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Andrea25
Joined: 04 Jul 2005
Posts: 2
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 Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2005 10:18 pm Post subject: Re: Need advice! |
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Hi,
I wonder if you can give some advice. I have recently completed a BA (Hons) degree in Humanities and would now like to pursue a career.
I have always had an interest in teaching, although I don't want to have to do the PGCE qualification.
I live in a small town in United Kingdom and wonder if it would be worthwhile thinking about commuting to a nearby city such as Birmingham or Manchester (1 hour 45 mins) to teach english as a foreign language on a part-time basis, say one or two days per week?
Also, is it possible to do tefl and tesol as an online career?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards
Andrea |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 4:18 am Post subject: Re: Need advice! |
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| Andrea25 wrote: |
| I have recently completed a BA (Hons) degree in Humanities and would now like to pursue a career. I have always had an interest in teaching, although I don't want to have to do the PGCE qualification. |
Hello, Andrea, and welcome to the forum!
I must admit I find it puzzling that you express an interest in a particular profession, but do not want (as yet) to take the time and trouble to get the appropriate qualification. Is there any particular reason why you do not want to take the PGCE? I have a BEd myself plus Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), although I will say that I got those 10 years ago and I have been in the TEFL game just four.
| Andrea25 wrote: |
| I live in a small town in [the] United Kingdom and wonder if it would be worthwhile thinking about commuting to a nearby city such as Birmingham or Manchester (1 hour 45 mins) to teach English as a foreign language on a part-time basis, say one or two days per week? |
If you are talking about teaching at a college of further education, I believe that it would virtually impossible to teach TEFL/TESOL without any professional qualifications such as the CELTA or the Trinity Certificate in TESOL. Consequently, you may find it an uphill struggle to teach anywhere, never mind a big city like Birmingham or Manchester.
These qualifications are regarded as "currency". If you put yourself in an EFL/ESOL learner's shoes, would you not prefer to be taught by someone who is professionally qualified? You may find that some organisations, such as the British Council, will not consider anyone who is not professionally qualified to teach the subject.
The vast majority of people, who hold the aforementioned certificates for TEFL/TESOL, have university degrees, so there would be no "advantage" for you if you just decide that a BA is enough. If you want to stay in the UK, let me tell you from my own experience - it isn't enough, not by a long shot. You really do need to get qualified!
Also, have you thought about teaching outside the UK? You don't mention this in your post, so I have no idea whether you have contemplated it or whether it is not in your plans because of, say, family commitments or suchlike. Overseas experience is a given in this game, so anyone who does not have any TEFL/TESOL experience overseas may find themselves at a great disadvantage over others who do.
| Andre25 wrote: |
| Also, is it possible to do tefl and tesol as an online career? |
Not without any experience at all, it isn't. You need to prove that you have experience in what you are doing before you can even contemplate undertaking what is essentially freelance work. Journalists have to work for newspapers and/or other media so that they can get the thorough grounding before they are confident enough in working for themselves. The same applies to TEFL/TESOL. I would imagine that at least three, possibly, four years of experience are needed before you could possibly call yourself ready to do this kind of thing.
That experience needs to be face-to-face. The idea that one can undertake a TEFL/TESOL career with no professional qualifications and/or face-to-face experience of teaching genuine students in whatever setting is virtually unheard-of in the UK.
There can be no half-measures in this. If you are serious about making a commitment to teaching any kind of subject (never mind TEFL/TESOL), you need to take the time and trouble (and money) to invest in a professional qualification. Believe it, it is an investment, and it is an indication that you are taking the profession seriously, and both employers and students will respond to that positively.
Teaching is not for the faint- or half-hearted - it is for the committed. Without commitment, you will simply not succeed. It is as simple as that. |
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Chasgul
Joined: 04 May 2005
Posts: 168
Location: BG
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 10:36 am Post subject: |
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Usually for those committed to teaching as opposed to an asylum 
Joking aside, you will not get a position as a teacher in the UK without qualifications. The only positions open to non-qualified people are as 'assistants', and I suspect that the rate of pay is not too nice. Otherwise you can, of course, do volunteer work.
