United States
US
Ally Kadambi
Teach Enrich Empower
Teaching in Taipei
Before I came to Taiwan I was working in an office job in London and doing part-time acting work, but wasn’t getting a lot of work so decided to take a year out and teach English abroad.
I had previously taught a bit of English and Drama in Italy but didn’t have much experience at all. Most of the jobs here don’t require any experience luckily!
I know a few friends who had done this TEFL course and taught English in Thailand and other places in Asia so did a 120-hour combined course with one of my friends and then eventually decided I wanted to go to Taiwan (after considering China and Japan too), and I’m really glad I made that decision in the end.
I’m teaching at an English school in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. I teach English to students aged 7 – 22. I also teach one Science class now too which is pretty cool as we get to do experiments and I have a lot of freedom to do what I want with that class really. My school is a small franchise of a chain school. There are 2 other English teachers there and it’s a really great school. All the students are generally really well-behaved too!
“Taiwan, and especially Taipei, is a great place to live. I’d say it’s one of the best places in Asia”
I found the TEFL course really helpful to me. I remember the first thing we learnt was how to do the basics of teaching English without using the student’s native language, and people always ask me how I do this now actually – it’s quite simple once you know how!
We’ve just had Christmas here which was really great as all the younger students learnt Christmas songs to sing to their parents (so cute!) and each class made Christmas-themed posters for a display. I’ve also just had my birthday and wasn’t expecting anything on the day but my students all sang “Happy Birthday” to me and my manager bought me a cake which was so nice and made me feel really at home.
Taiwan, and especially Taipei, is a great place to live. I’d say it’s one of the best places in Asia to live as they’re quite modern and westernised in their ways but also traditional still. Everyone is very friendly, there are lots of things to do like beautiful waterfall hikes and mountains not far away and lots of great street food!
I’ve managed to travel quite a bit around Taiwan so far as it’s not too big, and started to write a travel blog also. I’m going to Vietnam in a couple of weeks’ time for Chinese New Year which I’m really excited about and hope to go to Japan and Australia later on this year too.
I’d advise anyone wanting to teach EFL to research the country you want to go to of course, and definitely look at the different companies and jobs in a place first. If I was to do it again I’d probably go somewhere first and then find a job once I was there.
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