Teaching English abroad really is an education
STUDENT Susanna House spent almost a year in West Africa after completing her TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) qualification.
The 19-year- old, from Kidlington, Oxfordshire, taught English to pupils aged seven to 70 at a community education centre during her gap-year.
She says: ‘I’d decided to spend my year teaching English with the charity Project Trust and spent a year living and working in Kaolack, Senegal.
‘At the age of 18, this was, to say the least, a bit daunting. So I decided to prepare as much as possible by doing a TEFL qualification with The TEFL Academy. That turned out to be the best preparation I could have done.’
Susanna t a ught Engli s h to beginners, to ‘students who seemed to have memorised the whole English dictionary’, and in all group sizes, from one-to- one to classes of up to 30.
‘I think, over the course of my first year teaching English, I must have encountered nearly every type of challenge a teacher of English can face,’ she adds. ‘ So, th e TEFL Academy Handbook became almost like a bible for any difficulties I was facing.’
Susanna is now finishing her first year studying French and English literature at Southampton University.
She says: ‘I was working full-time, so I gained a great work ethic and developed other skills such as management and problemsolving through the responsibility I was given.
‘This has given me the confidence and desire to expand my postgraduate jobsearching to jobs abroad.’
The TEFL Academy is the UK’s leading TEFL course provider. The courses are designed to give students t he f undamental s kil l s needed to enable them to successfully teach English as a foreign language.
Another success story is 23- year- old Jenny Welch, f r om Oakwood, North London, who gained a first in History and English at Leeds University.
She completed her TEFL qualification in January and headed for northern Colombia, teaching English in a school in the city of Barranquilla. There, she says, she had an ‘ amazing’ time, teaching classes of up to 50 children.
After returning to Britain, Jenny now plans to backpack around Central and South America and look for another TEFL job in Asia before returning t o Colombia in September.
Recommending TEFL, she says: ‘I think if you’ve got itchy feet, it’s a great way to see the world. With house prices ever rising and the cost of living so high, I think it’ s a great alternative for graduates.’
FOR information about TEFL courses, log on to theteflacademy.com