Transferable Skills For TEFL Teachers

Teaching isn’t the only thing you’ll become skilled at when you’re teaching English as a foreign language. You’ll also pick up other useful skills that you can use when you decide to side-step into another branch of TEFL work. Or, even if you decide to leave teaching and take up another career. In other words, as a teacher you become skilled not only at teaching, but also other transferable skills.

Transferable skills for TEFL teachers

Planning skills

After some time teaching classes and planning lessons you’ll soon pick up the art of planning and organising. You’ll need both these skills to ensure that your lessons run smoothly. It means you will learn how to structure your lessons to get the best out of your students and organise your teaching so that the topics and grammar points flow together. It’s precisely the skill you might need if you stop teaching English as a foreign language and choose to go into an administrative post.

Organisational skills

Being a teacher means being organised at all times. You will teach a number of different classes, and while some may be the same level, age or language point, you will need to tailor your lessons to each class. You will need to keep track of what you have taught, any problems your students had, and the way forward. And don’t forget about learning names! In other words, you will become excellent at organising a schedule and keeping track of different projects simultaneously on-the-go.

Communication skills

Many people get nervous about talking in front of an audience and sometimes they are held back by their fear of public speaking. You’ll be used to facing a classroom full of children and adults of different ages and levels. Teaching English as a foreign language will help you enormously if you want to go into a career which involves giving presentations. For example, jobs in the training sector, management or fund-raising.

Problem-solving skills

While teaching English as a foreign language you will have to come up with ways to engage and enthuse your students. What’s more, you will need to be able to anticipate any difficulties your students have, sort out any technical issues you might have in your classroom, and make sure your lessons run as smoothly as possible. That’s called problem-solving and it’s a great asset outside the world of teaching. No matter your career choice post-TEFL, problem-solving skills are sure to be an asset to your CV.

Time management skills

When you’re teaching English as a foreign language your classes will normally last just under an hour. This means you have to make sure you cover what needs to be done within that time. You can’t go too quickly or you’ll be left with too much spare time and you can’t work so slowly that you don’t complete the lesson. You’ll become an expert at managing your time so that your classes cover everything that needs to be done in the time allowed. This is useful if you want to work in an office or go into training or a managerial position.

While we’re definitely big supporters of the idea that TEFL can be a career, it is very common to move onto another career after your teaching experience. Luckily, there are a range of transferable skills you will learn during your teaching which will only look good on your CV.

Read more: The Different Jobs of a TEFL Teacher