Job Discussion Forums

[biggroucho]

Hi all, I'm a complete newbie to TEFL & was wondering if it was feasible to teach abroad without a TEFL qualification.

I am a UK university 2:1 graduate and have heard of friends of friends who have gone out to East Asia without doing any extra qualifications. As I am also looking at other options over the next year or so, I am weary of paying for a course and not getting round to doing TEFL - hence, I would rather a job that didn't require a course, or a job that I could secure before having to complete a course at a later date.

Is this possible? Which countries, if any, could I feasibly work in? Am I making a big mistake by not completing a course?

Apologies if this has been dealt with a million times, and thanks in advance for helping out a clueless newbie.

[coledavis]

Well yes, this has been asked a million times. Here is a summary of the usual answers:
In that you don't know what you don't know (e.g. what is the present perfect and how would you teach it? how do you reinforce learning? how do you deal with errors? how to structure lessons), you may be disappointing yourself and your students if you go out there with very little understanding of what you are doing. People are generally less in awe of native speakers than they once were and, given that language teaching is not akin to other subjects, you are more likely to fail. So, the advice is generally to do your four weeks CELTA or Trinity Cert.

However, there are organisations which take in new people and offer some form of in-house training. Caveat emptor.

Or you could try promoting conversation work, maybe in China, although again, your lack of understanding of language teaching is going to limit how good you are at it.

Just don't expect to get a reasonable salary and a good job for a year without the training.

[tttompatz]

[biggroucho]

[fluffyhamster]

My advice, especially if money is tight, is always to simply buy and work through a few books (I and others have recommended plenty over the years, but here's a quite recent thread: http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=88872 ) rather than shell out for an (IMHO) overpriced/relatively poor-value cert, and put the difference/saving towards subsidizing the potentially low wages, and/or towards getting a "proper" qualification (diploma, or MA) once you've gained a few years' experience and decided you like the field enough (though if any of those books that I or others recommend turn out to not be quite to your liking, then you may well not enjoy the job as much LOL).

[biggroucho]