The Via Lingua TEFL course in Florence, Italy is a total scam. The school intentionally misleads potential students on its website by claiming that 85% of graduates of the TEFL course get a job within 30 days of finishing the course. This is a blatant lie - most of the people from the course go home without a job. The school provides very little in the way of support. Their idea of an exclusive lifetime job network for graduates is a binder full of print outs of job postings from TEFL.com and Dave’s ESL cafe.
Furthermore, the housing they provide is subpar and the owner of the school when confronted about these issues becomes very hostile. Via Lingua is basically a marketing scheme - they’ll say whatever they can (mislead, or leave out important information about the job market or working visas, etc) so they can get you to sign up for their course. They have about five or six websites all saying the same stuff, and they’ve paid bloggers and ESL sites like ESL Base to do free advertising. It’s not a professional school in any sense of the word. However, on the bright side (can’t all be bad, right?) Florence is a beautiful city!
It’s time for this school to be added to the TEFL blacklist. Via Lingua, you’re on notice.
For further
information, please contact info@vialingua.org,
call toll-free in the US (888) 835-6207 or in the UK (44) 203-004-0943.
Actually I called the outfit in Florence a couple of times, but found it impossible to communicate with anybody there who could speak even basic English. Doesn't say much for their 'school', does it?
Actually I called the outfit in Florence a couple of times, but found it impossible to communicate with anybody there who could speak even basic English. Doesn't say much for their 'school', does it?
