For experienced teachers / teachers with TESOL/ELT degrees from their own countries who would also like Cambridge ESOL qualifications, the TKT might be suitable (Teacher Knowledge Test). You can take a TKT preparation course before taking the test, but you can also take the test straight away (with some schools).

For future teachers and/or teachers without qualifications, perhaps the CELTA (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults).  A YL extension can be taken afterwards, too, if you're more interested in teaching kids and teens than adults. Usually either an intensive 4 week course (and I mean very intensive) or a 12 week part-time course (often 2 evenings plus a day on the weekend, per week).

They have other qualifications too.  I'd recommend having a look at the Cambridge ESOL website for more detailed information.

Hi Heath,

Thanks for your valuable suggestion. I'll have a look at cambridge site.

nisha

It depends on the organisation you do it with.  (A) Some organisations are only allowed to offer the test to applicants who have completed a TKT preparation course with that organisations.  (B) Other organisations are allowed to offer the test separately from any training course.

• If you can only do the TKT with an (A) type of training school, you don't have a choice and will have to do training with them. 
• If you can do the TKT with a (B) type of training school they will probably leave the choice up to you - do the TKT alone, or take a training course and then do the TKT.

My recommendation is that if you have graduate language teaching qualifications (eg. BA TESOL), then you can probably do the TKT without extra training.  A bit of review reading might help (recommendations below), but you shouldn't need a preparation course.

If you don't have any LT qualifications then unless you have both a lot of experience and are an avid reader of teaching methodology literature then you'll really need to take a preparation course.  There are a lot of language teaching specific terms, concepts and approaches that are tested, and a preparation course will be extremely valuable.

Suggested books followed by my purely personal opinion:

• The TKT Handbook (sorry, I can't recall the author). 
• The Practice of English Language Teaching (Harmer). 
• Learning Teaching (Scrivener).
• Any other teacher training/development handbook in a similar vein to these last two.

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