What is an ESL Instructor?

Do you wish to be a second language instructor-the master of English? ESL instructors are no less than a blessing for students who know any language except English. Did you know they can earn up to $21.62 by teaching English for an hour? As English is considered the most spoken language across the world, the job is very much in demand to help people connect.

The minimum qualification required to get an ESL instructor's title is a master's degree in English literature. But various institutes also hire candidates who have achieved their bachelor's degree in English literature. This is a standard position demanding your services for 40 hours every week.

ESL instructors are bound to prepare lessons and design course content that covers every aspect of English. They are also responsible for customizing study plans for students with special requirements. Next time, whenever you wish to learn English, contact ESL instructors, and enrich yourself with their knowledge of English literature.

What Does an ESL Instructor Do

There are certain skills that many esl instructors have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed critical-thinking skills, interpersonal skills and speaking skills.

Learn more about what an ESL Instructor does

How To Become an ESL Instructor

If you're interested in becoming an esl instructor, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 64.1% of esl instructors have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 24.9% of esl instructors have master's degrees. Even though most esl instructors have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.

Learn More About How To Become an ESL Instructor

Top ESL Instructor Jobs Near You

ESL Instructor Career Paths

As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, an esl instructor can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as program coordinator, progress to a title such as consultant and then eventually end up with the title principal.

Average Salary for an ESL Instructor

ESL Instructors in America make an average salary of $53,226 per year or $26 per hour. The top 10 percent makes over $78,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent under $36,000 per year.

Average ESL Instructor Salary

$53,226 Yearly

$25.59 hourly

$36,00010%

$53,000Median

$78,00090%

See More Salary Information

What Am I Worth?

Roles and Types of ESL Instructor

The role of an esl instructor includes a wide range of responsibilities. These responsibilities can vary based on an individual's specific job, company, or industry.Here are some general esl instructor responsibilities:

Assisting students with coursework in a variety of formats including individualized instruction, computer assisted instruction, structured courses,
Conduct and oversee esl directed and self-directed instruction. Teach rosetta stone (levels 1 computer based language programs to children
Faculty member is expected to encourage learning by preparing appropriate syllabi; by developing lectures, discussions,

There are several types of esl instructor, including:

Instructor

Role:

Instructors are knowledgable about a topic and work to pass that knowledge off to their students. Whether you work in a gym or a school, instructors are super important to the students' success.

There are lots of possibilities for you as an instructor. You could work at a health club or a gym or you could work for a school and instruct math. There are so many different instructors out there, basically any topic you can think of probably needs an instructor.

Your hours will vary depending on what industry you decide to go with. You may find some jobs require you to work nights and weekends, like if you were to become a fitness instructor, while school instructors only work during school hours. Your schedule really depends on what you're passionate and knowledgable about and when people want to learn it.

Average Salary: $53,426
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Adjunct Faculty

Role:

The adjunct faculty is responsible for teaching graduates and undergraduate students in a specific field of expertise. You are allowed to plan, create, lecture, and provide in-class discussions and assignments. Your job allows you to plan and develop a syllabus and ensure it meets college and departmental standards. Plus, you are responsible for grading and assigning papers, exams, and quizzes.

You will give class instructions, evaluate students' performance, and also coordinate courseware and curriculum with the academic department head. However, you will need to be a people person as you need to develop and sustain relationships with students for effectiveness. You will also need to participate in faculty meetings involving departmental updates, prepare materials and supervise the distribution, and make copies of supplementary materials available for distribution in class. You may also be required to maintain a record of student progress, involvement, and attendance.

An adjunct faculty must be detail-oriented, punctual, and must be able to motivate. He/She must also be a lover of academics, possess excellent communication skills, self-discipline, and the ability to teach well. The average salary of an adjunct faculty yearly is $50,000. An adjunct faculty must have a Master's degree in a related academic field.

Average Salary: $83,069
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Lecturer

Role:

A lecturer is a teacher who prepares and delivers classes in various settings. Lecturers develop material for courses and create lesson plans and use different platforms and methods to get the content through. They engage with students and support them, monitoring their progress, or tutoring them if necessary. They conduct and evaluate examinations as well.

