Volunteer English Teaching in Thailand

Although a hugely popular tourist destination Thai people have the second worst English ability in South East Asia. Volunteer English teachers are desperately needed to build students confidence and encourage them to use their English language skills. There are many different ways that you can teach in Thailand even if you have no prior teaching experience.

Below is a list of the English teaching placements Travel to Teach offer, however if you have some specific area of interest then we can tailor a placement to suit your individual skills.

A. Teacher/Classroom Assistant
As an English teacher in Thailand most volunteers will work alongside a Thai English teacher helping in areas such as pronunciation and general conversation. However, the Thai teacher often encourages you to take the lead role in the classroom, since their level of English is almost always lower than the volunteers’. Therefore, you will often find yourself leading the class, sometimes on your own.

Standing up in front of class for the first time can seem like a frightning experience, particularly as most of our volunteers have no previous teaching experience. To help prepare our volunteers we provide them with a teaching introduction, teaching handbook and materials as part of our induction weekend. We also try to make sure that inexperienced volunteers are eased in gradually, that they are not left to teach on there own at the start of there placement and allow them to work in pairs if they wish.

For several years volunteers with no teaching experience have successfully taught with us and we find that volunteers quickly become confident as teachers. So if you have ever considered teaching as a career this is an excellent opportunity to practice your teaching skills. As a volunteer with Travel to Teach, all it takes is a little bit of initiative, creativity and desire to make a difference in the world.

Photo Gallery: English Teaching in Nongkhai

Summer Camps
English camps are held during the school holidays. In Thailand this is between February - May and for the entire month of October. A typical day at English camp will last five hours. The first two hours will be teaching, you will break for one hour for lunch and the final two hours are for games and activities. The main objective of English camps is to build the students confidence and encourage them to practice their English skills. We do camps together with Thai schools but we also set up our own camps.

One guiding idea is that we want to work with the students at the same time as we teach. We have specialized in School Restoration Camps. We work togetyher with the community, in poorer village schools to repair the school at the same time as we teach.

Teaching Monks
In addition to school teaching during the day, in the evenings our volunteers in Nongkhai and Namsom provide free English classes to monks at local temples.

Volunteers usually take it in turns to teach the monks, usually teaching in pairs around once a week. In Nongkhai teaching is for 2 hours a night from Monday to Thursday with the first hour usually grammar and the second hour conversation. The general standard of English of the monks is good enough to make the conversation interesting and enable you to talk about life as a monk and your own life at home with them. In Namsom where there are fewer volunteers teaching is two nights a week. Teaching is usually very relaxed and volunteers prepare lessons and teaching materials themselves.

Temple Teaching
For volunteers that are interested in Buddhism and mediation we run temple teaching programs close to Nongkhai which involve staying in a forest temple and teaching English at a local school during the day.
Read more.