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Anyone have up-to-date TEFL experience to share please?


Heccy
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Hi - trying to establish if getting an appropriate TEFL qual in the UK would be useful as a potential income-earning backup before we move to France in around 6 months.

Quick search of the forum throws up lots of historical debate about TEFL, with the overall impression being that it's not really all that, and I'd be lucky if it helped to get some p/t work (which I'd be happy with BTW). However, ever the optimist I'm hoping that someone might have more recent experience to share.....We're moving to the Doubs area where I understand there aren't a lot of English speakers.

TIA

Kelly

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I haven't worked for a few years, but the basic fact remains that France is one place where the TEFL certificates and diplomas have less weight than in many other countries. Here the official bodies that you go through require French recognised path such as passing a 'concours' to validate your English qualifications.

You might be able to work for a private language school, or the most likely way to find work is to work privately, but for that  you will need enough French to sort out adverts etc, or French contacts who can help you with it.

One problem I found was that where there are a lot of students there are a lot of English teachers, and where there aren't many English teachers there are often not many students..

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[quote user="Heccy"] trying to establish if getting an appropriate TEFL qual in the UK would be useful as a potential income-earning backup before we move to France[/quote]Teaching in the school sector is chasse gardée as Norman points out.

However,

having recently moved (within France) to a town not a million miles

from Doubs I have found myself slightly inundated with EFL work.  I

didn't in fact seek this, and certainly didn't want or expect it  -  no

sooner had I arrived than people contacted me out of the blue asking me

to apply for posts which they found themselves unable to fill.

Part of this was under the aegis of the Mairie, part connected with the Pôle d'Emploi.  One job (which I declined) was offered by the Centre de Formation d'Apprentis.

A friend in the Côte d'Or does a great deal of EFL work for businesses, which seems to come very largely via the Chambre de Commerce.

So,

whilst this may not make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice, I would

say that this is not by any means a complete non-starter, even in the more

rural parts of France.

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