Culture Shock When Teaching EFL

Teaching EFL abroad is a great opportunity to see the world and expand your horizons. But being away from home, family, living in a different culture and always being surrounded by the unfamiliar – well that can take its toll. You might be suffering from culture shock.

It starts with euphoria

The first thing you’ll feel when you get off the plane is euphoria. You’re in a new country, surrounded by new things and it’s simply amazing. But this natural high has its drawbacks – after all, what goes up, must come down.

The full force of culture shock

Everyone’s different and some lucky people don’t even suffer from culture shock. But those who do have reported feelings of unease, negativity and a strong desire to shy away from anything new.

How to deal with it

Dealing with culture shock isn’t as difficult as you’d think. There are just a few simple steps you can take, which can make a big difference:

• Be prepared
  Knowing what to expect goes a long way to helping you deal with new cultures and experiences. So research the country you’re going to be heading to before you go.
• Be yourself
  It sounds obvious doesn’t it? But you’d be surprised how many people travel to a new country and try to become a completely different person at the same time. There’s no denying the fact that taking on a totally new career in a totally new country will change you. Just let it happen naturally, because if you don’t, you’ll feel even more lost.
• Take one day at a time
  If you’re teaching abroad, you’re probably going to be away for a long time. But imagining a whole year in this new, scary place can be overwhelming. So stay focused on the now and take one day at a time.
• Make friends
  One of the things you’ll miss the most when you’re working abroad is your friends, so make new ones. So if you’re feeling down, tell someone about it – they’ll probably be feeling the same way.
• Explore
  Getting to know your destinationwill help make it more familiar. And that’s the ultimate cure for culture shock. Start by looking for similarities between this new culture and your own.
• Stay in touch
  When you’re feeling homesick, there’s nothing better than talking to someone from home. So make sure you keep in close contact with everyone you’ve left behind to go on your travels.
• Learn the language
  The language barrier can put a real strain on you while you’re abroad. So you might find it useful to take a course before you go or while you’re there. Alternatively, ask the school you’re working for to set up some language lessons for you.

Just remember, your trip will be whole lot better if you embrace new cultures, instead of clashing with them. So if all else fails, just go with the flow.

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TEFL Zorritos: What could be better?  Study in a beautiful Peruvian beach town at our beach-front outdoor training centre with great accommodations available, including delicious local food.  Fully accredited 120 Hour TEFL course with a practical approach that provides you with 10 advanced certifications at absolutely no extra cost!  And a guaranteed job waiting for you when you complete the course.

Class sizes are limited, so don't wait, make your reservation today!

Too Old To Be An EFL Teacher?

If you have wanted to be an EFL teacher, but just thought maybe you were too old, well here are some reasons you might want to reconsider.

 Opportunity to Travel

Your 9-5 days are over and you have always wanted to travel, well teaching EFL is a great way to enjoy traveling while supplementing your income.  Best of all with demand for EFL teachers global, you can pretty much choose your teaching destination.

Work Experience

In many locations, mature experienced EFL teachers are highly desired.  Most employers appreciate someone who can demonstrate professionalism, have maturity in the workplace and lots of real life experience.

Family Experience

By far the biggest market in the EFL world is teaching children.  If you have raised a family you will have lots of experience working with children and this is a highly sought out skill in EFL teaching.

So what are you waiting for?  Select a great TEFL course, update your resume and start a new career as an EFL Teacher. 

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TEFL Zorritos: What could be better?  Study in a beautiful Peruvian beach town at our beach-front outdoor training centre with great accommodations available, including delicious local food.  Fully accredited 120 Hour TEFL course with a practical approach that provides you with 10 advanced certifications at absolutely no extra cost!  And a guaranteed job waiting for you when you complete the course.

Class sizes are limited, so don't wait, make your reservation today!

3 Questions About Your TEFL Course

Before you spend your hard earned money on a TEFL course, do your research, check the schools accreditation, talk to graduates of the course and ask these 3 questions.

