Teaching English as a second language?

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Hello. I'm about to be made redundant and I'm thinking of doing the Celta course to teach English as a foreign language.

Does anyone do this, and what are the work prospects, especially for teaching online from home please?

I fulfil the entry requirements for training. Thanks

I did celta and taught English abroad. That was great. I then tried to find a job back in the UK but they fall into two categories
a. very poorly paid jobs in language schools - usually in touristy places like Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol also most big cities
b. Somewhat better jobs in FE colleges teaching immigrants - this is actually TESOL rather than TEFL but what you will learn in Celta applies to both. Anyway I found these jobs rather competitive to get into and eventually went into doing something completely different.

I'm not sure about the prospects of teaching english online from home but I would presume it's more of a 'thing' right now with the pandemic. I'm not sure if there are many 'employers' that would do this though, it would more likely be a self employed thing so you would need to set up your own business and marketing yourself to the right people (especially if abroad) sounds like hard work.

Anyway I trained with International House and later worked for them in the UK and also Poland. I would highly recommend their courses - they will probably be able to tell you more updated information about teaching prospects too. Good luck.

Thank you @Frazzled2207 - that's very helpful.
I wouldn't need to earn a full time income and I'm happy to be self employed too - but did your course give advice about finding work, or is it just about equipping you with the skills to teach?

I live in a city with lots of immigrants, so that's a start at least.

Hi. The Celta didn’t help with job hunting per se but they did give me a job in Poland! I notice IH also now teach online (for obvious reasons) - they didn’t a few years ago.

If there are lots of immigrants in your town try and find out where they learn. My guess would be an FE college that is funded to provide courses for them that they don’t pay (much) for.

You can probably do celta remotely these days, but live class experience is very important.

EAL is very poorly funded, it's extremely hard to make a career out of it. My sis in law has a pgce and did an additional masters to qualify her as a teacher of EAL for adults and she struggled piecing together short term contracts at FE colleges for two years before jacking it in. It's a huge shame, but there's just no funding any more even in cities with big immigrant populations.

The EFL teachers I know are struggling on with online teaching but this is largely for students they already had, if they are abroad, they are having wages cut at their institutions.

Do you have a pgce? If you want to teach abroad or teach foreign students online the best paying colleges will want you to have this. You can do it with just a celta but it is harder.

I teach TEFL but I live abroad and luckily have a good contract. I have heard that it is very difficult at the moment to make a living solely out of TEFL. A lot of the online schools seem to pay very poorly.

Hi,
I did CELTA 7 years ago and then a MA in Applied Linguistics and TESOL.
My husband and I have our own business and I’ve not been in EFL teaching for about 5 years. I’ve recently been looking for positions (our business has been damaged by COVID) and they seem sparse in my area. There would usually be intensive summer courses for the international students at my local universities but they don’t seem to be going ahead.
I don’t feel confident enough to do the online teaching route. I haven’t created a lesson plan or taught in five years. Combine that with never doing an online lesson and I’m scared I’d feel very out of my depth.
I couldn’t recommend the CELTA course more though. It was an incredible experience and I took more from it than my BA and MA. You find out a great deal about yourself and your capabilities, make friends and learn skills. I think the intensity of it really suited me.
However, the CELTA teachers won’t help you find work and mine wouldn’t even give references after.

Last year I worked in an FE college teaching ESOL. It was reasonably well paid (£28 per hour I was on) but that's a sessional rate and so all non contact hours were unpaid. You'd be lucky to find a full time role delivering it because the provision isn't there but that really depends on the college

You could look at prison education, I previously taught English and ESOL there (look up Milton Keynes college), and you may be more likely to get full time hours there, or top up sessional

The polish and Hungarian students I taught last year were very interested in family tutoring, so supporting parents to support their kids in school, particularly high school level and would have liked a multi disciplined approach of helping parents with their English and maths (in English) and supporting the children. The parents I taught were feeling increasingly that their children spoke a different language to them and that their school work was a whole area of their life they couldn't support them with,

Hiya

I've taught ESOL / EFL for 25 years now and still absolutely love it - there's nothing like it - but there is a real shortage of jobs out there and they are like gold dust. Where I work, the whole EFL department is going as over the years it's just got smaller and smaller for all kinds of reasons.

ESOL is what I've done for over 18 years and it's teaching learners English who live here. I'll be frank, FE is poorly paid and it can be very hard work as courses are government funded and the paperwork is substantial. We have variable hours staff and none of them have hours this September.

If you feel passionate about English and teaching - and that is after all what keeps us in our jobs - doing a CELTA is the 1st step. You can teach abroad with that or here in a language school or college - if you can find the work.

On line teaching may be the way to go.

Sorry if I've made it sound like there are no jobs, it's just I've interviewed so many people with great experience and it's difficult times out there if you want to teach English as a foreign language.

I did this for 8 years OP, both home and abroad in management and teaching positions.

Getting into a school in the U.K. is going to be very hard as a new teacher the next few years as there will be a pool of experienced teachers struggling for work as schools recover.

I am expecting to hear from ex colleagues in the field that online demand will surge going forward and there was already plenty of it to go round. Most of the online demand comes from China, that may prove tenuous going forward given U.K. relations with China currently.

Also - be aware that a lot of immigrants doesn’t necessarily equate to a lot of work. My students were typically those who came over specifically to study.

It’s not well paid and staff aren’t well treated. It’s also tough, it’s teaching at the end of the day and you need a robust subject knowledge and teaching skills to go with it.

For me, EFL was the lifestyle it gave me and it just wasn’t worth it in the U.K., when I was abroad it was fabulous.

If you do do it, go for the CELTA - no decent school takes someone with an online ‘TEFL’.

All the best to you. I don’t regret my years teaching one bit, but I would always advise anyone entering to go into the profession with their eyes wide open.

Thanks for all the advice, lots to think about.

It sounds as though the training would be right up my street at least, but maybe not a great economic decision.

Can I ask what recommended YouTube channels anyone can suggest that are actual lessons? Someone suggested a large channel where the female teacher taught ESL to children and she was brilliant, but I can't remember her name. She was blonde, young and very animated. Mostly taught Chinese students.

I teach English online and have done so for the past year. I earn about £5 an hour so it doesn't pay well and I don't know any companies that do pay well online. On top of actual teaching I have to do lesson plans etc which is unpaid.

There's massive competition and it took me about ten applications before I got accepted anywhere.

I have a bachelor's and a TEFL. The TEFL isn't really worth the paper it's printed on. I've learnt how to teach English just by actually going out there and doing it, not from a TEFL course.

I enjoy the job though, it's rewarding and I am planning to move abroad and teach for a year or so, but I do think it would be difficult to actually consider it a long term career path.