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TEFL
visited a guy at a 3-person english teaching school. basically he said he'd ask around if anyone he knows can help us find jobs, even part-time jobs; said we should try for schools outside of town / on the outskirts of town because they're probably a bit more lax with rules, and said i should go get a TEFL (= english as a foreign language) teaching certification.
so i researched about TEFL. a 120-hour course is the international minimum to qualify you for *anything*, but apparently if you know about english grammar, linguistics and/or teaching then you can finish it in NINE HOURS. there was a huge sale on "i-to-i" (which, after googling and youtube-ing, was actually a legit site though it doesn't look that way to anyone who sees it) for a 300-hour course, that ended up being $200 USD instead of the massively overpriced $600-1500 USD i saw on other sites (+ the non-sale price of this site).
you can use a 120-hour course to get teaching jobs in places like china, korea, cambodia and thailand, but each country is a bit different on their requirements. for example, korea wants you to have at least 20 hours of in-person teaching (which you can only get through TEFL if you live in very certain countries) but japan doesn't care about in-person teaching with the TEFL at all. and certain countries want you to have a university degree on top of all this and other countries say you can teach with the TEFL alone.
the 300-hour course is actually one where you finish the normal 120-hour one first, get your 120-hour certificate, then just keep taking more separate courses and i assume get a different certificate later on after they're all finished. you "activate" the course via clicking a link you get in your email after you've paid, and you have x amount of days (70 in the case of the 120-hour course; 21 for each of the others) to finish the course. if you don't finish in time you can buy an extension for like $30 or something. i decided the more hours the safer, since i don't have my degree yet and reading online it seems like the international hour requirements are slowly climbing up so i don't want to have to like, tack on extra courses every few years in the future.
anyway... i bought the TEFL thing, i'm gonna start working on this on wednesday (due to site maintainance) and we'll see how it goes. at the very least, i'll be able to use this to teach in china for a year or whatever while i wait for my 4-year degree and to return to japan, if i really have to do something like that.
so i researched about TEFL. a 120-hour course is the international minimum to qualify you for *anything*, but apparently if you know about english grammar, linguistics and/or teaching then you can finish it in NINE HOURS. there was a huge sale on "i-to-i" (which, after googling and youtube-ing, was actually a legit site though it doesn't look that way to anyone who sees it) for a 300-hour course, that ended up being $200 USD instead of the massively overpriced $600-1500 USD i saw on other sites (+ the non-sale price of this site).
you can use a 120-hour course to get teaching jobs in places like china, korea, cambodia and thailand, but each country is a bit different on their requirements. for example, korea wants you to have at least 20 hours of in-person teaching (which you can only get through TEFL if you live in very certain countries) but japan doesn't care about in-person teaching with the TEFL at all. and certain countries want you to have a university degree on top of all this and other countries say you can teach with the TEFL alone.
the 300-hour course is actually one where you finish the normal 120-hour one first, get your 120-hour certificate, then just keep taking more separate courses and i assume get a different certificate later on after they're all finished. you "activate" the course via clicking a link you get in your email after you've paid, and you have x amount of days (70 in the case of the 120-hour course; 21 for each of the others) to finish the course. if you don't finish in time you can buy an extension for like $30 or something. i decided the more hours the safer, since i don't have my degree yet and reading online it seems like the international hour requirements are slowly climbing up so i don't want to have to like, tack on extra courses every few years in the future.
anyway... i bought the TEFL thing, i'm gonna start working on this on wednesday (due to site maintainance) and we'll see how it goes. at the very least, i'll be able to use this to teach in china for a year or whatever while i wait for my 4-year degree and to return to japan, if i really have to do something like that.