If you are reading this and understand every word, then you’re already an ideal candidate to teach English abroad. Teaching English overseas is now one of the most popular choices for recent graduates and gap year students, and it’s very easy to see why.
Firstly, it allows you to travel relatively cheaply, as you’re actually living abroad and you have access to some of the world’s most stunning landscapes on your doorstep. You’ll experience local life and get to interact with locals on a day to day basis, immersing yourself in a culture far different from your own - something that is impossible to experience on a fortnight’s package holiday deal. Though you’d be teaching in English, your language skills will inevitably improve, too, whether you go to Spanish-speaking Ecuador and Argentina, or China or India as you’ll be living and breathing it.
If you know that you want to become a teacher, the experience you gain from teaching English is invaluable. There’s a huge number of people who apply for PGCEs (Postgraduate Certificate of Education, a diploma required in order to teach) without any prior experience, so if you know teaching’s the job for you, then an English teaching placement in a foreign country will boost your CV credentials drastically and make you far more marketable to employers than the average student with no experience. Now that the cost of a PGCE has risen, demand for these places is higher than ever, and so universities can afford to be selective about whom they choose – and teaching abroad definitely stands out against the rest of the competition.
What’s great about these schemes is that if you’re a native speaker of English, you’re virtually halfway there. All that’s required is an enthusiasm for teaching, good communication and a friendly nature. You don’t even need to know another language in order to teach abroad, but you’ll likely pick up some of the native tongue anyway, thanks to close interaction with your students and, if you’re lucky enough, language classes in your area which one Lattitude volunteer in Argentina experienced.
There are over 250,000 English speakers working abroad as teachers, so chances are, you’ll get to meet people from all over the world and gain networking opportunities. Many English teaching placements are actually found via word of mouth so it’s by far more advantageous to get to know people and find out about these exciting placements that way.
If you think of the number of times that you’ve been inspired by a teacher, you’ll realise what an important job it is to educate the world’s next generation, in particular teaching them one of the world’s fastest growing languages. But it doesn’t mean that you have to be stuck in a classroom all day making lots of lesson plans - it’s allowed to be fun!
Find out more about teaching English