Do qualified teachers need a TESOL certification?

There are many reasons why fully certified teachers decide to leave their home country to teach overseas. It can often be difficult for newly qualified teachers to find a suitable job and teaching abroad is a great way to gain valuable classroom experience. More experienced teachers often feel like they need a new challenge and teaching in a new country can certainly provide that. Whatever the reason, the teaching profession is unique as it offers you the chance to develop your skills and knowledge and increase your experience and employability, while travelling and exploring the world.

Do qualified teachers need a TESOL certificate?

If you start searching online for English teaching jobs around the world you will quickly see that many employers expect their job applicants to possess a TESOL certificate. This applies to all applicants, including those who are fully qualified teachers in their home country. Although you might think that having spent several years studying and working as a teacher means you shouldn?t need any more qualifications to teach English abroad, in reality there are many differences between teaching English overseas and the type of teaching you are used to. Gaining a TESOL certificate will provide many benefits for you as a teacher and for the student's you end up teaching.

What are the benefits of having a TESOL certificate?

If you are teaching in an international school that only caters to native or fluent English speakers, then a TESOL course will probably be of little benefit. However, this particular scenario is quite unusual and is unlikely to apply to many teachers who head overseas. Most international teaching jobs are in schools that contain non-native English speakers with varying language abilities, many of whom are likely to be at the beginner stage.

As a trained teacher you are probably fully aware of how difficult the job can be at times, and trying to teach English without the specific skills required is only going to make it more difficult. Also, you need to consider it from the perspective of your students. If the teacher is not fully prepared for the job that they are employed to do, it will make the process of improving their language skills more difficult than it should be.

Will a TESOL certificate get my CV/resume to the top of the pile?

Qualified teachers have great potential for landing the very best jobs available around the world, however, many of the top schools only interview applicants who also have a TESOL certification on their CV/resume. With the addition of an internationally recognized TESOL qualification to your credentials there is nothing to stop you getting a prime teaching job in the country of your choosing. If you already have plenty of classroom experience, an online TESOL course will probably be accepted by most employers, as long as it is of at least 100 hours in length.

During job interviews you should notice the benefits of having completed a TESOL course. The interviewer will generally want to find out about your own approach to teaching in an international environment, which is something you might struggle to answer sufficiently without any TESOL training. Often an inexperienced TESOL teacher can feel more confident in these situations than an experienced teacher without a TESOL course under their belt. By completing a good quality training course you will have no problems demonstrating to employers that you are a highly skilled teacher who is fully prepared to teach in the unique setting of an international classroom.