International English Teacher 101

Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) or to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) is a hot career choice these days. The desire to see the world is common. Travel is one way, but people are finding it hard to take vacations these days. What if you could combine seeing the world and working? It is not easy to find jobs overseas unless you have very specialized skills and advanced foreign language fluency. For native speakers of English, TEFL/TESOL seems like a great solution.

There are as many ways to teach English overseas as there are people willing to teach overseas. Indeed, your motivation for doing so should be your main influence when selecting where and how to teach. Here are just a few of the ways to teach English overseas:

• Here are many chains such as English First and Wall Street that operate language centers in countries around the world

• On several continents, and in Asia especially, there are also small, individual language centers, such as the hagwons in South Korea

• You can teach in a public schools at pre/primary, middle and high school levels.

• You can also teach at private schools. Many countries have an American school or a Canadian school, or and International School offering an IB program

• You can teach at public universities. Teaching hours are very few, but class size is very high, so if you’re teaching composition, for example, you’ll have a lot of correcting to do

• You can teach at one of the many private colleges popping up all over- some with associations with US or Australian universities

• You can teach as a volunteer at a village school or in an orphanage

• You can teach as a missionary or with one of the many religious service organizations that are non-proselytizing

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