New Centers are projected to open soon in Lebanon. Increasingly, such employers are no longer satisfied with a BA and native-speaker status when looking for teachers of English. While a TEFL Certificate does not guarantee that a person will be an effective teacher, certificates from the best programs do make sure that a program graduate has mastered the essentials of class management, lesson planning, second language acquisition, principles of communicative teaching, and fundamentals of English grammar. In the United States and Canada, many universities and private, proprietary companies offer TEFL programs as well. University programs may require two or three semesters to complete.
Private programs are usually intensive one-month programs.
ELS Language Centers has its own TEFL Certificate Program. Formerly based in California, it has operated exclusively in its overseas Language Centers since 1998. In the Language Centers overseas, those who recruit and supervise teachers are often called Academic Directors or Academic Coordinators. The Language Centers also have Center Directors who are responsible for overall functioning and budgetary concerns of the Centers. These are often local people who are native to the country in question, except in the Middle East, where native speakers have these positions.