I write. I am writing. I have written . . . sorry! It’s just when you’ve been on a TEFL course, these grammatical structures get into your brain and they’re impossible to get out again.

That’s the point, I suppose! For native English speakers, their natural language is a major commodity in Spain and many expats turn to teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) as a means of making a living.

And it can be a good living. Some teachers earn up to €35 an hour teaching businessmen how to make sure their order book is right in English as well as Spanish. And as the demand for English teachers has gone up, so has the number of courses available to teach the teachers how to teach.

Most teacher-trainees choose, as we did, to take their course in Spain, ready to apply for jobs as soon as they’ve finished. There are several options available, with varying degrees of quality. In recent years there have been a number of schools jumping on to the bandwagon, with trainees paying anything between £700-£1200 (plus living expenses) for substandard teaching and a qualification worth next to nothing – or worse; some schools have gone bust, leaving employees and trainees out of pocket.

The best bet – but by no means a guarantee of quality – is to choose an accredited course, meaning the school has to meet certain standards set down by one of the examination boards and gives you a certificate which can open doors around the world. Search on any TEFL message board on the internet and you’ll find huge debates over whether the Cambridge CELTA or equivalent qualification is the best.

Talking to friends who run language academies in Spain, I found there wasn’t much difference as far as they were concerned. A TEFL qualification is seen as a means of sorting the wheat from the chaff and whether that’s CELTA or TESOL doesn’t make much difference.

Nor does where you take your course, as there are many academies in the UK offering TEFL qualifications. The only advantage in taking a course abroad is that the students you teach are more likely to be non-native English speakers while some UK schools end up with the trainees “teaching” each other – and believe me, that is no substitute for facing a room full of people staring at you blankly because they don’t have a scooby what you’re on about.

It’s a similar situation with online courses, a much cheaper option for getting a TEFL certificate. While former online trainees praised the standard of instruction they received, they all felt they missed out on the teaching practise and every TEFL graduate will tell you that’s the most valuable part of the course. So, having done the research, spoken to former trainees, and sounded out potential employers about what they wanted, of course I chose the right course, didn’t I? I wish!

I chose a school with branches throughout Europe which offers the TESOL certificate. It was a four-week course – the standard length – offering 120 hours of tuition and six hours of teaching practise with non-native English speakers. To apply, you had to complete an online application form followed by a series of grammar questions; then, on passing that, you had to have a telephone interview and write a 500 word essay on what it takes to be a good language learner – oh, and pay just over £900.

Warning bells should have sounded when I was still halfway through the grammar test of my application when the course director phoned to arrange the telephone interview. Less than 24 hours later I was in – with a request to send the essay as soon as I could. It got worse. The course leader resigned after the first week of classes – not that we could blame him; the previous course leader had walked out the month before, leaving him to do all the teaching as well as the bulk of the administration.

Our promised “quality” replacement turned out to be a Romanian TEFL teacher who complained bitterly about how many extra hours she was having to do while boasting about how much she was getting paid. Worse, she would confuse her grammatical terms and then, in her thick, Romanian accent, mock our phonetic abilities. “No, no, no,” she scolded after one phonetics test, “You are not listening to yourselves. You think you’re saying ‘independence’, but really you’re pronouncing it ‘indeperrrrrrndence’.”

Added to that was a workload that saw us doing 12-14 hour days, seven days a week, a lack of students to practise with, and a course moderator who took pride in making trainees cry. I can quite honestly say they were some of the worst weeks of my life. Yet I would do it again.

Some experienced English teachers (without a TEFL) tell you that you don’t need any qualifications, that just being a native speaker is enough. That may once have been true, but now employers are looking for more – and students deserve more. Just a week after the course I was being offered jobs on a much higher wage than non-TEFL teachers starting their career.

My real teacher-training starts now, with real students and an employer to please, but the TEFL course was an invaluable experience I would recommend to anyone. Just be prepared.