TEFL course and job opportunities..

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Hi,

I'm just looking for other people's experience of TEFL courses and career options/job opportunities.

Ideally I'd be working remotely and be able to pick my own hours. I'm currently a burnt out ICU nurse looking at all my options/possibly re-training in another field.

I can afford the initial outlay/costs of TEFL course and have possibly found a platform where I can work from home and gain some experience hopefully.

Thanks

I studied the TEFL course one day a week , face to face and it was a lot of work. I was working the other four days a week and spent most of the weekend preparing my teaching materials for the next week. The written assignments have to be produced to a high standard and any mistakes affect your final grade. Depending where you live there should be opportunities for teaching at home or working in a college. I found it very rewarding - especially teaching refugees. Also, my cousin spent years teaching abroad all over Europe.

There is a five month level 5 TESOL programme that starts in October at a local college which I might enquire about.

I did a properly certified course (CELTA) I think with the British Council abroad, and taught with them there. Dd did a similar, one month intensive course (classroom) in the U.K. and despite being a very able graduate linguist found it very hard work. It did however enable her to find work easily on her travels abroad.

I certainly wouldn’t advise one of the relatively cheap, online only courses. Nor any TEFL course if you’re the sort of person who struggled (or would have struggled) with GCSE French. (Not that I’m saying you are.). IMO you do need to have a facility with language/the workings of grammar generally. I had studied several foreign languages inc. Russian and still found the course hard going. It’s such a different thing from the way I’d been taught any language before - I.e. using English, to a class of English speakers. When faced with a class of speakers of other languages, maybe several different ones, you have to learn techniques for conveying what you’re trying to teach.

Personally I found the classroom experience - observing experienced teachers, and my own classroom practice - absolutely invaluable.