Teaching English Overseas:

A Job Guide for Americans & Canadians

Jeff Mohamed
Paperback, $19.95
Available from www.amazon.com
A Review by James Tipton

 

teahcing-englishJeff Mohamed believes that more than one billion people now use English (at least to some extent), and hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, want to learn English, preferably from a native speaker. Good news to all of you Americans and Canadians who, with a modest effort, will have no difficulty finding work as a teacher of English…particularly here in Mexico, the only non-English-speaking nation that shares a border with the United States, which is also its most important trading partner.

The author himself has been involved in TEFL—Teaching English as a Foreign Language—for over thirty years. Jeff Mohamed has taught students of over 80 nationalities in 7 countries. He has also taught over 120 TEFL Certificate and Diploma courses.

His book is a how-to-do-it book…how to get a job “Teaching English Overseas.” He distinguishes between the confusing acronyms, TEFL, TESL, TESOL, and ELT. TEFL—Teaching English as a Foreign Language—is what most of us might be interested in. TEFL “involves teaching people, usually in their own country, who want to use English for business, leisure, travel, etc.”

Many people find the possibility intriguing, but, are there really jobs available? The author is emphatic: “There are many more TEFL jobs worldwide than there are native-speaking teachers. If you are American or Canadian, you should be able to find jobs reasonably easily in Latin America….”

Regarding Mexico and Latin America—probably of most interest to readers of El Ojo del Lago—we discover that:

“Latin America is a really enormous TEFL market, with tens of thousands of jobs available every year in language schools, binational centers and universities….”

“Mexico is the easiest market in which to find a job, even for teachers who have no formal qualifications or training. It is probably also the easiest country for Americans and Canadians to adapt to.”

“Most jobs require teachers to work 18-24 hours per week, Monday through Friday, and year contracts usually include 4-6 weeks of paid vacation.

You will also learn how to conduct your job search—how to get job offers, evaluate them, and either accept or reject them—how to  handle legal requirements, what books and clothes to bring, health issues, the inevitable culture shock, and how to conduct yourself to fit into the culture without difficulties.

I teach English weekly to some lovely Mexican ladies in Nuevo Chapala—a neighborhood in the town of Chapala, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico—where I live with two other lovely Mexican ladies, my wife Martha and my daughter Gabriela.

Do I like teaching English in Mexico? ¡Si, me gusta mucho!

Do you think that you would like to teach English in Mexico or Latin America? (Or for that matter almost anywhere around the world.) If so take a good look at Teaching English Overseas: A Job Guide for Americans & Canadians.

And “¡Que tenga suerte! Good luck!

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