Fake English Certificates - Avoid Them At All Costs!

Just a heads up that TEFL scams are rife online. Most common are fake English test and TEFL certificate scams.

The other day I found this advert submitted to the forum on my Niche Laboratory website's forum:

Get registered IELTS, TOEFL, ESOL All English Language Certificates.

We Produce Real registered IELTS, TOEFL, ESOL without you sitting for an exam. We are out here to help you get your documents easy and help you save your precious years !! and time.

Certificates will be Original and registered in the data base with online verification posiblities Once your details are imputed in the system it will be in the IELTS, TOEFL, ESOL web sites/system and will appear real and legit. We have been in this job for more than 8 years and have helped a lot of people in the past.

Email: (registereddocuments01@gmail.com)

Just a heads up that fake IELTS/TOEFL and other certificates are to be avoided at all costs. This goes for degree certificates and TEFL teaching certificates (but more about these later).

IETLS and TOEFL certificates are almost always required if you apply to study overseas. The better organisations will check the authenticity of any certificates submitted by applications. I know because I used to work in the admissions department of one of the UK's leading universities. It was surprising how many applications were rejected because of forged documents.

Of course you could probably study at a lesser organisation with fake documentation. But then a certificate for whatever you study there will be largely worthless in the global marketplace.

Fake TEFL Certificates - What's the Point?

It's so easy to find faked TEFL Certificates online. I'm not sure I really see the point of them because:

• A real 120 hour TEFL Certificate costs around $300. I think that's what I paid for my TEFL certificate from The TEFL Academy.
• A CELTA will cost about $2000 but if you do yours somewhere there's high demand for teachers then you're pretty much assured of a job when you finish the course. When I did my CELTA in Barcelona, Spain, all of the students on the course found teaching jobs after completing the course. Well except for me - I backpacked round Europe for a bit then went to work for an insurance company in London.
• If you're intending to teach in a country like China then you'll need to authenticate your teaching certificate. So it's essential you get a legit one in the first case.

When I applied for my first ever teaching job in China then I had to pay to get my bachelors degree, police check and TEFL teaching certificate authenticated. This cost me £350 which is a heck of a lot of money! However, I should only ever need to do this once.

My bundle of authenticated documents which were certified by the Chinese Embassy in London.

Finally remember that submitting fake documents when applying for a job is illegal in many countries. Most countries are very strict when it comes to immigration fraud, as these examples show:

• Three jailed for submitting fake academic qualifications to apply for work passes (Singapore)
• Fake university degrees in the spotlight (Thailand)

Two popular TEFL destinations - Thailand and China have become increasingly strict about immigration lately. So you don't want to be made an example of.


In the case of Thailand, it's even apparently common for university teaching staff to have fake degree certificates. This is just one reason why a degree from a university in Thailand doesn't carry much weight. It's a shame because in theory it would be a good place to study for an MA TESOL. But the reality is that academic standards in Thailand are pretty darned low.

Could you sleep at night in Thailand or China knowing your TEFL Certificate or Bachelor's degree certificates were forgeries? Teaching on fake certificates could get you deported and barred from re-entering the country, or even jailed!

Don't take that risk.

Dear Teaching Diary: More From My Second Week Teaching English in China!

Periodically I write down my thoughts and reflections after a lesson, particularly if I think the lesson was a milestone of some sort.

I was taught on the CELTA that self-reflection is a great way to get better at teaching. It's particularly important if you teach somewhere like in a Chinese university. Generally speaking you rarely (if ever) get peer observed. So the only person who can really gauge your teaching effectiveness is you and maybe your students.

I wrote this log after one of the classes I took in the second week of teaching English in China. I taught 35 sophomore Business English majors. I would say that the majority of students in this class are lower Upper Intermediate (if that is a thing). Like most Asian English learners, their spoken English lags their reading and writing.

This class doesn't have a textbook. At first I was worried about this, but as the semester progressed I used the other classes' textbooks less and less each week.

What We Did

A lesson about technology.

We saw 3 groups of students do a presentation from last week.

We watched a video about old British phoneboxes. Then we saw that the phoneboxes were scrapped because everybody has mobile phones now. We saw some uses for old phoneboxes.

We wrote a list of things mobile phones do that used to be done by standalone machines (e.g. alarm clock).

We ordered smartphone features in order of importance.

We listened to a recording about technology that will become obsolete.

We watched some Dom Joly Trigger Happy TV sketches about a guy with a loud Nokia mobile phone. I set a homework task to get the students to make a new sketch based on the ones I showed them.

