Teaching English in Lima, Peru

When most English speaking foriegners travel to Lima, Peru the most common question often asked is "what kind of jobs are there for foriegners in Lima?"  The response to this question is simply "teach English!"  When I first arrived in Lima I was working with my father in his plastics manufacturing company in Chorrillos, while I had worked with my father in the past it wasn´t quite what I was looking for in terms of a job (though I did learn a lot from working in that particular industry).  Searching newspaper classifieds and on-line classifieds I soon discovered that finding a good paying job was not as easy as I had initially thought it would be, in fact it took me 6 months of searching before I finally found an ad for English teachers.

Since I was running low on luck I decided to apply for the job and sure enough two weeks later I was called in for orientation and before I knew it I was giving business English classes all across Lima.  It was through teaching English that I discovered that for most English speaking foriegners the occupation of English teacher was in fact a very popular and very available job.  At the institute, the majority of my colleagues are from several different English speaking countries like: Australia, New Zealand, England I mean Britain or the UK, USA, Holland, Ireland, Scotland, and many other non-English speaking countries.

The real question is "how are there so many English teaching jobs?"  The reason for the large and popular demand of English is due to Peru´s interests in foriegn business and tourism which have both grown significantly over the past two decades.  The rise in demand for English proficiency has contributed to the plethora of private academic institutes, whom all compete to prove that they provide the best in English education.  This trend also lead to many already pre-existing universities and private institutes to adopt English classes in attempts to break into the English as a second language market.   What does all this mean exactly?  This means that the large demand for English has also given rise to a large demand for English teachers in Peru, which is good news for anyone who is a native English speaker. 

If you do decide to persue a job in Peru teaching English I highly recommend that you take sometime before hand to research the institute or school that you are interested in working for, as many have bad reputations in terms of how they treat their employees.  The last thing you want to do is take a job with a sketchy English institute that has an widely acknowledged history of not paying it´s teachers on time.  For those of you who are currently considering or are currently looking for English teacher positions in Peru I highly recommend the following links.

The first link is from a well respected blog writer who has a lot of experience in teaching English abroad, the link is to an article that she has put together ranking the TOP INSTITUTES IN LIMA. 
http://tefltips.blogspot.com/2008/11/top-institutes-in-lima.html

The next link is to an article that provides additional advise for those intersted in TEACHING ENGLISH in Peru.
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/work/esl/articles/teaching_english_in_peru.shtml