Lecturers are experts in their field. They may work at universities or colleges or other higher education institutions. They do presentations of their research at conferences, publish articles in scholarly papers, and manage research funding.

Excellent presentation skills and passionate knowledge about your subject is a must if you want to work as a lecturer. Teaching is not a 9 to 5 job, you have a lot of work to do after your official teaching hours are up, so you really have to love what you are doing to be able to keep at it. On the other hand, you will be working in a position that is considered the second most beneficial for society's well-being, right after military personnel.

Average Salary: $61,988
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

States With The Most ESL Instructor Jobs

Mouse over a state to see the number of active esl instructor jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where esl instructors earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.

Average Salary: Job Openings:

Number Of ESL Instructor Jobs By State

Rank	State	Number of Jobs	Average Salary
1	California	2,976	$84,730
2	Texas	1,874	$40,920
3	Florida	1,735	$45,967
4	New York	1,272	$70,039
5	North Carolina	1,131	$46,251
6	Illinois	1,077	$48,342
7	Georgia	1,046	$40,790
8	Virginia	1,037	$46,604
9	Michigan	1,029	$48,886
10	New Jersey	1,008	$63,456
11	Pennsylvania	939	$50,005
12	Colorado	935	$55,878
13	Ohio	846	$48,518
14	Minnesota	780	$48,906
15	Maryland	758	$62,071
16	Arizona	741	$52,086
17	Massachusetts	692	$52,058
18	South Carolina	641	$44,310
19	Nevada	581	$70,032
20	Washington	551	$51,017
21	Tennessee	533	$56,645
22	Oregon	458	$56,702
23	Indiana	450	$32,248
24	Connecticut	434	$64,175
25	Missouri	425	$42,565
26	Wisconsin	383	$56,369
27	Iowa	338	$47,874
28	Alabama	328	$46,370
29	Louisiana	327	$54,388
30	Oklahoma	308	$43,525
31	Kentucky	296	$48,795
32	Kansas	295	$48,878
33	Utah	268	$66,023
34	New Mexico	254	$41,559
35	New Hampshire	242	$70,244
36	Mississippi	219	$47,801
37	Nebraska	216	$52,933
38	Idaho	212	$56,696
39	Montana	187	$61,146
40	Arkansas	167	$50,601
41	Maine	143	$56,997
42	West Virginia	123	$50,960
43	Rhode Island	122	$70,643
44	Hawaii	112	$60,519
45	Vermont	111	$63,639
46	Alaska	109	$56,221
47	South Dakota	107	$57,203
48	Wyoming	104	$46,788
49	North Dakota	87	$61,983
50	Delaware	0	$68,757

ESL Instructor Education

ESL Instructor Majors

English

21.8 %

Education

8.6 %

Linguistics

8.5 %

ESL Instructor Degrees

Admissions

Most Popular Majors

Business

Education

Political Science

Linguistics

English

Top Skills For an ESL Instructor

The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 12.6% of esl instructors listed grammar on their resume, but soft skills such as critical-thinking skills and interpersonal skills are important as well.

Grammar, 12.6%

Classroom Management, 12.3%

Language, 10.1%

English Language, 9.4%

Vocabulary, 6.9%

Other Skills, 48.7%

Choose From 10+ Customizable ESL Instructor Resume templates

Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use ESL Instructor templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your ESL Instructor resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.

ESL Instructor Demographics

ESL Instructor Gender Distribution

Female

65%

Male

35%

After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:

Among esl instructors, 65.0% of them are women, while 35.0% are men.

The most common race/ethnicity among esl instructors is White, which makes up 65.9% of all esl instructors.

The most common foreign language among esl instructors is Spanish at 41.8%.

Online Courses For ESL Instructor That You May Like

Advertising Disclosure

1. Teaching EFL/ESL Reading: A Task Based Approach

This course explores ways of teaching reading skills in English as Second and Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) using a task-based approach. You will be introduced to the concept of task and the key principles of task-based language teaching (TBLT) and learning. TBLT uses communicative tasks as the key unit for creating language learning activities. You will also examine the role of reading in real-life and in second and foreign language teaching and current thinking about the interface between TBLT...

