Anyone done a TEFL course?

[surlycurly]

Just what the title says really. I'm hoping to move my life in a different direction and was wondering about TEFL courses. Is anyone making a living out of teaching English? Would love to hear from you.

It's a long time since I did it but the TEFL course itself was more about setting you up with basic techniques to teach people who spoke a different language to you plus some rudimentary classroom management skills that you're probably well beyond anyway if you're a qualified teacher. After that it was mostly a case of learning on the job, and that went as far as you wanted it to. The communicative techniques were useful though.

Agree that business teaching is the way to earn money but I think it would be quite hard to just go into it cold with no contacts or market knowledge, which is why a TEFL certificate and a job in a language school is a useful stepping stone.

Most schools have business oriented students - the main reason for learning English is career advancement, after all. And most decent schools would prefer you have the TEFL just so they can say to their paying clients that you do, even if you're already a qualified teacher. It just helps to sell themselves.

Once you're in a school, you can work on building a portfolio of private students from this pool of adults who are in the market for tuition, and then look to see how best you can position yourself. Potentially it's a good money maker.

Alternatively of course you can teach in an international school with your teaching qualification, and the money is fairly good by local standards, most places, and you can have a nice life.

But just working in a TEFL school, with no private students, is good fun and a nice life experience, but won't net you a decent salary really and a lot of employers are not great as their target employee pool is young drifters who aren't looking for much.

People advertising for 'TEFL' are not expecting 40 year old qualified teachers from the UK.

Don't be daunted OP. Since having DD, in a foreign place, I resort to teaching out of boredom but am going to give it up. Someone less qualified than me, with more time, younger, charges 27 euros per child for 1 1/2 hour in a group lesson up to 12 per lesson.

I get 27 euros for this group lesson.

It is SO easy to set this up yourself.

Business is also so much more rewarding. You then get contracts with the company if you are liked, and so on...

Personally, I do think a good quality TEFL course is needed to be a good EFL teacher.

It teaches you strategies and methods of teaching English to those who have varying levels of prior knowledge (including those with none) and has a focus on teaching grammar which comes naturally to us as native speakers, but needs to be understood properly to be taught to our students. This is even more important with business or academic students who will have a million 'why..?' questions which am understanding of teaching grammar makes much easier.

I taught EFL in Europe and outside for ten years and was a qualified teacher in the UK beforehand, I also took a CELTA course and what was then the DTE(E)LLS at Level 5 for QTS within the FE sector and beyond. I met hundreds of teachers during my different stints who had done online TEFL courses or other shorter courses, nothing comes close to CELTA in terms of quality and ensuring you know your stuff. That's my opinion, of course. If it's something you're considering long term or even have ideas of starting your own business or school then the CELTA at least wouldn't be a waste of your time or money.

It's a really rewarding job and can be a career choice, particularly abroad, so do go for it and I wish you loads of luck. Your teaching experience will stand you in brilliant stead. If you ever need any advice then you can always PM me, good luck!

@apapuchi that's a really kind offer- thank you. This has al been incredibly helpful- thank you!

Agree with you @apapuchi. Your business clients will be looking for someone who can get them the qualifications they need. I think it would be hard to do that without any TEFL knowledge or experience. Not impossible, but it involves specific information and techniques the TEFL gives you these things.

You're welcome and the offer is always open! I wish someone had given me insight into various aspects before I started, although I never had any bad experiences.

PS. (My post was written in paragraphs, I swear! Haha. I expect this one will be a blurb, too...).

@Sturdyfriend ah 'techniques' was the word I was scrabbling around for in my ramble.. thank you!

OP last post and then bed.

I have only taught in Europe. All major cities, before and after a child and having left a corporate job in London.

People with privately educated DC's are savvy. They do not want to pay the middle man.

They want to go direct.

Companies the same. If you own the company, they want you.

Research 'TEFL' speak on line if you must, but it is not required at all. 'TEFL' or two years equivalent experience' is what is required. An established UK teacher is hens teeth.

My acquaintance just got her TEFL. She writes 'your' and 'scarry'. Instead of 'you're' and 'scary' and I find that scary.

Go for it. I wish I had. Own your own company!

For those saying teach business english, what exactly do you mean?

What about teaching online via one of the many online companies (EF is a good place to start looking) I just did a TESOL for this reason and am planning to do this if I don't have a job to go back to after lockdown (doubtful). As a lot said it's mostly students from China which works out very good for fitting in school hours (if you have kids, not sure that you do) due to the time difference. I wouldn't have the confidence to start my own business English school but perhaps down the line, who knows?

I have to disagree with anyone saying you don’t need a TEFL qualification.

Teaching EFL is a very different thing from e.g. teaching French or German to a class of people who speak your own language. A good TEFL course teaches you how to put things across to a class of very possibly mixed nationalities/languages. You have to teach things that as a native speaker you never consciously had to learn, or even think about.

I used to teach motivated young adults, mostly speakers of Arabic. I enjoyed it and was very glad I’d done an excellent CELTA course first.
English language students will often have paid hard-earned money for their lessons, will very likely need to pass exams, and IMO deserve to be taught be someone properly qualified to do so.

I categorically need some kind of TEFL qualification. It's just deciding if I need to spend the money on the CELTA course. I've obviously got lots of teaching experience but need to learn how to teach English grammatically and specifically for business. TEFL also has an additions business English course that's quite affordable. I may have a look at coaching qualifications too...

It’s probably a prescribed reference book for any TEFL course, OP, but the Thomson and Martinet Practical English Grammar is absolutely invaluable for any EFL teacher.

Although I’d studied several foreign languages by the time I came to teach EFL, I found that English grammar from an EFL POV was a very different thing from whatever I’d learnt before. The book gives you the rules for things you’ve never had to think about.,

When I hadn’t been teaching very long I once had to take a rather more advanced class for someone who was off sick - and had to teach them the 3rd conditional. Eeek! WTF is that? Thank God for the good old T and M.
Of course it’s something we use everyday without even thinking about, but very complicated for speakers of languages like Arabic, from a different language family altogether.

I have a CELTA but still don't understand what Business english means - is this english for specific purposes - where you have to tailor the english for the indivual according to his/her area?

I did the CELTA course a few years ago, it was a hard month and they threw you in at the deep end teaching a real class on day 2. In terms of usefulness for jobs all I know is jobs I applied for and rejected from before getting the CELTA suddenly started offering me interviews when I applied for them again after

@paininthepoinsettia, Hi! To me, in the various cities I've taught business English in, it was as you guess.

In Europe, English is already way past basic level in higher level corporate clients and business people in top companies. They want to know how to write a business email in English (varies greatly from say, Spanish, Italian etc)

They want to improve pronunciation. Get it really professional sounding. One school I worked for wasn't keen on strong regional accents, for example.

They want to read relevant articles in 'The Times' with you, that you have sourced for them.

They want colloquialisms

They want relevant vocab to their industry

They want to practice phone calls/ presentations etc...

It takes a lot of preparation but is fun and challenging. It really isn't much to do with TEFL.

They want to know about English business culture.