A TEFL certi fication is not required or highly recommended for teaching in Korea. While it may help prepare you for your classroom, we would not strongly advise you to take it as it may mean unnecessary time and money spent. As long as you have the desire and drive to excel, learning how to teach will not be difficult. You will have the curriculum and training from your employer, and many teachers come without any classroom experience and do very well.

We would recommend taking a course that requires a minimum 120 credit hours. We have never had an employer that gave preference to one method over the other; online or classroom course. Having a TESOL certificate can look good on your resume, however, this will usually not affect your compensation for private schools.

However, for public schools, if you take a 120 credit hour course, your compensation will be affected. You may also take the TEFL course after arriving to Korea and enrolling online.

The two largest TEFL course providers that we would recommend are

www.teflintl.com
www.globaltesol.com