Teaching English in France

[Shining on]

Hi everyone,

I'm on a pre-uni gap year and thinking about moving to France for 4-6 months near the start of next year to teach English. I have established that I would need to do a TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) course to stand a better chance of getting a job and better pay when I get there.

But since a couse costs about £700-1000, I'm not sure if it would be worth it considering I would only be tyeaching for 6 months at the most. One of my friends mentioned a scheme whereby the French Government give TEFL training to foriegners in exchange for them being language assistants in schools.

My french is just about at 'get by' standard (hopefully I'd pick much more of the language when I got there), but I was wondering if anyone knew anything about it? I've google(.fr)d it and cant find much - all the results are written in French which doesn't help! - not that I didn't expect that of course!

[supergrover]

Hiya! Ive got a few links for you that might prove useful:
Becoming an eng lang assistant in france (http://www2.britishcouncil.org/languageassistants-france.htm) and
foreign lang assistants in france (http://www.ciep.fr/en/assistantetr/index.htm) and
Language assistants homepage from the british council (http://www2.britishcouncil.org/languageassistants)

These might be a good starting point for you. Watch this space for more info though - Ill post it up when I get my mitts on it.

All t' best!

[Shining on]

Thanks for this supergrover,

I've had a look at the links but they all seem to require at least 2 years of higher education, which, being on a pre-uni gap year, I don't have! I don't know how flexible they are on this though.

The other thing, and possibly more difficult to overcome, is my lack of french! I'm not sure if I'm being unrealistic to think i wuold be able to go and do this sort of thing or not??