Sharing Parental Experiences

Becoming a teacher is a worthwhile career which can have a positive impact on every pupil you come across. There are opportunities to teach in many different institutions across the UK including state schools and universities. Many new teachers find that there are no vacancies for the subjects they are trained to teach like English and History because these are so popular. Teachers who decide that teaching English to speakers of other languages is what they want to do will not have this problem as there are thousands of people looking to learn English as a second language in the UK.

The qualifications you need to teach English to foreign language speakers depends on where you will be teaching. It is becoming increasingly rare for newly qualified TESOL teachers to get a job if they do not have a degree to accompany their TESOL certificate. You have to have a PGCE if you want to teach English to speakers of other languages in a state school in the UK.

The tasks and roles that you will have to fulfil whilst working as a TESOL teacher include your general classroom teaching, classroom management, lesson planning and preparation, preparing and setting examinations, giving feedback on oral and written work and basic administration such as registration and attendance records. Some teachers will be asked to get involved with other things at their school like sports days and excursions.

It is not just schools where TESOL teaching takes place however. You may find a job working in the commercial sector helping someone in their work or training students who need a certain level of English to be able to attend and higher education institution in the UK. There are commercial language schools where these teachers teach around the UK.

Work like this tends to be seasonal and temporary whereas you are more likely to get a longer contract working in a school helping children whose first language is not English. If you think you would like to teach English abroad then you should look into Teaching English as a foreign language or TEFL.