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To teach English as a foreign language, you need to be proficient in the language you teach in but there is no mention that you specifically need a degree
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If you intend to teach English as a foreign language, I would recommend either CELTA or Trinity College's CertTESOL (these are the equivalent of A Levels/Access or Level 3 under the NVQ framework), even though you don't need these certificates in specific countries to teach e.g. China
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If you intend to teach foreign languages at a British school (in the UK or abroad), you will likely need a PGCE on top of your degree in languages
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Are you familiar with the CEFR framework? In summary, it's a comparison of international language certifications to the level of fluency for specific languages (for British English, you have IETLS, Cambridge English, TOEFL for example). Whilst it's specifically for European languages, it has been used to compare other languages outside of Europe. In particular, there are language certificates for Mandarin Chinese (HSK), but there are also the language tests for Japanese (JLPT) and Korean (TOPIK) .See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages#Language-specific_scales
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If you do use the CEFR framework to compare qualifications, you would notice that some language certificates have higher levels of fluency (C2) than what you can learn from a language degree (usually C1 at most).
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A C1 fluency is the equivalent of a foreign student being able to pass a higher tier in GCSE English Language for British English. C2 is a pass in A Level English Language. In other words, if you do a degree in a foreign language in the UK, your level of fluency won't be significantly different to that of a foreign "GCSE"/high school certificate in their home language.
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Linguistics is useful if you intend to go into academia.
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It's said that usually you can become fluent a lot quicker through immersion in the language as opposed to studying in a classroom.
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Polygots have experimented and shown that you can sometimes become fluent by picking up children's nursery books in the language to pick up the basics and then try conversing with a fluent/native to get the gist of a language within 30 days.
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