1. What is the length of the course?

If you have no previous EFL teaching experience, then you need an onsite course that is at least 120 hours.  In general the more hours the course offers, the better for you.  If you can get a course with 160 hours then even better.  Also make sure the course includes actual observed teaching practice.  Hands on practice teaching of local students will be extremely valuable in your preparation to be a good teacher.  In fact most schools will not hire teachers with a TEFL certificate that does not include at least 6 hours of practice teaching, and they actually prefer if you have 10 or more hours of practice teaching.

2. Is your course accredited and by whom?

TEFL courses are not uniform in either content or quality.  Any person or institution can offer a TEFL training program without regulation or standardization.  Thus one of the best ways to know that you are enrolling in a respectable TEFL course is to check that the institution is externally validated by a reputable accrediting agency.

3. What is the maximum class size?

A course which I saw a video of recently seemed perfectly happy to show the trainer standing in front of a hundred people with a microphone for their one week “Advanced TEFL Certificate”. Reputable courses will have no more than 12 trainees on one course.  A course with too many students will result in some or all of the students "lost in the crowd" and you will not get the personalized attention you need to be a good teacher.  Make sure the TEFL course focuses on the needs of the students and is not just a TEFL mill that cares only about profits.

Of course this is not an exhaustive list of questions, so don't be shy if you have any questions, be sure and ask them.  The TEFL course you are considering should welcome your questions and should make it easy for you to contact them and should provide you with timely answers to your questions.

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TEFL Zorritos: What could be better?  Study in a beautiful Peruvian beach town at our beach-front outdoor training centre with great accommodations available, including delicious local food.  Fully accredited 120 Hour TEFL course that provides you with 10 advanced certifications at absolutely no extra cost!  And a guaranteed job waiting for you when you complete the course.

Class sizes are limited, so don't wait, make your reservation today!

Life In The Province In Peru

Once you decide Peru is the country that you would like to make your home, albeit for the short term, the next step is weighing up where exactly you would like to live. This decision may be based on work opportunities or relationships and which parts of the country you have already experienced. Lima, being the capital, is generally the most obvious choice and it certainly boasts the largest population of expats. However there is much to be said for thinking outside the box and considering living in one of Peru’s many provinces. The majority of the information available is about living in Lima so here are some things to take into consideration before ruling out life in the country.

Lima versus the rest of Peru

Lima is the most common choice for new-comers to Peru, due to its modernity and the work opportunities available, the same reasons which attract Peruvians from all over the country to move to Lima and compete to survive. Generally foreigners are lucky enough to live in wealthier suburbs such as Miraflores, Barranco and Surco, and have access to modern supermarkets and shopping centres, international cuisine and enough Starbucks to keep the homesickness at bay and to avoid experiencing too much culture shock. Lima however is not Miraflores or Barranco and neither is Peru for that matter and there is a whole country of Peruvians whose experience of Lima, and Peru, is very different. Not stepping outside of these tourist bubbles can mean your experience is limited, protected and not particularly realistic. It can’t be denied that for someone who lives in a small town there is a slight thrill heading into a Wong in Surco, excited by the knowledge that everything needed will be available, from mushrooms and blue cheese to an array of good wines, non-existent pleasures in some provincial areas. Nevertheless, living in a small Peruvian town means that one is well aware that these wealthy, American-like suburbs are not a realistic example of a typical Limeno’s life.

A Rich Cultural Experience

Life in the province offers a rich cultural experience and the opportunity to integrate and participate in the local community. Depending on the location and amount of foreign tourists and residents, it may take some time to be accepted by the locals, however once you become a part of that landscape it can feel something like home. Although the locals may be a little slower at accepting the novelty of foreigner in their town, this curiosity and apprehension can slowly turn into understanding and acceptance once they see you living the same way they do. A particularly fond memory of my Mum’s first trip to Peru was in a tiny town in the Sacred Valley, walking down the road we passed two little girls who started pointing “gringa, gringa!” and enjoying the novelty of feeling like an animal in a zoo, she began to dance down the road and put on a show, much to everyone’s delight.

Crime and Safety

Lima, along with other regional cities in Peru obviously have the highest rates of crime and the everyday personal safety of its citizens and visitors is a serious concern. Small regional towns and areas can offer a respite from this, and it’s one of the few things that local residents of these towns can honestly boast about when they compare their home to Lima. That’s not to say that you won’t ever be robbed; someone may still pinch your clothes off the line and you still need to be conscious of security and lock all cars and houses, however you are much less likely to be held up at knife-point or mugged by a taxi driver, so at the end of the day it’s all relative.

