Teaching English Abroad

We left the UK in 2013 with over £20,000 of hard-earned savings, which paid for almost a year and a half of fast-paced travel around New Zealand, Australia, South-East Asia and the UK. However, this wasn’t enough to quench our wanderlust, so we hatched a new plan that would allow us to continue to travel, live in new cultures and earn enough money to save for the future: teach English abroad.

After completing TEFL courses,  we moved to Hanoi in Vietnam for a year to work in government-run public schools. As a qualified teacher from the UK, Andrew has also taught in London, Vietnam, Spain, online and is currently teaching at an international school in Portugal. Drawing on our experiences and contacts, we’ve put together a series of guides to help you teach abroad too.

Andrew teaching in Vietnam

Want to teach abroad?

How to Teach English in Vietnam Ebook - Amy Blyth

Do you want to experience what it’s like to live in a different culture? Teaching abroad allows you to work alongside local people, earn a great salary and travel in the holidays. We’ve had amazing experiences and saved a ton of money by teaching in Vietnam, Spain and Portugal and we’d like to help you do the same.

Looking for a job specifically in Hanoi, Vietnam? We have contacts and can possibly help you find a role, contact us now and we’ll see what we can do.

Vietnam is one of the top places to teach English in Asia, with high wages and living costs. If you’re interested in teaching in Vietnam, you can also buy our e-book, which covers everything from how to find a job to getting a visa and how much you can earn on a teacher’s salary. We’ve also partnered with some great recruitment agencies that can help you find work elsewhere in Asia:

Teaching English abroad – how to get started

Although Andrew is a qualified teacher in the UK, I managed to land my first English teaching job without any previous experience, just a master’s degree and a TEFL certificate. Check out these articles about what it’s like to live and teach abroad.

