Teaching English in Spain or Italy

Hiya Lisa!

I'm not too sure about the visa situation unfortunately as I'm married to a Spaniard, best thing I can advise is to contact the Spanish Embassy, the guys at the Cape Town Consular's office are super helpful.

If you live in a village or the south of Spain, that budget will work. However if you want to live in Madrid, that budget is super tight - fancy baked beans much? :-) However, English teaching opportunities are abundant in Madrid and the rate at the moment starts at 15euro. So the first few months could be baked beans hell, but once you find your feet and better paying clients, you could be living pretty.

Good luck!

Hi I have lived in Italy for 9 years and have been teaching English. I have both Italian and British citizens so the situation with your visa situation I cannot comment. I am now leaving Italy as it is not a country I would advise anyone to come to unless you have a lot of money to survive it is very expensive and they salary for teaching is dreadful when they pay you as they pay when they want.

I have friends who have relocated to Spain and found it much better.

I hope this helps you

Thank you so much -I'm crossing Italy of the list!

Fifteen euros is the absolute minimum you should charge. My niece was studying here - only 18 years old - and was getting 20e. If you charge 12 you're gonna starve. And hate your life.

Good luck Lisa with your relocation.  If I can be of any other help please contact me......

Plenty of work for native speakers. Expect provincial pay to work out at about 10 € pet hour take home. 1000€ a month is survival money outside the main cities but remember you won't get paid over the summer im smaller places.

It's now between Taiwan and Spain-Taiwan is quite structured there are several big franchises that will have a number of schools each.  Any language schools in Spain anyone can recommend?

Are you an EU citizen or South African only?

If the latter then the only way to get a work visa is to be able to prove that you can do a job that no other EU citizen can first. Teaching English unfortunately wont be one of those jobs.
You can always ask at your local embassy but it would be very unlikely that you will qualify for a work visa.
No harm in trying but Spain isn't easy to get into for non-EU citizens who want to work.

I don't mean to discourage you if you have your heart set on coming to Spain but if I were you and money is an issue - I'd go to Taiwan. I can speak best about Madrid but  in general the language schools pay and treat teachers poorly, have a serious lack of educational resources and in short exploit the cojones out of the educators. Madrid is an expensive city and it's very difficult to find work that will pay for a halfway decent lifestyle. I have friends that teach elsewhere in the country and tell me that the situation is as bad or worse. For example, I have one friend who went to Andaluscia last year because it is cheaper to live. However, the pay rate for teachers is abysmal - sometimes as low as eight euros an hour. Recently the Spanish ruling party has been trying to sell the notion that the economy is recuperating but it's a flat-out lie. Unemployment is still stuck at around 24 percent and 1 out of 3 are at risk of extreme poverty. The worst part is I don't see things improving at all. In fact, I believe they will get worse after the election in December. That said, I have other friends who've moved on to various locals to teach english (including Taiwan) and they speak very positively of their experiences. Again, if money is no object you can come here and enjoy the sun and decent food. However, if you are on a tight budget - consider yourself warned.

South African only-thank u SPAIN13!!! I'm going to heed your advice.  I'm going to head to Kauhsiung-Taiwan.  My friends who are over there are advising me to come and look for work once I'm there.

Hello. I've been teaching English in Spain gor ovee 10 years. I'm from Ireland and six years ago I vegan wtiting my own handbooks. One of thrse books is called Teaching English. It has advice on where to find teaching jobs and many tips on vlassroom procedure here. The lessons are easy and my other books have free audios on website to all the stories and lessons within my short books.
I hope the teaching book will be of help to you. You can get it in print format from Amazon  and directly from my website and google play at
Librosdeingles.es
Regards to you all.
Nireen Byrne