Teaching English as a Foreign Language isn’t just for those who have graduated from college or university. Although many cases require that you be 21 or over with a Bachelor’s Degree to secure a job teaching English abroad, you can still become TEFL-certified and teach English to foreign students. Because of this, TEFL is a fantastic option for university and college students in more ways than one.
Why Students Should Become TEFL Certified
Becoming TEFL certified while you are already in education shows potential employers that you’re not just settling for the bare minimum. In addition to your academic pursuits, gaining a TEFL certification shows that you’re always seeking more.
Not only will becoming TEFL certified show that you’re proactive, but it will also grant you the opportunity to earn money throughout your studies.
Additionally, it opens up a range of prospects for the students. Not only will you become more skilled and qualified, but you will also interact with members of the TEFL community who can share their unique insights and stories into teaching abroad opportunities.
TEFL Courses for Students
While I was at university, I always thought teaching English as a Foreign Language was an unattainable opportunity. Teaching English to foreign students abroad, traveling the world, and getting paid to do it? That’s simply too good to be true.
I thought there must have been plenty of logistical obstacles and reasons why it wasn’t possible. Maybe the TEFL course is too hard, or too expensive. Yeah, probably.
But only once I started investigating further and took the necessary steps to get the ball rolling, I realized that obtaining a TEFL qualification couldn’t be easier. Whether you want to attend online or in-person training, the choice is yours. TEFL qualifications on Premier TEFL are self-paced and come in a range of forms, varying from 120-hour online courses to 310-hour hybrid courses in order to thoroughly prepare you to teach English to foreign students. Some of our popular courses include:
- 120 Hour TEFL Course
- 130 Hour Hybrid TEFL Course with Live TEFL Practice
- 180 Hour Ofqual Regulated Level 5 TEFL Course
- 240 Hour Ofqual Regulated Level 5 TEFL Course
- 300 Hour Ofqual Regulated Level 5 TEFL Course
When you begin your online and self-paced TEFL training, you have 6 months of study time. This means that you don’t have to worry about your TEFL getting in the way of your academic goals. You can study during your free time, and move your priorities towards your academic course when the intensity starts to load up. Want to head to a festival with your friends after your exams? Go ahead. Put your TEFL studies on hold and return to it once you’re done studying and partying! Should you run out of time on your TEFL course, you can extend your course for a small fee.
Work and Teach English Abroad at Summer Camps
Going to festivals is a signature way to celebrate during the summer holidays. However, teaching English to foreign students abroad is another fantastic yet overlooked way to spend your summer!
But why does it have to be one or the other? You can venture abroad to work at a summer camp teaching English to foreign students and deliver engaging activities from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, depending on your availability and preferences. Whether you want to balance quality time at home with traveling, or you want to spend your entire summer abroad, the choice is yours.
English Summer Camp Benefits
Working at a summer camp abroad can be beneficial for students in a number of ways. More often than not, you’ll receive free accommodation at your summer camp, and you may even receive a stipend throughout the experience and come back with more cash than before. Some camp organizers may even cover your airfare cost!
Fun and Engaging Atmosphere
The learning environment at summer camps is typically informal and incorporates a range of activities. You may be helping your students complete team projects and presentations one day, and then the next you may be hiking, hosting, or even taking part in a sports competition. Campfires, talent shows, and much more, summer camps provide a diverse environment for students to learn English in.
If you have any hidden talents or musical abilities, for example, they will thrive in the summer camp environment. If not, don’t worry, your enthusiasm is enough! And don’t worry about teaching and presenting math equations on a whiteboard. English summer camps are about engaging students in a range of fun ways within the context of English communication. This ends up creating an infectiously fun atmosphere not only for the students but for the teachers as well.
See New Places and Widen Your Perspective
You’ll meet new people and see new places. Not only are you visiting a country, but you’re temporarily living somewhere and engaging with members of the community in a way in which you can absorb some of their culture and traditions.
While university and college is undoubtedly transitional stage in your life, traveling will increase your independence, and cultural adaptability, and widen your perspective tenfold. Wealth is of the mind, not the pocket, a young Pharrell Williams once said. Regardless of how irrelevant he is in the context of TEFL, traveling fulfills you in immeasurable ways. Thankfully, there are a few summer camps in which teachers can apply to work on the Premier TEFL website.
