Teaching English Overseas

Teaching English overseas appeals to people across all age groups and can be very rewarding. For young people who are looking for adventure and want to teach and travel while earning some money at the same time, teaching abroad offers excellent prospects as there are always English teaching positions available. Always go through reputable agencies. Ask friends who have tried teaching English overseas and used a teaching organization, to recommend a company. Look for reputable companies who are experienced in running teaching English abroad work placements will look after you properly. You probably will not speak the local language and will need the backup of a good quality organisation.

Speak to friends who have been traveling even if they have not been teaching English while traveling, and find out about their experiences in the countries they have traveled in, especially those who have been to the country or destination you would like to work. Find out the name of the company or organization they used, if they went through one. See if they have any contact with any friends made while in that country and who are still out there and see if you can establish a connection to find out what vacancies exist currently. Many people find work on recommendation from people who have worked or still work for organizations.

There are many companies on the internet who offer teaching English overseas work, and there are thousands of TEFL, TESOL & EFL jobs offered worldwide. You will find more information about individual countries criteria for teaching English overseas on this page. Carefully check exactly what is on offer before committing yourself. To teach in many countries you will need a work permit, a visa and sometimes a health check too. These can on occasion, be difficult to obtain, especially if you are not going through a reputable organisation. Good companies will generally offer to take care organising these issues and meet the costs and cover the bureaucracy of handling it all too.

Teaching English overseas and abroad offers the prospect of learning a language first hand and getting to know other cultures and customs and if your native language is English, you speak grammatically well and clearly and have a degree (in any subject though obviously English is preferable), you should find a position to teach English as a second language fairly easily.

Even without a degree, provided you can articulate well, there will be work for you.

Research which country in which you wish to teach English overseas thoroughly click for possible countries If you are looking to help children in areas of poverty consider teaching English as a volunteer, places such as South America or Africa could be a good place to start and you may wish to look at volunteering for a period of several months during a gap year break or similar. From my research, it appears that many of these English teaching positions in third world countries are for children who are generally quite young, probably aged between four and fifteen. They are very keen to learn the English language and make excellent students. Class sizes are often quite large ranging from groups of twenty up to sixty or even a hundred in a single class.

When teaching English overseas you will often find yourself revered. Our standard of living and what Western countries provide is greatly looked up to and you will find your self speaking English out of school hours, so great often is the desire to improve their English language. For many people, to be able to speak English is seen as a possible ticket out of poverty.

If you are looking for an exotic location, for instance sun and sea while you teach English overseas then parts of South Asia may fulfil your criteria. Again it appears that the majority of your students will be fairly young or at least school age. Destinations such as Thailand appeal to many students and backpackers looking for gap years or a short stay abroad. Make sure you are fully prepared and don’t expect to save a lot of money from your earnings, often schools in these places are able to pay very little. However, meeting lovely people and getting to know and understand different cultures and customs are rewards money cannot buy.

For those of you who want to teach English abroad during summer time, consider a language school in Spain or France where many teachers are employed just for two or three months or even for only a few weeks.

UK recruiters and companies are increasingly welcoming French and Spanish speaking graduates who are native English speakers. So learning to speak a language you probably started learning at school but did not have much enthusiasm for, can be hugely improved over the space of two or three months while teaching English at a summer school.

Mandarin is fast becoming a competitor to learning English and if you want to improve rapidly and earn some money while teaching English in China, there are hundreds of schools and language schools offering work teaching English overseas.

p>Many of the universities will request you have a Celta, Trinity or Cambridge Tefl certificate as well as a degree in English but there are also many positions available in the provinces or in small language schools which do not require any more than a weekend Tefl course and no previous knowledge of teaching. Again, always ask friends for references. Good jobs are always more difficult to come by and will require more qualifications and experience whereas low paying work where you may work many more hours than your contract states (if you even get a contract) for little financial rewards although you will gain experience and a better understanding of their language and culture.

For individual countries see here

 

 

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