ON
Toronto ON
Vancouver BC
Victoria BC
Waterloo ON
Windsor ON
Winnipeg MB
I completed my Oxford Seminars TEFL course in November of 2019, and found a job in December of 2019 through the Oxford Seminars Job Placement Services.
The Oxford Seminars course is divided into two 60-hour parts. The first part is in-class, meeting over three weekends for nine hours a day. The second part is entirely online and done at the user’s own pace – though it does need to be completed within roughly three months of finishing the in-class portion of the course. You receive several books with the course, at no additional charge. At the start of the course you receive a teaching manual and a book that briefly covers teaching theory and methodology, and upon successful completion of the in-class portion, you receive a grammar textbook.
The in-class portion of the course will be fairly variable. Even though the instructor’s have a common curriculum, obviously how they present the material will vary based on their own teaching styles, as well as the facts of the classroom. In general, the in-class portion features a lot of discussions and opportunities for “teaching-like” activities. For example, in our class, every student needed to come up with an ice breaker and guide the class through it. There were a lot of activities like that which simulated teaching.
The in-class portion ends with a practicum, in which each student creates a lesson and then teaches the rest of the class. Depending on the size of the class, these lessons will be anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour. While passing the class is ostensibly tied to delivering a good practicum, all the students in my class passed despite several pretty bad lessons.
The online portion of the course is only available after completing the in-class portion successfully. It’s divided into two sections, each of which features several smaller units and each of which is concluded by a multiple choice test. The first section focuses on grammar, though it does feature some scenario-based questions about teaching. The second section is more of a hodge-podge, concerning, for example, punctuation marks, technology in the classroom, and CEFR language levels. It definitely feels like padding to justify calling it a “60-hour” course. The multiple choice tests are not only “open book” in the sense of allowing you to look at your notes, but you can even have the relevant units open in another tab, so it’s very unlikely that you’ll fail.
The three books you receive are fairly decent. I can see using the grammar textbook and the teaching manual as references in the future. The book on methodology is interesting, but a lot of the same information is included in the teaching manual. All-in-all, it’s a good deal that these books are included without any extra fees.
The Job Placement Service becomes available upon completing the course successfully. You are required to select between three to five countries you want to look for jobs in (even if you only really want to go to one), but you can certainly game the system by picking countries which you certainly won’t be qualified to teach in (ie. Germany or the Middle East). I can’t attest to the quality of the Job Placement Service for all countries. I specifically wanted to go to Japan, and my advisor was able to produce five possible companies. None of them had particularly stellar reputations, and four of them were companies which I could have applied to on my own. I had hoped for some secret connections that might have gotten me into some special job some place, but unfortunately Oxford Seminars either lacks such connections or simply doesn’t have those connections in Japan. Realistically, if you aren’t looking for a job in China or South Korea, you will probably want to be ready to job hunt on your own.
Overall, I would say that Oxford Seminars is worthwhile. Personally, I wasn’t too confident standing in front of a class when I first signed up for this course. Day one I was nervous when standing up in front of eleven other people. But by the time my practicum came around, I felt fairly confident. The in-class portion of this course is THE reason to take it; everything else is a bonus. That said, the actual quality of the material is somewhat questionable, and I think in most cases you will have better luck than Job Placement Services at finding a good job in your target country. It also seems like everyone passes, regardless of how well they grasp even the most basic material; if you’re one of those people, that may be a good thing, but otherwise it’s a mark against the company.