Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / June 2004

Depends on the school's policy.  Non-native teachers are not unknown even
in the UK.  It obviously depends on how good a teacher you are and how
good your English is.  You'll also obviously have a far better chance of
work in Poland.  I used to have a very hard-line opinion on non-native
teachers (it's not as if there's a shortage of native-teachers in many
parts of the world), but I've mellowed.  You may, however, find yourself
always given low-level classes.

If you've got any English Teaching experience, it's not too late to get a
summer job in the UK with teenage groups this year, which could get your
foot in the door & can be fun - check out the Guardian EFL recruitment
pages at http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/browse/education/tefl/ .

DC

In order to teach English, you need only be more competent in the
language than your students.  Thus, a non-native speaker of English can
easily teach the language, as long as she knows the language better than
her students.  Non-native speakers with good competence in English can
teach all but the highest levels of students.  Teaching students to
eliminate an accent is about the toughest task for non-native speakers,
I think, but hardly any students are interested in this, anyway.