What Worked

I successfully took the class register.

The funny videos were very popular.

Showing interesting photos and asking for comments worked quite well.

The feature ranking game worked very well. For future reference it should be possible to line up 14 students at the front of the class.

The presentations from last week were a good inclusion. The students really need to work on their presentation skills though.

What Didn't Work

The listening exercise was a bit boring.

What to Work On

I need to be a bit more precise in homework setting. The students didn’t know whether to write dialogue or make a movie. In hindsight they should be able to film a movie to show in class.

Student presentation skills need A LOT of work! I should do more of these activities.

I should have chosen better material for the listening task.

I should try and use the room PC where possible, especially if students are using USB memory sticks!

Postscript

I teach 4 cohorts of the Business English major. This cohort is by far the most lively. It might be something to do with the fact that this is the only class I teach in the afternoon straight after lunch.

I've come to like lively students because it's so much easier to get them talking! In such a class I can spend less time getting them to actually talk, and my main task is to make sure they keep talking in English and not Mandarin Chinese.

The getting students to stand up and rank things in order was straight out of CELTA boot camp. The tasks are pretty easy to set up and generate a lot of unscripted dialogue. It was a little more difficult with 35 students in the class. However I worked out that I could get 14 students lined up in the front of the class.

In this lesson I finally realised that if I set homework and the students bring work into the classroom, they might want to plug their USB devices into my own personal computer. That really scared me, so I switched to using the classroom computer for showing student work. Unfortunately the classroom computers have seen better days and we have the occasional unplanned reboot, but at least I keep my own computer free from viruses and dodgy USB sticks.

It isn't always easy using the classroom computers though. Every one is different. Most have all kinds of malware on them that pops up windows and special offers (especially annoying if you're showing a video at the time). Sometimes the computers are set up for Chinese language input, and it's not always obvious how to change it. In one classroom I teach in the computer doesn't actually have English input - the choices are Chinese or German!

I would always recommend if you go to teach in China that you bring your own laptop with you. A 15" screen size or higher will also allow you to just about get away with showing Powerpoint presentations should the classroom computer or overhead projector fail altogether.

It's also a good idea to find one with decent speakers that can be used for listening tasks in case of other IT equipment failure. Or you can just use a bluetooth portable speaker. Don't bring one with you as they're really cheap in China and sold in many stores.

Finally this lesson was the one in that I set them homework of making a video. This one became a bit of a classic, and the resulting homeworks were excellent. If you ever teach millennials, then you might be amazed at how good they are at shooting videos. They also enjoy this kind of task tremendously. Watching the end results was also a lot of fun. I came away with the impression that Chinese students aren't boring drones at all - in fact they have terrifically active imaginations.

Dear Teaching Diary: My Second Week Teaching English in China!

Periodically I write down my thoughts and reflections after a lesson, particularly if I think the lesson was a milestone of some sort.

I was taught on the CELTA that self-reflection is a great way to get better at teaching. It's particularly important if you teach somewhere like in a Chinese university. Generally speaking you rarely (if ever) get peer observed. So the only person who can really gauge your teaching effectiveness is you and maybe your students.

I wrote this log after one of the classes I took in the second week of teaching English in China. I taught 36 sophomore Business English majors. I would say that the majority of students in this class are lower Upper Intermediate (if that is a thing). Like most Asian English learners, their spoken English lags their reading and writing.

This class doesn't have a textbook. At first I was worried about this, but as the semester progressed I used the other classes' textbooks less and less each week.

What We Did

In the first half of the lesson the students showed their presentations from the previous class. I got them to make a comedy sketch based on a UK TV show I showed them in the previous class.

In the second half we did some listening to clips about education.

What Worked

The presentations from last week were on the whole very good. About half the groups made very imaginative presentations. The students really enjoyed this task.

At last I have got the students speaking. Some of the students are very good indeed.

The students who made videos made an excellent job. However I should probably specify that presentations are made in class unless the class is specifically about making a video.

The listening tasks were on the whole OK. They did prefer the listening tasks where younger people were speaking.

What Didn't Work

I think 3 students missed doing the group presentation. It's hard to manage so many groups, especially as I don't have a printer to print class lists.

The attempt to set them an in class group speaking task was a disaster. I need to rethink this.
Timekeeping was an issue in this class and I overran when I was worried about underrunning.

What to Work On

I should ask the presenting students some questions at the end in order to get them practicing unscripted dialogue.

I need to read Teaching Listening by JJ Wilson in order to make the listening tasks more worthwhile.

