How much did corporate gigs pay in China?xiongmao wrote:Well I've now done my CELTA, it was harder than I ever expected - even doing it part-time, but the certificate arrived last week. Definitely if you want to teach overseas, then get the CELTA.
Spain should be on that list - it's a great country to live in AND there are a lot of TEFL jobs, particularly in the smaller towns and cities.
In China the big money is to be made from private tuition. When I was a university student there the admin staff were swamped with companies wanting English tuition for their staff. I turned it all down as I was too busy firefighting my mosquito issue and dating hot hot women.
When I was in Indonesia, I determined that I wouldn't really benefit much from the CELTA. It's great if you want to know how to teach English. I'd taken a course in it in college. But if I remember right, you could only get a certificate if you were completing an education degree or teacher certification. The ESL certificate was an add-on to that. I also learned how to teach through trial and error.
After having X years of experience, having a CELTA didn't help that much. I may have lost one job over it at a national plus school in Indonesia that would have considered hiring me if I had a CELTA certificate. But most schools wouldn't consider it because CELTA was for teaching adults, and these types of schools were secondary schools that taught children.
In South Korea when I was there, you just needed a college degree to get the job. I'm not saying a CELTA wouldn't be worth it to know what you are doing and have some confidence. But it probably wouldn't have helped me land a job. It was easy to do that. And I don't think there is a bump up in pay if you have a CELTA in most cases. Maybe having it would put your resume at the top of the stack if there is competition or get you into some slightly higher paying school that pays a bit more. But I don't think it helps if you are in a market where there is a high demand for native English speaker teachers and salaries are rather flat. South Korea seemed to fit that description when I went there.