How to Get Started Teaching ESL Online to Kids and Top 5 Things You Need to Do to Become Successful
Teaching ESL may seem an attractive career to you if you have a liking for teaching languages. You may visualize yourself standing in front of a class of foreign students. This is definitely an attractive picture if you are also fond of going abroad. However, it may be even more encouraging to you to know that you can teach English to international students without leaving your home! Yes, the internet is available to you today with the help of which teaching English to students in other countries has become so easy!
How to Start Teaching ESL Online?
Working with an Established Institute: If you have not yet tried to teach online, it’s better for you to take some kind of experience and you can do this by working with an already established company, rather than working independently. The drawback of this is that the payment may be low and working hours may be inconvenient. However, you will get an invaluable experience, on the basis of which you can develop your career further as an online ESL teacher and can teach English online from anywhere. There are many English teaching institutes in various countries that are always in search of good English teachers. You can apply at them and you can get valuable experience and skills, and your confidence will definitely grow to eventually start independently.
Forming a Blog: While working with an established institute, you can prepare for your future as a proposed online English teacher by forming a blog. You will have to do this much before getting independent jobs because it will take a lot of time for your blog to become well-known to your targeted audience. You will have to take a lot of efforts to make the blog famous and market yourself as an online English teacher. Once you create such a blog, there are a lot of things for you to do, as creating videos of English lessons, creating games, puzzles and other entertainment incorporated in the lessons, and other things that can entice your audience.
Joining a Teachers’ Community: By joining a teachers’ community, you not only get useful information about the latest openings for teacher’s positions, but also improve your teaching skills, methods, new developments and more. One such amazing community is that of the Facebook page of Teaching English – British Council. Try it!
Choosing a Right Platform for Communication: Once you decide to choose the field of online English teacher, you will have to find a platform to communicate with your students that should be convenient and suitable to both of you. Today, Skype is the most popular platform for teaching because it has many features that are useful for teaching and learning. It offers free audio and video communication. You and your students can easily send files to each other of lessons, questionnaires, workbooks, assignments and more. Moreover, you can make corrections in your students’ answers then and there itself, while your students can ask you difficulties on the spot. You can even share a view of your screen with your students.
Another option is Google Hangouts which can form a virtual classroom. A Google+ account is what is needed to use this platform. Up to ten people can be invited on a Hangout. Once you start using the Hangouts, you can take benefit of many other features like Google Drive (to store files in cloud, sync them with your students’ and other files, and share them with your students), Google Sketchpad (to use as a whiteboard) and more. Also you can make use of YouTube videos and also of sound effects like a drum roll or clapping etc.
One more option is WizIQ which too offers free online platform for private teachers. You can teach up to ten students by inviting them to the course, then set date and time and upload teaching materials beforehand. While uploading your course, you can add your cost too to the course which the students can pay through PayPal. This virtual classroom allows you to embed videos, upload documents and share your screen. A chat box and whiteboard is also available and there is a facility to save their content. WizIQ also offers free training courses upon signing up with them. If you upgrade, they also allow you to advertise your courses at their marketplace.
Top 5 Things You Need to Do to Become Successful as an Online English Teacher
- Have Flair: If you want to take up the job of teaching ESL just because you find it an easy way of earning, this may not be a right attitude. For becoming successful as a teacher, whether online or offline, you should have flair for teaching; only then your students will be bonded emotionally with you and that will make you a successful teacher.
- Manage Your Time: You will come to know how difficult it is to manage time when you become an online teacher. Limiting your preparation and research time is pretty tough. You may think of uploading your lessons on your blog to save time, but creating these lessons itself is quite time-consuming. So, you will have to plan time management beforehand and how to fit in your different teaching activities in your schedule.
- Cater Various Intelligences: It’s an interesting and delightful experience when you deal with tender minds that they have got various types of intelligences! By far, none of them are dull or dumb – it’s only the difference in their types of intelligence. You have to identify this and find the intelligence level of each of your students, whether it is visual, bodily, musical, intra- or inter-personal, naturalist or even spiritual! This may seem a difficult job but you will find that it’s utmost interesting and you will enjoy to communicate with each of your students and creating a bond with her/him.
- Keep Students Entertained: This doesn’t mean that you should always sing and dance before your students. Even without doing any entertainment programs, you can keep your students entertained, i.e. by bringing a variety in your lessons, incorporating stories, puzzles and games in your teaching and so on. Remember that once your students start getting bored they will show a dislike in learning and that may spread your name as a bad teacher.
- Prepare to Deal with Parents: You won’t only have to deal with your students if they are young! You have to deal with their parents too. They are keen about knowing whether their money is being properly utilized and their children are getting the full benefit of the online class. You have to prepare to reply such parents’ questions satisfactorily. This is also a matter of experience. If your students are adults, you won’t have to deal with parents.
TeachESLOnlineAnywhere.com is the place to get thorough guidance about being a successful online ESL teacher. Keep in touch with this website to get useful tips.