When playing videos for listening I should always set some sort of task. Otherwise the students get bored, unless the video is particularly interesting.

Postscript

Teaching Listening by JJ Wilson is still on my reading list. I soon realised that my absolute priority was to learn more about how to teach speaking more effectively.

I no longer set homework. Partly because I feel a little guilty about how much other homework the students get. The students in this class also come from less wealthy homes and many have part-time jobs. A bigger reason is that I've found homework isn't particularly effective at helping them improve their English speaking. If you give the students a group speaking presentation to prepare, then they will only end up writing down huge chunks of dialogue. That's not really what I want them to be doing. I want them to talk completely unscripted. And for that it's better just to set classwork assignments where they have minimal time to prepare.

To manage the large groups I teach, I now use two computers in class: the classroom one and my own. I use the classroom computer to show videos and Powerpoints using the overhead projector. I also use it for listening tasks. I use my own computer to keep track of students using the class register Excel spreadsheet. In most classes I try to write down some scores for the students' classwork. This also avoids having to set too much homework, or have too much reliance on end of semester exams.

For listening tasks I have found out they tend to prefer listening to people their own age. So I always bear this in mind when I'm looking for warmers.

If groups are presenting then I've gotten into the habit of getting the audience to ask the presenting group questions. This keeps the audience on their toes. I can also log scores of their English ability. Of course it also minimises teacher talk during the lesson. I'm purely there to direct the speaking. On the downside I've found the questions they ask aren't always that good, and a lot of students ask the same question. I'll definitely improve on this during the next semester.

As for task setting during video watching - I don't always do this. Particularly if they're just used as warmers. But I have made sure that I select videos that are particularly interesting to them. I've found the Ellen chat show clips on YouTube to be exactly the type of video I need to use as warmers. I use them a lot.

Dear Teaching Diary: My Second Lesson Teaching English in China!

Periodically I write down my thoughts and reflections after a lesson. I was taught on the CELTA that self-reflection is a great way to get better at teaching. It's particularly important if you teach somewhere like in a Chinese university. Generally speaking you rarely (if ever) get peer observed. So the only person who can really gauge your teaching effectiveness is you and your students.

I wrote this log after my second class teaching English in China. I taught 20 freshmen students on what was their very first day of university classes. For most of the students I was the first foreign national teacher they had ever had.

What We Did

I introduced myself. We also did the coursebook Real Listening & Speaking 3 Chapters 1 - 2 where are you from and shopping.

What Worked

My lead in (about me true/false) worked well.

This is a much better book! Both topics were interesting for the students. And it’s at the right level for the students – maybe even a little too easy for them. We covered more material than I expected.

I numbered the listening clips so I was able to find them easily.

I put some new vocabulary on the board.

Most of the students got the answers although a few of the boys struggled a bit. Chunking helped with the harder listening activities.

They liked the shopping related videos I showed from The Two Ronnies, especially the 4 Candles Sketch. They were perfect for lead-ins, especially as the students were sleepy after lunch.

I successfully took the class register.

What Didn't Work

I need to work on setting pair work and group activities. One activity worked, the other was a complete flop.

There were a lot of students not really paying attention. It's harder to monitor them in this classroom, and the class size is quite big.

What to Work On

Again, I need to prep the classes so I know the answers to the questions in advance.

I should think of some activities related to any videos I show.

I should remember to set some homework that has clear goals. Simply "look at this website" is just too vague.

Postscript

I have of course noticed that the more times you do the same activity, the better you become at it. So recycling lesson plan tasks has really got me through the semester.

I have found it much tougher to teach the freshmen compared to the sophomore students. The freshmen don't talk much and they find it hard to maintain attention. In fact I found it easier to teach 47 sophomore students than I did a class of 18 freshmen.

I now know that initial impressions about coursebooks are very accurate. So hats off to my CELTA tutors for training me well. I hit the ground running and in my first week pretty much identified all the strengths and weaknesses of the two sets of coursebooks I was asked to teach from.

I don't like teaching 20 students in a classroom made for 50. So a couple of times this semester I have ended up making students move closer to the front of the class.

I noticed in this lesson that the students liked the video clip I showed them. So for each class I try to find a couple of short videos to use as warmers.

In my first lesson I noticed the girls were on average better than the boys. I say on average because the girls tended to be precisely that - average. ALL of my superstar English students in this semester were boys, despite there being far less of them. I believe that this echoes the exam results I saw back in the UK when I worked for an educational consultancy; boys do worse than girls but when boys are good, they are very good indeed.