You’ve decided you want j travel around the world whilst making money teaching English. Great fortune and experiences lie ahead!
The first thing to do is to decide the ages that you wish to teach. Children are easier to prepare for as they require less focus on grammar, but more emphasis on activities and games in order to practice and improve their English; however, their conversational abilities can sometimes be limited or nonexistent.
Children also require a lot of energy (especially pre-school) and it can be emotionally stressful when disciplining them. On the other hand, you will be able to actually hold a conversation with adult students, 8 times out of 10 you will never need to discipline them and little energy is used up. Despite this, teaching adults will consume more of your personal time. Adult classes will require detailed research and lesson planning, plentiful and creative materials, and will require you to have good grammatical knowledge.
On a slightly biased note, I found that teaching children can sometimes feel more rewarding because they are able to learn more efficiently than adults, who can take months and even years to break away from bad habits.
Getting Started
Alternatively, you may decide that you want to teach both adults and children. Being able to offer services for both children and adults will certainly open more doors for you. As the world continues to globalize economically, more and more adults are seeking teachers to help them with their conversational English, IELTS and TOEFL exams; while more parents are aiming to ensure their children have an upper hand in life by being able to speak English.
Once you have chosen whether you want to teach children, adults, or both; you will then need to undertake an in-class or online TEFL program as all English teaching positions in the world require you to have a TEFL certificate. It’s cheaper to take it online, but by spending a few more dimes for the in-class course, you receive much more hands on experience that an online course can offer.
Once you’ve booked your course, I would advise you to start to brush up on some simple and basic grammar points. You don’t need to do a whole lot of revision as the TEFL program will go over grammar as part of the course. However, starting the course with a little bit of grammar revision will make it easier for you further down the road. I have included a checklist of 8 grammar points that you can quickly review and get your head around:
Grammar Review Checklist
- Past and present simple vs. past and present progressive.
- Past perfect vs. present perfect.
- Verb tables (just get familiar with their layout, i.e. verb 2, verb 3).
- Modal verbs (their functions).
- What is a syllable and a syllable stress.
- Comparatives and superlatives (how they are formed).
- Will vs. going to.
- Use of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, pronouns, and of course verbs.
At this point you should start a game list. Try and think of all the games you played at school and with your friends. These will come in very handy once you begin teaching children (and even adults). I have of course included a vast list of games and activities but, nonetheless, my list does not include all the games known to mankind. There are variations upon variations of every type of game so… start writing your game list. The more games you have in your inventory, the easier teaching will be.
Not like any other type of teacher
A TEFL teacher is an entertainer. You may not believe me, but trust me when I say, your primary job is not to teach English, but to entertain; as a consequence, the students will learn English. Teaching is one third preparation and two thirds delivery. Many times I have seen new teachers try and fail at teaching simply because they believe they can teach like a professor at a university.
This is not the case. I´m an introvert in the real world, but when I step into the classroom, I must become an extrovert; like an actor the real me fades away and I must become a completely different person. So think seriously before entering this profession.
Can you act comfortably like a fool? Can you sing and dance around your students? Are you able to be loud, witty and comical in front of strangers (often parents and managers will sit in your classes to assess you)? If the answer is yes, then you’re ready to become a TEFL teacher.