If at the end of the day you decide you stay in the big smoke be sure to make the effort to travel and explore the regional areas in Peru, as the towns as much as the cities are all part of the rich diverse landscape that this beautiful country has to offer.

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About the author: Ellie Ryan is an Aussie expat working and living in Peru. She is the Founder of TEFL Zorritos, a TEFL training institute which trains people to become English language teachers and places them in positions in Peru and abroad. This article was originally published on the Living in Peru website. 

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TEFL Success Stories - Part 54

Vicky - USA

Wednesday Evening - ESOL class at a local library in Burlington, Vermont, USA.

Today I arrived in the old annexe room to find a nice new whiteboard in place of the shoddy old thing that was all scratched to pieces and the size of a postage stamp. It was almost too large to fit into the corner where the old one precariously perched on its ailing metal legs. I am both delighted and horrified. Whilst doing my TEFL qualification, my 'whiteboard management' was always on my list of action points. I could never seem to stick to my plan, and the carefully considered use of different coloured markers was beyond me. My whiteboard, plain and simple was messy. So when I began teaching at the library I was filled with unusual joy to see their paltry version of a whiteboard and had breathed a sigh of relief that my weakness would not be exposed. Now the large, snowy white, smooth as silk whiteboard blinds me with its newness. Filled slightly with dread, I ponder what to do, what to do?

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Study a TEFL course with TEFL Zorritos in Peru, South America and travel the world, live abroad and enrich people's lives by teaching them English. A TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Certificate is an internationally accredited and accepted qualification to teach English to people from non-English speaking countries. More questions? Head to our website

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I had planned to do a lesson on what was needed if my students were stranded on a desert island. You know the type of thing, what luxuries you would like, what essentials you would need. Lots of group work to come to a consensus. I decided to draw a desert island tableau on my virgin board. Now let me explain that drawing is up there with my whiteboard management, pretty bad. I cannot draw, have never been able to draw. So I set about practicing some palm trees, and seagulls, some blue sea and a sun on some scrap paper. After 10 minutes I realised that I could do my nice new whiteboard justice and I drew a rather fetching rendition of the bog standard desert island scene.

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Our TEFL Certificate course is held at the gorgeous Sunset Club in Zorritos. Sunset Club is a private club and hotel where you will study surrounded by palm trees and overlooking their stunning private beach. Our training site is located within metres of the ocean which provides a lovely breeze and a breathtaking view. The club has various swimming pools, bars, a restaurant, tennis courts, a soccer pitch and a playground.

Included in your TEFL course fee is lunch daily at Sunset Club for the duration of the course, as well as a private taxi twice daily from your accommodation to the club, as it is located approximately 15 minutes from the centre of Zorritos. You can also choose to stay at the club for the duration of course, which we offer in our Course Packages.  

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When my students arrived, I excitedly drew their attention to the new acquisition and then started to elicit the names of the items I had drawn. Palm trees, sea, seagulls and sun were all correctly identified. I was delighted, not with their vocabulary knowledge, which I knew was pretty advanced, but with my drawings being recognized and identified for what they were. Maybe this was the start of a beautiful relationship with my new whiteboard, and next week I could begin to do some neat and tidy, colour coordinated written work as well.

So what luxuries did the students wish to take with them to this perfectly realised desert island? There was a huge push for liquor of any kind, though Baileys Irish Cream and Heineken beer seemed to be the most popular. Ice cream was another favourite. And one young man felt that without marijuana and Playboy, he simply would not be able to survive. After much hilarity and teasing, this led to our oldest student, a Russian lady who is the strict but nurturing grandmother of the group, saying the most perfectly pronounced English word that I have ever heard her say. And the word? Playboy. I don't know how useful this word will be to her here in the USA, but I couldn't help but praise her flawless pronunciation.

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TEFL Zorritos: What could be better?  Study in a beautiful Peruvian beach town at our beach-front outdoor training centre with great accommodations available, including delicious local food.  Fully accredited 120 Hour TEFL course with a practical approach that provides you with 10 advanced certifications at absolutely no extra cost!  And guaranteed job waiting for you when you complete the course.

Class sizes are limited, so don't wait, make your reservation today!

TEFL Success Stories - Part 53

Simon - China

I think it is too easy to lump kids into separate camps of 'good' and 'evil'. Remnants of a former foreign teachers' reign may give you some indication as to which way the child sways e.g. finding out a child's English 'name' is 'Tinker' or 'Satan spawn'. But I also think this divide comes down to a teacher's failure to isolate talent. As a teacher it is your job to identify and then nurture (exploit) a child's talent. By adopting this mode of thought even the most migraine-inducing child can become a veritable asset to the class.

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Study a TEFL course with TEFL Zorritos in Peru, South America and travel the world, live abroad and enrich people's lives by teaching them English. A TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Certificate is an internationally accredited and accepted qualification to teach English to people from non-English speaking countries. More questions? Head to our website

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Take Sam, for instance. Sam belonged to the worst behaved class in the school, my Thursday-morning class. It was not a rarity to see my assistant teacher weeping quietly into her green tea by 9.30am. There seemed to be absolutely no means of subduing them long enough to teach them anything. After an unusually successful game of 'Simon says...' I was enjoying the momentary silence that is 'Simon says be quiet', when there was a loud gnawing sound. As I strained my neck to locate the source, I saw Sam bent down under his desk chewing the table leg. His metal table leg.

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Our TEFL Certificate course is held at the gorgeous Sunset Club in Zorritos. Sunset Club is a private club and hotel where you will study surrounded by palm trees and overlooking their stunning private beach. Our training site is located within metres of the ocean which provides a lovely breeze and a breathtaking view. The club has various swimming pools, bars, a restaurant, tennis courts, a soccer pitch and a playground.

Included in your TEFL course fee is lunch daily at Sunset Club for the duration of the course, as well as a private taxi twice daily from your accommodation to the club, as it is located approximately 15 minutes from the centre of Zorritos. You can also choose to stay at the club for the duration of course, which we offer in our Course Packages.  

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It was early one morning as I was watching Sam repetitively educate one of the other kids in the ways of sharing your stationary, that it suddenly dawned on me what Sam's special talent was. Seizing the moment I announced to the class that I needed a 'helper' and asked for volunteers. To everyone's surprise I chose Sam. Placing his seat at the front of the class facing everyone else, I explained to Sam and the rest of the class what his role would be. His role was to sit and watch his friends - if they were talking or messing around while I was talking, Sam would have a word with them. If it happened a second time Sam would take them to the back of the classroom.

There was no arguing with Sam's decision. I told him to write his name down on the board under the title of helper and to take his seat at the front of the class, all the while talking to him as I would the assistant teacher. Now, and this is the important part, if any of the class started acting-up, it was Sam who would receive the punishment along with the warning "Sam - control your class!".

I've often wondered how the Gestapo worked ... My worst class rapidly became my best class using a careful rotation system of fear i.e. allowing Sam to pick next week's helper (inevitably a Tinker or Satan spawn). I left my classes with a giddy sense of well being. Had my assistant teacher not still had the delights of child birth still fresh in her mind I dare say she would have asked me to be the father of her next child. Unfortunately, she failed to see that a successful class was due to the appropriate application of talent rather than the 'helper' system itself. By choosing children whose talents lay in listening and being attentive, she reopened the world of pain Sam's talent had previously laid to waste.

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TEFL Zorritos: What could be better?  Study in a beautiful Peruvian beach town at our beach-front outdoor training centre with great accommodations available, including delicious local food.  Fully accredited 120 Hour TEFL course with a practical approach that provides you with 10 advanced certifications at absolutely no extra cost!  And guaranteed job waiting for you when you complete the course.

Class sizes are limited, so don't wait, make your reservation today!

TEFL Success Stories - Part 52

Saul - Russia

If I tell you that the biggest news of the week is that Bananarama are coming to do a concert in St. Petersburg, part of an eighties throwback thing that is currently plaguing Russia, you'll get the idea that this has been a quiet week. The city hasn't seen anything quite like it since the Pet Shop Boys were here in 1997 (I'm not including the vastly overpriced Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston concerts of last year), and it will probably be some time before the residents of St. Petersburg are lucky enough to see something quite so special again.
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Study a TEFL course with TEFL Zorritos in Peru, South America and travel the world, live abroad and enrich people's lives by teaching them English. A TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Certificate is an internationally accredited and accepted qualification to teach English to people from non-English speaking countries. More questions? Head to our website
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Oh yes, I almost forgot, on Wednesday a teacher fell on the ice and broke a bone in his wrist. Better than the week before when three teachers were robbed; things seem to be calming down. The teacher in question can carry on working and will be out of plaster within a few weeks, and I count myself lucky that he's the hardy type who wants to carry on – I'm sure other people, including me, would have been looking to get the first plane back home in the event of such inconveniences as a broken bone.
Apart from these two piece of news the only other thing that springs to mind is that I've forgotten how to teach teenagers. As a spoiled DoS who chooses his own timetable and groups, last August I automatically gave myself the groups I knew I would get along best with and whose courses seemed the most interesting (and demanding) to me. In doing this I have improved my grammar teaching, my techniques for introducing advanced vocabulary and my general understanding of the CAE exam, but in bettering myself in these ways I have become blind, or at least immune, to one of the biggest problems my staff face on a daily basis – getting teenagers interested in English.
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Our TEFL Certificate course is held at the gorgeous Sunset Club in Zorritos. Sunset Club is a private club and hotel where you will study surrounded by palm trees and overlooking their stunning private beach. Our training site is located within metres of the ocean which provides a lovely breeze and a breathtaking view. The club has various swimming pools, bars, a restaurant, tennis courts, a soccer pitch and a playground. 
Included in your TEFL course fee is lunch daily at Sunset Club for the duration of the course, as well as a private taxi twice daily from your accommodation to the club, as it is located approximately 15 minutes from the centre of Zorritos. You can also choose to stay at the club for the duration of course, which we offer in our Course Packages. 
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I'm sure Russia is no different to most other countries when it comes to teenage groups. There are always one or two well-motivated (and sometimes very pedantic) students in teenage groups, but the rest have far more interest in impressing their peers or playing with their mobile phones than the future perfect.
On Thursday I trekked to the very south-eastern end of the city to deliver one of our open advert lessons to a group of teenagers. Things started off badly when I realised that I was on my own (the lady who does the advertising at such events didn't turn up, hence it ended up as not much of an advert lesson), but got a little better when I entered the classroom to see only twenty students. Over the past few weeks teachers have been shoe-horned into classes of forty and fifty-seven students for open lessons, though there is still a way to go to beat last year's record of eighty one.
Open lessons are only forty-five minutes, but I'm sure the clock was going backwards as they devoured every task, ignoring the educational value of the process and instead looking for the quickest result, leaving me not really knowing what to do next. 'They want to ask you about England', hinted their regular teacher, so I gave them the chance to ask me. Silence - nobody had any questions. However, once the bell had (thankfully) rung for end of the lesson they suddenly found their tongues, and as they circled round me I was asked whether I am married, where my wife was and what my favourite football team is. One boy even took a photo of me with the camera he'd been playing with all lesson.
It worries me not that they were asking where my wife was or that they seemed to know nothing about Leicester City, but that they waited until after the lesson to ask. The atmosphere in the lesson was all wrong. It's obviously difficult to build up a rapport with a group of people in such a short space of time, but it's not impossible.
Time for a refresher course for me on teenagers; in doing this lesson I completely forgot the basics when it comes to teaching them – show them some respect and that their opinions count, make it interesting by doing tasks relevant to their age group and if they don't like an activity lose it and start on something else.
To make things worse, a fight started on the trolleybus on the way back to the office. I turned my back on the brawlers and pulled my woolly hat tighter over my head to block out the grey day. Sometimes it can be quite depressing to live in St. Petersburg…
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TEFL Zorritos: What could be better? Study in a beautiful Peruvian beach town at our beach-front outdoor training centre with great accommodations available, including delicious local food. Fully accredited 120 Hour TEFL course with a practical approach that provides you with 10 advanced certifications at absolutely no extra cost! And guaranteed job waiting for you when you complete the course.
Class sizes are limited, so don't wait, make your reservation today!