ESL Jobs Forum

[Emmanuelle]

Hi everyone,

I'm sorry if this is not the right category for this topic. I just want to share my personal experience with the school "Oxford Seminars" and warn as many future ESL teachers as possible. Some of you may have had a great experience with them but I think it's also important to show this other side of the coin.

My experience with Oxford Seminars was a complete failure. They promised to contact many schools in Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina and in Brazil and they only contacted 2 schools in Costa Rica. My partner Erik finished at the same time and one month later, they still haven't edited his resume and his cover letter. They are, indeed, supposed to help write your resume and your cover letter and they still haven't done anything for my partner.

Also, their website is absolutely not updated, I trusted their list and sent many emails to different schools and most of them bounced. Very professional indeed... and when I tried to contact someone about this issue, I felt like I was imposing and I was the problem (it's very convenient, isn't it?)

I just have the feeling I spent $1095 for nothing but unfortunately, I can't ask for a complete refund because I'm not a native english speaker. You can be refunded only if you are a native english speaker and there are many non native english speakers who don't even dare complaining because they are afraid of whatever consequences. Please, be careful, there are many scams out there and Oxford seems to not be a exception.

Emmanuelle

[Lexicon]

It's pretty common knowledge Oxford Seminars is both a scam and from a training standpoint a total joke. Yet for some reason sites (even this one) keep taking their money and posting their ads which just enables them to rip off more and more prospective teachers each day.
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[lincoln223]

It seems unreasonable to call Oxford a scam and a joke. It is completely understandable to have had a bad experience with the program, but with the number of clearly qualified educators it employs, it's silly to identify the whole thing as a ripoff. Granted, you won't get in-class experience or learn the basics of grammar, but what can you expect in a weekends-only course? The Seminar, at least the one in which I'm currently enrolled, has thus far provided me with good fundamentals on managing a classroom and planning lessons.

You can't expect to become a Master's level educator during a 60-hour course, but I expect that the skills and understanding that I have and will gain through the program will augment my ability to teach what I know. If you want to learn to teach grammar, take the course and then learn proper grammar independently. If you want to get classroom experience, go with a program that claims that as part of it. It is unfair to call a program a "scam" because it fails to do something that it never advertises.

[markc]

Emmanuelle, What exactly did you get for your $1,095? How was the training? Or was the main point to end up with a job through their contacts?