According to the International TEFL Academy, there are approximately 1,000 new English teachers hired every month in China. This huge demand is great news for teachers looking for high salaries and attractive benefits, but what’s it actually like as an English teacher in China?  In this post, British couple Hattie and Seb share their tales of teaching English in China, including everything from pay rates to visa regulations and how to find a job.
17 January, 2017 /
Do you long to teach English abroad but worry that you won’t find work because you’re a non native English teacher? Well, don’t despair. I get a lot of messages from aspiring teachers who aren’t native English speakers and here’s the good news: there are non native English teacher jobs to be found in Asia. In this post, Venkat Ganesh from India shares his story about teaching in Vietnam and gives some excellent advice about how to find TEFL jobs for non native speakers.
10 January, 2017 /
The year I spent teaching in Vietnam was one of the most intense adventures of my life. I still vividly recall the early-morning Hanoi drizzle, the smell of Pho cooking on street corners and the shoals of beeping motorbikes coursing through the streets. I remember the shouts of “Hello Teacha !” the feel of chalk on my fingertips and the deafening rumble of 50 kids all crammed into one sweltering classroom. Do you want to teach in Asia? Maybe this article will inspire you to make your teaching dreams a reality.
20 September, 2016 /
Looking for a quick, easy and flexible way to earn money in Spain? Then working in English camps could be the answer. In April and May this year Andrew and I signed up to work in English language immersion camps just outside of Madrid; here’s the lowdown on what our experience was like, how we found our jobs and how much money we earned.
12 May, 2016 /
Want to live in Spain, enjoy a laid-back lifestyle and eat tonnes of tapas? Then teaching English could be just the way to achieve that dream. Andrew and I moved to Spain at the beginning of 2016 to look for teaching jobs in Madrid and ended up working in English immersion camps. This is our ultimate guide about how to teach English in Spain, including information about what qualifications you’ll need, where you can teach, what type of work is available and how much money you can earn from teaching in Spain.
21 April, 2016 /
As Andrew and I search for teaching work in Madrid, I can't help thinking back to our first experience of teaching abroad in Hanoi. I'm hoping the lessons I learned from those exciting, turbulent months in Vietnam's crazy capital city will help me cope with the challenge of starting afresh in Spain. Are you thinking of looking for jobs in Vietnam? Asia is a great place to cut your teeth as an English teacher; in this post I talk to British couple Hannah and Ben about their experiences of teaching at a language centre and an international school in Hanoi.
02 March, 2016 /
Are you considering teaching English in Vietnam? I remember well from my own experiences in Hanoi just how daunting the whole process can be. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have a million questions about everything from finding jobs in Vietnam to deciding which city and area to live in, how much money you can earn and what kind of qualifications you need. To help you figure things out, I’ve put together this series of Q&As with teachers currently living in Hanoi, Vietnam.
10 February, 2016 /
After writing about my experiences teaching in Hanoi, I often get questions from readers about how to teach English in Vietnam. So, to help you guys decide whether you could live and work in Vietnam, I’m publishing a short series of interviews with teachers who’ve lived, or currently live, in Hanoi. In this first edition I talk to Emma and Loes about everything from teaching highs and lows to pay rates, living costs, visas and teaching English if you’re from a non-English speaking country.
28 January, 2016 /
We’ve spent the last few weeks trying to transfer the bulk of our hard-earned teaching dollars safely back to the UK. After four trips to Vietcom bank, multiple phone calls to our English bank and the help of a Vietnamese colleague to translate, we heaved a huge sigh of relief when the money finally landed in our account. That is, until we saw that we’d lost £300 in the hefty exchange rate. Oh, and we still have another instalment to transfer next month but hey, we’re halfway there!
19 April, 2015 /
I vividly remember how terrifying my first teaching experience was in Vietnam. I was nervous and had a sore throat, the heat was stifling, the children were noisy and restless because it was Sunday afternoon and I was completely overwhelmed. By the end of that first class I was practically in tears and thought I’d never survive my nine-month teaching contract – but things got better.
24 January, 2015 /
We were totally overwhelmed when choosing where to teach in Asia. Should we select a country we'd been to and loved, or go for somewhere completely new? After much debate and research we narrowed down the options to five countries and analysed which one would be best in terms of pay, benefits and working hours - here's what we found out.
20 December, 2014 /
Did you know that November 20th is Teachers’ Day in Vietnam? Yes, that’s right, in Vietnam there’s a whole day set aside each year for students to give thanks to their hard-working teachers and shower them with adoration. Although there's an International Teachers’ Day on October 5th, it isn't really celebrated in the UK, so I think I definitely picked the right country to start teaching in! Here’s a look at our first Teachers’ Day in Vietnam.
29 November, 2014 /
So, you want to teach English abroad? In that case you’re probably wondering what kind of qualifications you need, which country you should move to and how you’re going to find a job, right? At least, these were the things I was most concerned about when I decided to step into the world of English teaching. One of the first decisions I made was to take not one, but two TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) courses - here’s why.
15 November, 2014 /
When we set off to travel the world in 2013 I never imagined that I’d end up teaching English to five-year-old kids in Vietnam. Back in London I worked as an online writer and continued freelancing during the first six months of our travels through New Zealand, Australia and Asia. I am more used to offices and computer screens than noisy classrooms and the feel of chalk on my fingertips, so just how did I end up here? What's it actually like to teach English in Vietnam?
31 October, 2014 /
When we decided to teach English in Asia we had a lot of decisions to make. Which country did we want to live in? How easily could we find a job? How much money would we make? What qualifications and experience did we need? We wanted to choose a country we felt we'd enjoy living in but with our travel fund running low we also had to consider where we could earn the most money and take into account visa issues.
16 October, 2014 /

As a secondary school teacher in the UK sometimes you feel like there are nothing but targets; “you must do more of this and include less of that in your lessons”. Any UK teacher will tell you how a visit from the school inspectors is one of the most stressful things you can be put through, even if they don’t end up actually viewing one­­­­­­ of your lessons!

17 March, 2013 /