If you don't want to do PGCE then try CELTA: it's one month of hard work as opposed to a year of messing about, or you can do it 6 months part-time, which gives you the chance to work the rest of the time to pay off your student loans and/or overdraft. |
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Andrea25
Joined: 04 Jul 2005
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:17 pm Post subject: |
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Hi,
Thank you for replying. I realise that I would need to do a TEFL course.
However, doing a PGCE for some reason sounds more demanding.
I am wondering if it's possible to get a temporary job for about a month, working in a different country? The reason I am asking this is, I am not sure whether I would be suited to the work. Also, are there any one-to-one tefl jobs abroad that someone could do?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards
Andrea |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:49 pm Post subject: Advice for newbies without TEFL quals and/or experience |
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| Andrea25 wrote: |
I realise that I would need to do a TEFL course.
However, doing a PGCE for some reason sounds more demanding. |
If you are thinking purely in terms of TEFL, a PGCE may not be necessary, though, as far as I know, if you want to teach in a college of further education, a teaching qualification is now mandatory (it didn't use to be). Hence, a PGCE (FE) would be appropriate.
Of course, a PGCE is a demanding course. Teaching is a demanding profession. It is not simply a question of gaining Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) at the end of it, but it also equips you with the vital skills you need for teaching, whether it is your specialist subject or whether you do teaching of any sort, especially if you were to go to another country and teach at a government school or college there. The CELTA and Trinity College Certificate in TESOL are shorter in duration but are more demanding as you would have a far sharper learning curve.
| Andrea25 wrote: |
| I am wondering if it's possible to get a temporary job for about a month, working in a different country? The reason I am asking this is, I am not sure whether I would be suited to the work. |
I can understand that you might want to "try out" something before committing to it. With TEFL, however, the best that you could possibly do is with a group of private students. If you have contacts with people who might know some people who are learning English as a second language (E2L), that could be OK. You mentioned Birmingham and Manchester in your previous posting, so, being the multicultural cities that they are, there are about to be plenty of E2L people there.
As for doing this in another country, you might find it very difficult if you do not have any contacts there. It is unlikely that locals might want to have some person pop out of nowhere and ask if they are at all interested in English classes. It could be misinterpreted as someone saying: "Hi! I've no money! I'm desperate! I'll teach you English if you give me some cash!"
Having said that, there are usually summer camps being advertised in countries like China (where I am now), and they are always looking for people to work there, even if it might be hard work and you might be paid peanuts. You could try a search on Dave's or on Google if you are at all interested in going that route.
| Andrea25 wrote: |
| Also, are there any one-to-one tefl jobs abroad that someone could do? |
Again, only private tutoring (as you would have guessed) and, then again, only really if you are supplementing your income. Doing one-to-one as your main source of income is questionably dodgy - even I would not do it, and I have been in the TEFL game for four years. There are absolutely no guarantees whatsoever that the classes would last - as I know only too well from my own experience. Still, the longest private tutoring group I had was a group of six children and lasted 48 hours, so I suppose that this was not too bad!
One 18-year-old, whom I tutored on a one-to-one basis last year, is now completing a year-long English course in Cambridge, of all places, and his parents are contemplating sending him to my current school in China for a year with a view to sending him back to the UK again, only this time to undertake a bachelor's degree.
You also have to bear in mind that you might have to travel to the student's home and spend a considerable amount of time - as well as your own hard-earned cash - travelling there and back. Also, if you want to teach privately, students (or their parents, especially in China) want to know if you have a solid background in TEFL; they are incredibly picky, and parents are unlikely to want to pay someone to teach their child English if they do not even work at a school.
If you want to teach only adults, you may find that students have enough on their plates already, what with the crushing burden of assignments that they have to do for their universities, especially in China. However, parents do not think twice about sending their little darlings for extra classes, especially if their teacher is a foreigner. Parents delude themselves into believing that native speakers can somehow wave a linguistic magic wand and make them "perfect" English speakers. Not! |
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EnglishBrian
Joined: 19 May 2005
Posts: 189
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Andrea, you're getting some very good advice here. |
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Glenski
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Posts: 12844
Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 8:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Teaching in most countries will require a work visa, which is good for a year. Employers won't want to hire for just a month. You'd only give students 4 lessons then leave. And, if the foreign country is fairly distant from the UK, you would spend more getting there and setting yourself up than what you'd recoup in any salary. Besides, how would you give notice? Some places want a month's notice, so you'd have to resign the day you started. |
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