TEFL is the acronym for Teaching English as a Foreign Language and TESOL for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Ultimately they are the ‘concept’ of teaching abroad and are terms used interchangeably, usually depending on the country you're in or more frequently the course provider you are working with. When assessing course providers, it is more important to look at course content, delivery and accreditation criteria than the acronym they have chosen to use.
In its previous life, the delivery of online TEFL/TESOL courses was presented as a correspondence course or ‘distance learning’ one, in which the participant would simply download assignments and send them, through snail mail or via e-mail as attachments, to their tutor.
This is still the case for some TEFL/TESOL course providers even though the needs and demands of internet users cry out for the technological advancements that can so easily be made available to them. Not only has this involved the leading TEFL and TESOL suppliers providing audio and video tutorials, course components are now being completed online, reducing the need for textbooks or other reference materials. Knowing all your work is in one place, on one user interface is reassuring - especially to those of us who remember spending hours pouring over textbooks, journals and tabloids to write essays before submitting them and never seeing them again.
This old-style teaching technique significantly hampered learning and development and the new features of the online course have come a long way towards gaining the respect of the industry. It is also refreshing for online TEFL/TESOL tutees to have easy access to their course tutors. Now they can ask questions and get answers within a twenty four hour period and course feedback is much the same.
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