I moved to Thailand in October. Lived in Paris before that. My partner passed away within a very short time so I knew I need to move quickly. I had no idea what to do so I thought of Thailand since I was here a few times on holiday. But what to do? Teaching came to my mind as an option. Being Hungarian and not having an excellent level of English I doubted I can do it. I called a TEFEL course in Chiang Mai and talked over my options. The guy told me I should have a specific exam and do the TEFEL course and it is possible to get a job. He assessed my English whether I would be able to pass the exam. So I took the exam. IELTS academic. Then I came over to Thailand. I wanted to do the TEFEL in Chiang Mai but was short on budget and was worried what if I can’t find a job at all or even if it takes longer than I planned I will end up without money. So I looked for a job without the TEFEL and I got one. I met another Hungarian who came to teach at the same time. I mentioned her the exam but she never heard of it. She also got a job and nobody asked for the exam, not even immigration. So I think it is possible to get a teaching job if you have a diploma and speak a fairly good English. You don’t need TEFEL or IELTS (non native). As for online teaching the half world wants to speak English. Why don’t you work for yourself instead of for companies? That way you are in full control and do what you want to do. You are a native speaker. I wish I was too. The next question is do you know grammar? Can you explain it? Are you aware of the fact that to remember what you teach needs a lot of repetition, well structure. As you teach you get better at it and if you have a natural ability to teach you will be a good teacher. If not, you can do all the courses you won’t be successful. Be unique. Creat videos. Put it on different social media platforms. Have your own website. Go to European social media platforms. Connect with university students. I made sooo much money when I taught in Hungary University students who needed a special language exam. It was economic. So the exam was not a very high level but the vocabulary had a lot of economic terms. I taught business English too. Paid very well since we Hungarians don’t really speak other languages and English teachers wanted to teach sentences like This is a table. I didn’t know either but took the job and was learning as I was teaching. I was earning a lot of money. This was maybe 15 years ago but since then online working took off. So I am thinking of teaching online. But not through an agency. I want to have my own students. You have to creat good English teaching videos. There are a lot of teaching videos but not a lot of them are good. Also if you want you could try to learn a new language to feel how much practice it takes for a word to remember or a certain grammar point. How important it is to use them over and over again . If you understand this and creat videos like this people will contact you. Or advertise yourself in European newspapers, social media, universities.

@Simon Goodall I tell you a story. A new teacher gave a demo class in our school. The topic was the passive voice. He asked us as the ‘students’ to rewrite active sentences to passive. ( I taught it actually to grade 6 just in the previous semester) The native speakers had no clue how to do it and their sentences were a DISASTER. The demo class turned into a “hang on how do we say it” challenge. I was shocked. They didn’t have minor mistakes. Their sentences sucked. Me on the other hand, I not only could rewrite the sentences but I also have a step by step easy technique that I developed and my students can rewrite any sentences into the passive. So how could they teach the passive in grade 6 if they get the class? I have no idea. So when I see comments on teaching platforms from native teachers that we should not teach, I think hmmmm. Some native speakers have no idea about the grammar or how to learn a language because they never learned one. So yes, I make a lot of mistakes and my accent is heavy but I can explain the passive to my students and many other grammar points, and also am able to check if they made any mistakes. Still when I speak I will make a lot of mistakes, even using the passive. If I had a school I would employ native speakers and also non native speakers who learned English buy learning grammar. So since this demo class I don’t feel myself like I shouldn’t belong there. I used to walk in the school like ‘What am I doing here with my bad English’? But now I am more confident because when I look at the native speaker I just think, I may be not food but he doesn’t understand the passive voice. Haha. By the way my native speaker colleagues are so sweet. All of them, I am lucky to have them in our school.

Where did you advertise yourself for the first students? Online? On website? Facebook? Or with schools? By the way congratulation to your success.

@Clive Kingshott thank you.