If I want to teach English in a country like Spain, do I need to have a certificate??
Wherever you go, get a certificate in TEFL first. You need to know what you are about for your own self esteem and for the people who will be paying to be taught by you. What sort of cowboy outfit would employ you without some kind of qualification? A certificate will not make you a qualified teacher but you will be initiated and in a position to know how to develop. Don’t do an online course, because that will not involve supervised teaching practice – it’s like being taught to play football without going onto the pitch with a team. And avoid those 20 hour TEFL weekends. Any course should include sessions on grammar, vocabulary, phonology, listening, speaking, reading, writing, classroom management, materials evaluation and lesson planning, so imagine what is being left out on a ‘TEFL weekend’. ELT does not pay well anywhere, unlesss you can get into a university department, so you have to check out conditions before you go – tefl.com has info about all this. In lots of countries you
