Article: These organizations allow you to network with other ESL professionals and learn more about the career. More importantly, they will allow you to meet people who may be able to provide you with job opportunities, references, or advice on finding a job. Some of these groups are:  TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) is a global organization that holds annual conventions, maintains online forums and blogs, and provides access to TESOL resource centers. AAAL (The American Association for Applied Linguistics) is the American branch of IAAL and offers access to peer-reviewed journals, holds annual conferences, and grants student travel awards. IAWE (The International Association of Worldwide Englishes) is another global group that brings ESL teachers together, runs a journal, and hold various conferences throughout the year. ILTA (The International Language Testing Association) is an organization that runs newsletters, holds online discussions, and hosts annual conferences for people interested in developing testing to gauge how individuals learn languages. You will need a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) certificate to work as an ESL teacher. The certificate provides you with additional ESL training and is offered online or through community colleges and language institutes. States require all teachers to obtain a license to teach at public schools and adult education programs run by the government. Qualifying to take the exam for the license usually requires obtaining a bachelor's degree and finishing a teaching training program. You are now ready to get your career as an ESL teacher started. You can obtain employment through networking, help from college advisers or online employment websites.  You may find that work for ESL teachers is more readily available outside of the United States. If you plan to work abroad, you will want to apply for or renew your passport and look into getting a visa, if one is needed for where you are going. There are a number of websites and online resources for ESL teachers looking to work abroad. Some of those sites are: Dave's ESL Cafe provides a list of jobs available around the globe for people looking to teach ESL abroad. Teacher Port gives a listing of ESL opportunities across Asia and the Middle East. Go Abroad is a website that provides a number of suggestions for finding employment abroad to fund traveling abroad. There are many ESL opportunities on this site as well. There are also plenty of opportunities to work as an ESL teacher domestically as well. Some websites that provide opportunities to to teach ESL in the United States are: ESL 101 is a searchable database of ESL teaching jobs that allows the user to look for opportunities by country or region. The TESOL website maintains a job listing database that can help you find an ESL job in the U.S. Remember, ESL goes by a number of different acronyms (EFL, TEFL, ESOL, EAL), so be sure to search for all the associated acronyms when looking for employment. This will expand your job pool quite a bit. University and college departmental webpages often maintain links to relevant job search sites. So be sure to scour English, teacher-training, and education departmental websites. Many of the teaching opportunities for ESL teachers are found in public schools across the U.S. As such, you will want to look at state government and local school district webpages as well to see if there are any ESL job openings in your area.

What is a summary?
Join ESL organizations. Earn a TESOL certificate. Pass the state teaching examination. Work as an ESL teacher.