Earn by Teaching English To Foreign Students at a Summer Camp in Romania
Buna! At Premier TEFL, you can take part in a fully inclusive program where you will teach English in Romania during the summer! You will be provided with a TEFL course, accommodation, a weekly allowance, cultural excursions, and more! The only requirement is that you are a native English speaker and are 18 years old.
When you aren’t leading your team through a range of team building, music, arts and crafts as well as outdoor activities, you’ll have the opportunity to visit Bran Castle, which inspired Dracula, as well as fantastic cities in Romania such as Brasov, Bucharest, and more. You can read much more about must-have experiences in Romania for English teachers!
Earn by Teaching English To Foreign Students at a Summer Camp in Germany
Guten tag! Teaching English to foreign students in Germany is a fantastic way for university and college students to spend their summer. The fully inclusive 5 – 10-week program includes a TEFL certification course, free accommodation, a teacher allowance, cultural excursions, and more! The only requirements are that teachers are 19 years old and are native English speakers.
Teachers will have the ability to work at either Lüneburger Heide, Regen, Amrum Hachen, or Mölln, destinations that are rich in wide green landscapes, history, and Gothic architecture.
However, there are far more options to teach English to foreign students at a summer camp if Romania or Germany aren’t intriguing enough for you. You can search for summer camp opportunities through other websites such as GoAbroad or even apply directly to English camps!
Gain Experience and Earn Money by Teaching English Online
Although you may enhance yourself spiritually by teaching and traveling at summer camps, you can also benefit in many ways by teaching English online throughout your studies. From a more practical standpoint, you can gain plenty of experience to bolster your CV or resume and earn money to fill your wallet by teaching English online throughout your studies.
Flexibility
Depending on your academic schedule, teaching English online is a very viable option for college and university students. Teaching English online allows you to choose your own hours to ensure that they do not clash with your seminars, lectures, and so on.
Should your academic work intensity increase, you can decide to scale back on how many lessons you teach. Teaching English online is a very flexible profession. You are often able to set your own hours and are very rarely restricted to a schedule set by someone else.
Earn Money
We all know how hard it can be to survive off beans on toast and pesto pasta throughout our studies. Teaching English online even part-time will help you earn money to help you cover expenses as a student. Although you won’t become rich by teaching online part-time, you can earn enough money to support yourself without needing to travel to and from your workplace.
Let’s say you choose to teach for two hours on three days of the week. Hypothetically, you earn $10 per hour since you’re only new to TEFL. You teach on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday (let’s save Friday for your post-lecture night out). $60 a week, or $280 a month will help to pay for your food that week and also use it as your night out budget. Unless you go crazy heavy on your nights out, of course.
Of course, online teachers are able to not only book more lessons but earn incentives if they are able to commit to teaching on the weekends. However, it is not essential if you want the weekend to recharge following a week of studying and teaching English online.
Gain Experience Bolster Your CV and Resume
Not only will you be supporting yourself financially, your future employers will be able to see this. They will be impressed with your commitment to teaching English while also thoroughly studying at college or university.
Employers will be particularly impressed if you are applying for a TEFL job. Typically, people begin their TEFL courses as post-graduates. Should an employer see that you were an undergraduate when you not only became TEFL qualified but amassed experience teaching English, they will be impressed by your already established experience within the TEFL industry.
Additionally, TEFL isn’t for everyone. That is the case for any other job such as finance, marketing, law, and so on. So, teaching English online is a fantastic way to gain experience and test the waters before teaching English abroad. While they are different in many ways, they can help you understand whether or not teaching is for you.
If you want to find out more about teaching English online, you can read our guide on teaching English online without a degree. The article includes examples of platforms that hire teachers who are without a Bachelor’s degree.
Teaching English as a Student
Let’s run through the benefits of TEFL for students one more time. Not only will you be able to become a qualified English foreign languages teacher, you will have many more opportunities to earn money, gain experience, and travel the world. This goes for whether you want to teach during your studies or wait until you’ve graduated.
Even if you do not wish to actively teach throughout your studies, becoming TEFL certified has many benefits. You will have gained plenty of insight into the world of TEFL, and employers will notice that you have exercised your knowledge about teaching English in a foreign classroom in order to become certified. Once you are TEFL certified, the process of venturing to live and work abroad will be one step closer.