One of the most popular options for students going abroad for a year is to become a teaching assistant in a foreign school, where you use your position as a fluent speaker of English to support the work of the teachers. 

The hours are light, the pay is usually very reasonable, and you will have lots of spare time to travel and do whatever else takes your fancy.

Don’t worry, you don’t need any former teaching experience! For the teaching aspect, the British Council provides some fantastic advice on their website, so really use it, and ask for help from the teachers you work with - your school should try to help given that they won’t want to lose their assistant because he or she was so unbearably happy at their institution.

However difficult it is, try to find ways of enjoying the job and your time there; of taking advantage of the relative lack of responsibility you have as an assistant rather than a teacher, and one who will be in the job for a matter of months. Above all, try to be enthusiastic in front of the pupils. It helps enormously.

The majority of students get their placement via the British Council, which places hundreds of teaching assistants every year in schools across seventeen different countries. Applications are usually made through universities, but more information on the process can be found on the British Council website.

There might be interviews for the placements, especially if you are applying to somewhere like Latin America where places are few and interest high, but in general if you are a languages student applying for a post in Europe you are very likely to secure a place.

There are also plenty of opportunities to take up a position as a teaching assistant in private schools. These private schools often contact universities directly or through outgoing language assistants to advertise these opportunities, so keep an eye out!

To apply for a post you must:

• Be a native-level English speaker
• Meet the requirements of the host country (see British Council website)
• Have completed secondary education and at least two years of higher education. For China and Senegal, only graduates may apply
• With the exception of China, you must have the prerequisite language skills (this varies, so please check the country pages on the British Council website)
• Hold a British or EU passport - if you don’t, you can contact the British Council to discuss your eligibility, so don’t be put off straight away if you meet the rest of the requirements!

Keep in mind that some countries have minority languages that in some regions are spoken more than the language you are going there to learn. For example, in schools in Catalonia (Spain) you would find that Catalan is used more than Spanish. This is not necessarily a problem, but it is wise to keep this in mind when deciding where you want to go.

Within a country you are normally allowed to indicate your preferences when you apply. For example, you will probably be asked which region you’d prefer to be posted in, and whether you’d prefer to work in a city or a more rural settling.

Posts in private schools are, of course, wherever the opportunities come up. In particular there are often a good deal of opportunities in mainly Catholic private schools in Latin America.

It is always best to talk to the school where you will be teaching to find out exactly what they want from you, but generally speaking you will either be helping teachers in the classroom or taking small groups of students aside and going through a few activities that you will have prepared beforehand.

This may seem a little daunting, but remember that the teaching staff will always be on hand to help out or give some advice. Again, the British Council website provides plenty of tips and has a section of the website dedicated to providing ideas and materials to teaching assistants.

At first you might feel like you’ve been thrown in at the deep end, but try to be positive and throw yourself into the job and you are sure to have a great time and get a lot from the experience.

This varies from country to country, but in Europe most language assistants are placed in state secondary schools, but both in Europe and further abroad there are some opportunities in primary schools and specialist language colleges.

If you are working as a teaching assistant in Europe then you should be able to apply for an ERASMUS grant to top up your already decent wages! ERASMUS grants are handled by universities, so they should provide you with more information when the deadline for applications approach.

It is worth looking out for the other assistants, who can really help form a social basis in the country where you are working. And if in private sector, is worth taking it upon yourself to look into existence of other language assistants who are working in the public sector. If you’re worried about this limiting your contact with the foreign language, be honest about it. You could always talk the language you are studying between you and work on enlarging your network to include max number of native speakers as possible.