Perhaps no other field offers potentially more opportunities
for native English speakers (especially college students and graduates) to pursue
employment and live in a foreign country than teaching English abroad. In more
than 50 countries from China to Costa Rica, hundreds of millions of
people of all ages and backgrounds enroll in English language classes and many
seek instruction from native speakers.
One great aspect of teaching English abroad is that you may not need an
education degree or prior professional teaching experience. But earning an
accredited TEFL certification (TEFL = Teaching English as a Foreign Language) may
be becoming increasingly essential for those seeking to get a paid job teaching
English abroad. Here are the three basic
reasons why:
Gain the Skills You May Need to Succeed
as a Professional English Teacher Abroad
If you walked into a classroom full of 20 Japanese 5th graders or 10
businessmen in Spain tomorrow, would you be able to competently teach comma
usage, sentence structure or English language pronunciation? Would you be able to communicate with your
students without speaking their language?
Sounds tough, doesn’t it. Now imagine that you have to teach 5 classes a
day, 5 days a week.
A quality, 120-hour TEFL
certification course – equivalent to a four-week intensive course – could
provide you with the training you need
in lesson planning, classroom management, and teaching practices and
methodologies to provide your students with a quality educational experience.
You could learn how to teach basic skills like reading, writing, pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary, in addition to learning how to work with students of
different backgrounds, ages and levels in different types of classroom settings.
Earn a Recognized Qualification that
Employers May Seek so You Could Actually Get Hired
The bottom line is that earning a TEFL certification may qualify you, even without
prior teaching experience or a college degree, to pursue job opportunities to
teach English abroad. Language schools and institutes worldwide may be
desperate to hire native-speaking English teachers, but the days when you could
walk into any language school in Beijing or Buenos Aires and get hired with
zero training or experience are fast becoming history. Educational institutions and businesses may want
to employ trained teachers and they might not just hire you off the street
because you happen to be a native English speaker. In some countries, possessing
a TEFL certification may be required for foreign teachers to gain a work visa.
Employment Assistance
When it comes to pursuing great job opportunities teaching English abroad in Europe,
Asia or Latin America, gaining the qualification and skills you need through a
TEFL training course may be half the battle. The second half of the equation may
be navigating the job search process: understanding interviewing procedures and
seasons, hiring requirements and then actually interviewing with schools and
recruiters and getting hired. There may be jobs that you are qualified for,
even without prior experience, but if you don’t know about hiring seasons,
recruiters, and where and how to actually pursue job opportunities and
interview for them, you may have a hard time pursuing the job you want teaching
English abroad.
While some TEFL classes may include some workshops on resume
development, interviewing and how job markets work, it may not typically be
part of the curriculum per se, but rather a service that is included with the
tuition for your TEFL course. Guidance from expert advisors, school contacts,
referrals to major recruiters, access to job boards and databases, and information
about hiring seasons, requirements and visas are all hallmarks of quality employment
assistance that could enable you to pursue teaching opportunities around the
globe.