Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL): Is it worth it?

After teaching English as a foreign language for over six years, I am better qualified than most to talk about teaching English in a foreign country. After graduating from university in 1999, I spent a few months doing some voluntary teaching in Nigeria and this gave me a taste for travel and educating that I wanted to take further. After doing some research on the Internet, I found two places that seemed to pay their foreign English teachers very well; and they only required a university degree to apply, with no experience necessary. One of these places was Taiwan, and the other was South Korea. I opted for South Korea, as the salary was a little better at the time. I spent the best part of ten years there.

“But wait a minute,” I hear you saying. I opened this article by saying that I taught for six years, but then I go on to say that I spent ten years in Korea. Well, that is one of the first benefits to teaching English as a foreign language. You save money, and you have plenty of opportunities to travel between contracts! Contracts in South Korea typically run for one year before you can either renew or take some time off. Between contracts, I traveled to Thailand three time, Indonesia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Egypt, France, Spain, and Switzerland to name just a few.

As well as traveling all around the world, I also saved a significant amount of money while working in South Korea. An average teacher’s salary there is around $2000, and this often includes free accommodation in the form of a one-bedroom apartment. The best thing is, living costs are reasonable and you should save about a half of what you earn – which adds up quite quickly. If you are sensible, after a year or two, you should have enough money to come home and put a deposit on a house or start your own business.

When you start out teaching English abroad, you will probably teach for around six hours per day. But as you build your resume and get more experience, you may negotiate better and better teaching conditions. When I first started out, I taught for six hours per day plus two hours of preparation time. In my final year, I was teaching for three hours per day with twenty minutes of preparation time, and my salary had doubled!

However, if you are not confident enough to just walk into a classroom and start teaching, you could always take a TEFL course first to build your confidence and get the skills necessary to be a teacher. I did an online TEFL course before I began and I picked up some useful skills that I put to good practice in the classroom. There are many websites where you can find teaching jobs abroad, and to finish with, here are a few of the best: