Tutoring ESL Students Abroad

As an ESL teacher, getting private students to tutor can be a great way to supplement your full-time job and make extra cash. Fortunately, lots of foreigners want tutors for different reasons. Maybe they’re students who want to improve on an upcoming test; maybe they’re workers who just want to relate to the customers more. Either way, there’s work to be had: while teachers net in a few dozen students in their classes, each individual student can learn from their own tutor.

Use the list below to help you find jobs, check out our online tutoring job opportunities, or read our teach abroad columnist, Richelle Gamlam's, advice on finding private students to tutor.

Ways to Tutor

Schools don’t often specifically market for tutors unless they’re pooling from their staff of certified teachers. And because tutoring is individual and (often) completely informal, the best way to find tutoring gigs is to solicit them. Whether it’s through the Internet or the good ol’ fashioned street corner flier, putting your name out there is the best way to find students.

Alternatively, they may come looking for you. There are more than students out there looking to learn. If it’s an informal position, stop by the local universities and look for ads. Or go online and check any kind of local solicitation website. Once the tutor/student relationship is established, the schedules and relationship should become pretty flexible. The one-on-one relationship lends itself towards a symbiotic dynamic, as opposed to the dominant/submissive one necessary through classroom teaching. When and where the classes will take place is completely up to you and your student.

Au pairs abroad will also often be expected to participate tutor the children in their care in English.

Almost all non-English speaking countries have a huge market for tutors. The number of students who want to learn English (not to mention other subjects) on a one-to-one basis will always outnumber the amount of people willing and able to tutor in those locations. Due to this fact, anybody who simply wants to tutor makes an oyster of the world. Those who want to tutor as a supplement to a full-time teaching position should look in popular markets for that career, particularly Asia (Korea and Thailand) or Europe (Spain especially).