I have completed a intensive weekend TEFL course followed by the 120hours online follow up study, I graduated last year and I am now looking to begin my career abroad teaching English.
The question is where would be the best country to start out?
At the moment I am torn between Spain and South Korea, quite contrasting countries.
I have done a a lot of research into South Korea it seems to be the hot place for foreign English teachers at the moment. Indeed the benefits are very appealing in a year i could of cleared my debts and saved money to travel, another great perk of Korea is it is also close to so many other amazing countries. I love Asia and I have spent time in Thailand and India. Going somewhere so different to England would be a fantastic experience.
On the other hand I am also drawn to Spain, though how easy is it to get into a good job as a newly qualified teacher? I have considered doing a CELTA over the summer to imrove my prospects before looking for a job in country, though this is costly. I would prefer to be in a city, which I have heard can be competetive. I have found it difficult finding many job ads on the internet that don't require at least 2 years experience.
Can anyone offer me some help and advice?
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Yes it's true that teaching is competetive in Spain, although less so in the south, but you will find it difficult to find work with no experience unless you apply to Vaughan Systems. The main problem with that though, is that many other school don't have a very good opinion of Vaughan and might not consider time spent with them as proper experience.
You can, however, find some schools that will take you if you are qualified enough, and if you are serious about teaching I would definitely say that CELTA is worth it, I'd do it if I had the money/credit rating.
If you're attracted to Korea, it would probably be a great place to start. Have you tried tefl.com, Dave's ESL Cafe, and Spainwise.net? Also more local there are Spainexpat and Madridloquo, in fact most cities in Spain have a loquo site where you can advertise your services as well as look for accomodation.
Hey! I'm in Korea. I decided that I'd do Korea before Europe as I wanted to get the experience before going into the far more competative job market. Just my decision though, and I'm not sure if it was a good one. On the one hand, I LOVE Korea. On the other, however, Greece's economy kinda took a nose dive while I was here, and that was pretty high on my list of places I wanted to go. I'm thinking Italy now, in the hopes that there will be some TEFL work there still by the time I get there :P
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