See More on Coursera

2. Teach English: Intermediate Grammar

This specialization is for ESL teachers and future ESL teachers who want to make their classes more effective and fun. You will learn how to use online videos and activities that ESL teachers at University of California, Irvine created to teach intermediate ESL learners. You will review language-learning pedagogy and best practices for using these resources effectively. This specialization will give any ESL teacher loads of creative ideas for their classrooms...

See More on Coursera

3. Teach English Now! Teaching Language Online

Whether you have already taught English as a Second Language and want to start teaching it online, you've already been teaching ESL online and want to sharpen your skills, or you are new to teaching and interested in teaching ESL online, ASU and VOXY provide you with the basic ideas and concepts you need to know in order to successfully teach ESL online. This course uses a fun and interesting theme of "International Travel" to deliver content in an entertaining way. There are also plenty of...

See More on Coursera

Show More ESL Instructor Courses

Job type you want

Full Time

Part Time

Internship

Temporary

Best States For an ESL Instructor

Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as an esl instructor. The best states for people in this position are California, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and New York. Esl instructors make the most in California with an average salary of $84,730. Whereas in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, they would average $70,643 and $70,244, respectively. While esl instructors would only make an average of $70,039 in New York, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.

1. Nevada

Total ESL Instructor Jobs: 581

Highest 10% Earn:

$104,000

Location Quotient:

2.73

$70,032

Avg. Salary

View 581 ESL Instructor Jobs In NV

2. New Hampshire

Total ESL Instructor Jobs: 242

Highest 10% Earn:

$102,000

Location Quotient:

1.36

$70,244

Avg. Salary

View 242 ESL Instructor Jobs In NH

3. California

Total ESL Instructor Jobs: 2,976

Highest 10% Earn:

$126,000

Location Quotient:

$84,730

Avg. Salary

View 2,976 ESL Instructor Jobs In CA

Full List Of Best States For ESL Instructors

How Do ESL Instructor Rate Their Jobs?

Top ESL Instructor Employers

Most Common Employers For ESL Instructor

Rank	Company	Average Salary	Hourly Rate	Job Openings
1	California State University	$66,027	$31.74	15
2	Kaplan	$60,137	$28.91	40
3	Zoni Language Center	$55,591	$26.73	20
4	inlingua Metro NY	$55,584	$26.72	27
5	English	$55,486	$26.68	26
6	Embassy C E S	$55,395	$26.63	13
7	FLS International	$54,217	$26.07	21
8	ESL Federal Credit Union	$54,190	$26.05	167
9	Global LT	$51,757	$24.88	17
10	ELS Architecture and Urban Design	$51,458	$24.74	16

ESL Instructor Videos

How to Make Teaching ESL a Long Term Career

Teaching English in Thailand. A day in the life of an ESL / TESOL / EFL Teacher. Part 1

Advice on teaching English abroad from 26 ESL teachers

Updated February 6, 2023

What is an ESL Instructor?

What Does an ESL Instructor Do

How To Become an ESL Instructor

ESL Instructor Career Paths

Top Careers Before ESL Instructor

Top Careers After ESL Instructor

Recent Job Searches

Average Salary for an ESL Instructor

Roles and Types of ESL Instructor

Instructor

Adjunct Faculty

Lecturer

States With The Most ESL Instructor Jobs

Number Of ESL Instructor Jobs By State

ESL Instructor Education

ESL Instructor Majors

ESL Instructor Degrees

Top Colleges for ESL Instructors

1. Columbia University in the City of New York

2. Harvard University

3. New York University

4. University of Pennsylvania

5. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

6. Stanford University

7. Northwestern University

8. Johns Hopkins University

9. Vanderbilt University

10. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Top Skills For an ESL Instructor

Choose From 10+ Customizable ESL Instructor Resume templates

ESL Instructor Demographics

ESL Instructor Gender Distribution

Online Courses For ESL Instructor That You May Like

Best States For an ESL Instructor

How Do ESL Instructor Rate Their Jobs?

Top ESL Instructor Employers

Most Common Employers For ESL Instructor

ESL Instructor Videos

ESL Instructor Related Careers

ESL Instructor Related Jobs

What Similar Roles Do

Resume For Related Jobs