Job Discussion Forums

[Pipi]

Sorry if this question has been asked before but can anyone tell me what are the basic requirements for teaching ESL in NZ or OZ?
I'm hoping to return home later this year after three years of teaching in Asia. I have a grad. dip. in Teaching and one in English Lit.
Most of the jobs seem to ask for CELTA or a specific TESOL qualification. I've looked into getting CELTA but the information on the website seems to imply that it's more for someone with no teaching qualifications or experience. It's also a bit pricey to obtain if I don't actually need it.
Thanks for any help you can offer

[supervisor133]

A Grad Dip in Lit won't take you anywhere in the ESL field here. Grad Dip in Ed? Depends on the methods you chose. The only teachers I know with a Grad Dip Ed but minus a CELTA/TEFL cert did ESL as one of their teaching methods. If that's your situation then you may not have too much trouble!

If not, then I'd recommend getting some kind of certification as teaching ESL here will probably be very different from teaching it in Asia. I did my cert after my initial 15 month stint O/S and found it quite helpful.

If you go to teach in a high school, they may well ask you to teach ESL as you have experience O/S, in addition to your usual teaching method at that school.

[eslstudies]

Firstly, there aren't many jobs being advertised. Most that are appear to be in Qld; nothing wrong with that.
All seem to require some post grad TESOL. You can do a certificate through a number of universities by distance/online, and get a post grad loan to fund it, so its free until you're pulling a decent salary. Do you have current registration? You'd need that to work in the school sector: international programs are big at the moment, both long and short term. The drawback here is that the state systems are encouraging their own permanent employees to retrain in ESL, as it is an area of increasing demand. This kind of freezes out "outsiders". Once you're in though, employment is nearly guaranteed. Many current "ESL" teachers are standard classroom English teachers with a strength in teaching literacy, but no specific ESL training, experience or qualifications.

Otherwise, for the English colleges, you don't need registration, but most are asking for post grad TESOL and relevant [esp. Asian] experience. I easily landed two contracts in these places before winning a much better paid long-term position in a state school, teaching international students.

I can't see why anyone with a degree and teaching experience would bother with a CELTA when post graduate TESOL will qualify one for a much wider range of better paid jobs.