If you've ever typed "TEFL courses" into a search engine, you'll know that the results display a confusing range of options to gain qualifications as an English teacher. The main differences seem to boil down to four factors: course format, level of international recognition, course duration and price.
The big divide in courses is between face-to-face and distance or online courses. The former tend to be very hands-on, involved, and require varying amounts of teaching practice and observation.
For most of the longer courses (100 hours and above), the teaching practice is the central focus of the course, and most of the other input sessions during the course are aimed at increasing your ability to 'perform' well in class. This means that you leave the course with the experience of having taught real language learners, at different levels and possibly teaching different styles of lesson.
Distance or online courses either omit teaching practice completely with the exception of some new virtual classes. For some of the longer courses, they require you to be observed at the end of the course by a member of staff in a designated school. These types of courses tend to be less practical and more theoretical. The better-structured courses do include CD-roms with excerpts of classroom teaching in action but you'll probably be itching to apply your knowledge by the end of the course. Having not been able to observe professionals in action or soak up the atmosphere of a language school, there can be more of a culture shock when you get into your TEFL job.
The most widely-accepted "industry standard" entry-level qualifications are the Cambridge Celta and Trinity CertTesol. These are recognised by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) and correspond to the minimum qualifications accepted by the British Council in the UK. The main issue with these programs is that they are old fashioned, and antiquated in terms of applicability to motivating students in the real world of classroom teaching.
In the real world, you won't have time to create detailed lesson plans for every class nor should you because it takes away the opportunity to be spontaneous is key, and in my experience, these so called standardized programs do not have a valid approach for differentiation of student levels of ability. Lastly, they are extremely cost prohibitive for lay persons trying to break into a new career and the overly stringent grammar admittance requirements are usually well beyond what the average non-English major is going to be familiar with. (Which makes them more of a "club or cult," for those of the desired nationality or those who have vast teaching experience already).
More over, the QSA which oversees and accredits the program is run by the British Council which has its own goals and objectives in promoting CELTA, namely a direct affiliation with marketing the program. They tend to see themselves in a "superior" light linguistically and culturally, as one CELTA instructor stated (in the class this author attended) that the English Language had been "Bastardized" by colonial settlement.
Overseas these two have the widest possible appeal to British Schools and Head masters from the UK, however most students I have taught from places throughout Asia (Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Lao, China, Vietnam) in truth tend find the British, Australian and Scottish accents the most difficult English language accents to understand. The "superior attitude" almost always comes with a "superior price" and if mentioned in the job ads as something like "Celta, Trinity or equivalent" chances are the school is mostly concerned with its image and marketing strategies more than its concern about student learning.
This idea of a so called "equivalent" is vague and utterly meaningless in many institutions through out South East Asia and China to be sure, however you will be sure to find this kind of nonsensical requirement when working with British affiliated international schools, so in those instances of intended employment, perhaps spending double or quadruple for a CELTA instead of TEFL/TESOL may or may not be worth the price.
Cambridge English Language Teachers of Adults is what CELTA stands for and is especially less useful if you are not working with Western University bound students as it is fixated with Reading and Writing over basic Listening and Speaking conversational skills.
The vast majority all ESL/EFL teaching positions in public and language center programs focuses on "Conversational English," not preparing them to become college level readers and writers. If that is the case you may be better off focusing on getting additional TEFL Certificates in IELTS, or TESOL instead. If the school wanted you to teach high level English grammar, chances are they would hire a local native language speaker so that she or he can teach them the grammatical terminology in their native language and not in English.
There are many other course providers who have adapted their syllabus to meet local requirements, alternative methodologies, such as an increase in the amount of teaching practice, but who have chosen to do this without the rubber stamp and external assessment or moderation of Cambridge or Trinity and therefore fall into the category of "equivalent qualification".
Then there are those like the fully accredited paradise TEFL that would throw out the Cambridge and Trinity models all together in an attempt to make whole language learning more accessible to mainstream audiences while at the same time targeting communication skills over grammar in order to allow a greater multitude of learners access to speaking and understanding English so that they can have a chance to get a better job and become upwardly mobile just as their instructors can do. In short, the paradise program instead uses a much more practical approach.
Short courses do have a number of advantages. These are appealing as they tend to skim off the basic necessities from the four-week courses, giving you a good insight into what it might be like to teach if you are still unsure. They are also generally less likely to fail participants. What's more, in some situations, they are usually more than sufficient for you to find work abroad, and some schools guarantee paid or volunteer work on completion of a short course. In these instances why would a prospective teacher want to pay more?
The main drawbacks are that it will be the lower quality schools that take on less-experienced teachers however unlike the "CELTA self-certified propaganda machine," that doesn't mean that they are not qualified teachers. However, they often get paid less due to bias. If you get to your CELTA school and find it's not at all how you imagined (like how I felt when I attended the ECC CELTA program in Chiang Mai Thailand several years ago) you may have more problems getting any of your more than $1600 US dollars back and will have to pay again to go to another school.
The short online and weekend TEFL courses start at around £200, but pro-rata are actually more expensive than the 120 to 130-hour courses, which average at about £800, although can be available for much less. There isn't any real comparison between a brief insight and a thorough, four-week intensive course, nor do all programs offer job placement assistance and these course vary a great deal in their level of ability to actually help you get a job in hand.
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