Thanks for your comment.

Perhaps you took a dirt-cheap online TEFL course then because there are some excellent online TEFL and TESOL courses available that are equal to – some surpassing – the CELTA.

There can be no doubt that the CELTA is a first-class program, but it is not the holy grail of TEFL certification.

I took an online TEFL course and have been teaching in Vienna for years- alongside teachers that have a CELTA qualification.

Regarding the Ninja Teacher Academy, I have no comment.
We leave it up to its students and graduates to review the course.

Mia Williams – Trusted TEFL Reviews

JHT.

Thanks for your comment.

It’s true that you can get a TEFL for as little as US$20 online, but those dirt-cheap courses are best avoided. More info: https://trustedteflreviews.com/2019/09/20/online-tefl-tesol-certification-courses-for-under-50/

Ninja Teacher can charge whatever it wants for its TEFL courses.

It is true that schools really don’t care if you took the TEFL online or on-site.
Before the pandemic, Ninja Teacher claimed that online TEFL courses were worthless.
I guess this is because they were offering an on-site TEFL course and online TEFL courses were eating into their profits.
When the pandemic arrived, Ninja Teacher did a 180 and began offering its TEFL courses online only. It began promoting its online TEFL courses as an excellent and convenient method of getting into TEFL teaching.

It is, therefore, of little surprise to me if Ninja Teacher is claiming again that on-site TEFL courses are far superior to online TEFL courses. It’s just them trying to market and operate an on-site TEFL course in an industry where online TEFL courses are the go-to choice for many.

Mia Williams | Trusted TEFL Reviews

Have heard and have read very good reports about Ninja Teacher’s on-site TEFL program in Ho Chi Minh City.
It is an accredited program, not fully accredited.
Despite this, I would recommend the program if you are looking for an on-site TEFL program to take when in Vietnam.
The certificate should be good for most teaching jobs in Vietnam.

We’re always looking out for ways to improve upon our courses and programs and take feedback from our customers seriously.

We’re sorry to hear you felt like the online course was rushed. We had filmed the training sessions from our in-class course so we already had the foundations prepared for an online course and it wasn’t a rushed switch on our side, but perhaps it wasn’t as polished as it is now when first released. Since then we’ve also improved the course a lot and continue to do so based on feedback. We aim to make it the best online learning experience we possibly can (and provide lifetime access to the new content so you can always come back to it).

Regarding the credibility of online TEFL certificates, we don’t make definitive statements that online TEFLs are not accepted at all by employers. However, it’s absolutely true we strongly recommend in-classroom training and tell potential customers that employers prefer such courses because, based on our experience and close connections with employers, this is what we hear from them time and time again.

A high quality online TEFL course can certainly provide a good foundation to be a TEFL teacher. Our issue with many courses over the years was the low quality of courses and how under prepared teachers would be from these. A lot of my push back against online courses was due to text-only online courses on the market. Our online course provides video recorded training from the classroom, live online training sessions and feedback on lesson plans. We believe our online TEFL course, while not in our initial plan, now makes a solid addition to our line up of courses.

We have now relaunched our 4 week in-class TEFL courses in Vietnam (and a 2 week course especially designed for people who have taken an online course and would like to get a practical teaching add-on) so we do maintain our views about the importance of in-person training.

We hope this provides some context for those reading this review.

Alex Stevenson
Founder & Director
Ninja Teacher TEFL Academy

Thanks for writing your customer review of the Ninja Teacher Academy.

I do have some background information about this TEFL course provider.

Before the pandemic, the owner spent much of his online energy creating YouTube videos where he promoted his on-site (Ninja TEFL Training) TEFL course, and where he chastised anyone for wanting to take an online TEFL course.

Reason: he was running an on-site TEFL program and online TEFL programs were negatively affecting his business.

When the pandemic hit, the owner of Ninja Teacher Academy did a 180 and quickly began talking up the Ninja TEFL Academy online course that he very likely had quickly put together when he realized that his on-site TEFL program wouldn’t be bringing in any new customers, what with all the international travel restrictions, lock-downs, etc.

This pattern of behavior could be witnessed at the time in almost every on-site TEFL program that had in the past aggressively vilified online TEFL training courses.

Their argument was that employers only accepted on-site training certificates and looked down on online TEFL training certificates.

This wasn’t true back then and it isn’t true now.

Other than this information, I don’t have any current information about this program.

It hasn’t received many customer reviews, and it hasn’t tried to submit fake customer reviews, so I am pretty neutral currently about Ninja Teacher Academy.

Mia Williams – Trusted TEFL Reviews