Considering a language course for your gap year?

Here are five great options from E.S.L:-

Learning a second language during your gap year means you can make that time off really count for something. Travelling the world, meeting new people and trying local speciality drinks are all noble pursuits, but how will they help you make your CV stand out?

At ESL Language Travel, we help thousands of students each year to have a once-in-a-lifetime cultural experience, whether before, during or after uni.

Here are some options if you want to have a gap year that really stands out:

Volunteering in Boquete, Panama

Our partner school Habla Ya! offers a wide range of volunteering options in Boquete, Panama. ESL students help at local charitable organisations, including an orphanage, an NGO, a reading and book lending programme and a recycling centre. All of this will complement your classroom Spanish work, ensuring that you make rapid progress with the language while making a difference to the local community.

And then there are the mountains! Boquete is immersed in virgin rainforest, where the dense flora and fauna sprawls over volcanoes as far as the eye can see. A beautiful place to spend some time.

Volunteering in Quito, Ecuador

Quito may not be the city you expect in a country that straddles the equator. It’s not especially hot, for one thing, with year-round conditions that resemble a pleasant spring day. It’s also 2800m above sea level, which is higher than the highest point of most European ski resorts. But it is a superb place for a Spanish course, and our Academia Columbus partner school offers programs that combine quality Spanish tuition with community volunteering work. Find out more.

To find out more about ESL’s Latin American partner schools and the steps they are taking towards a sustainable future, check out this blog post

Double up with a duo destination course

If you want to learn a language but don’t want to stay in one place, we can help you plan any kind of trip you like. For example, start a French course in France’s gastronomic capital Lyon and continue it on the shore of Lake Geneva in Montreux. Or feel the buzz of Madrid and then head to the glorious Basque coastline and gorge on pintxos in San Sebastian.

If you have something in mind, let’s make it happen.

Plug in to the mighty German economy in Freiburg

If you already speak some German, an internship combined with a German course at our school in Freiburg will push you to the next level. Nestled in a sunny corner of the Black Forest, the school has strong ties with the local business community. This means that you can spend some time (usually around 3 months) working in local industry after finishing your course. One big local industry is wine growing... there are certainly worse places to spend time developing your language skills than the local vineyards!

Train as an English teacher and then go, go, go!

An English teaching qualification is your passport to the world!* On every continent, people are learning English and they want to do it from a native speaker. To put yourself at the front of the queue for jobs, an official teaching qualification is in order. We work with some of the UK’s most respected teacher training centres to offer TEFL courses year round. We also offer teacher training courses in other languages.

*Please note, this is a metaphor. ESL does not recommend trying to get past customs officials with just your CELTA certificate; you need a real passport too.

Check out esl.co.uk for our full range of courses, or contact our UK office on +44 (0) 20 7451 0943