I have been very fortunate to have taught English online to a variety of students, particularly with the Preply platform. Coincidentally, I have taught on-and-off with Preply for four years now, and it certainly helped during the pandemic. Fast forward from March 2020, and everyone seems to have jumped on the ‘online teaching bandwagon’ with many international institutions and organisations now singing the praises of how international students are able to connect with international teachers and now the entrance to online education is really now a laptop and a strong internet connection.
My response to an article published by the Guardian about English teachers employed to teach online courses for the British Council
This is in direct contradiction between how I approached the subject of online education during an international conference in Germany with other teacher training educators, and they dismayed online teaching as “not real teaching”. However, there is a growing regard for the skills required to teaching online – we only have to see Cambridge offering the online CELTA course or Nile ELT offering online courses to accommodate the growing need and desire to deliver online language courses.
The development of technology, not least since the pandemic, has made online lessons a more acceptable and reputable form of English teaching, and education has certainly gone on leaps and bounds. However, there is much to still learn as this is a relatively new field of language education, and many language teachers still need to develop the skills necessary to be able to deliver quality online lessons. However, how do we go about it?
When I was starting out as an English Language Teacher, there was a table of Teacher’s Core Competencies which Cambridge English had developed back in the early-2010s but nowadays I believe it is now renamed as the Cambridge English Teaching Framework. Not much has changed but it offered in-class teachers the opportunity to reflect and review their own teaching practices as language educators. Nowadays, Cambridge English envisage the Teaching Framework to:
help teachers to identify where they are in their professional career
help teachers and their employers to think about where to go next and identify development activities to get there.
Essentially there are five categories that attempt to connect with all elements of English teaching:
Learning and the Learner
Teaching, Learning and Assessment
Language Ability
Language Knowledge and Awareness for Teaching
Professional Development and Values
However, despite the five key components, which are incredibly thorough and well thought through, it appears to not have been updated to include aspects of online language teaching – not least after COVID-19. The core values and breakdown of the categories is available on the Cambridge English website to download, and you can also find out more information about how and why the categories were created.
The current competencies shared by Cambridge English do not necessarily include an aspect of online language teaching, as it can be obviously viewed rather differently compared to face-to-face language teaching. Looking at the Teaching Framework Summary linked above, common words related to online teaching have not been included (i.e., ‘technology’, ‘online’, ‘remote’, etc.). Therefore, I would suggest that the Teaching Framework should have been updated to include the already growing presence of online education and the many successful platforms that are now being used by reputable organisations such as the British Council.
On the one hand we have many institutions embracing online education, while on the other hand a perceived lack of professional standing for online education. It is perhaps about time that Cambridge update and modernise their Teaching Framework to accommodate the well-established online teaching industry to help fledging English teachers broaden their knowledge and awareness, rather than keeping things as they were pre-pandemic. This would aid the professionalism of the online teaching industry, draw interest from stakeholders curious about the teaching of English online, and potentially connect the online CELTA course to the main tenets of remote simultaneous education.
There are a few questions to ponder while continuing this conversation:
What are your thoughts and ideas about the acceptance of online language teaching post-pandemic?
To what extent is there a two tier policy between face-to-face and online English teaching?
How much is it a fallacy to disregard an already established online teaching industry?
Do you believe that there should be an improvement with the Teaching Framework to incorporate online English teaching?
When I first started teaching online back in 2014 with a variety of platforms based in China, most lesson material was rather dry and stale. Many of the educational platforms had their own material organised for lessons and I was required to deliver this rather questionable material to various students who were predominantly based in China.
Despite being involved in creating lessons for online platforms in 2018 and attempting to make more interesting and engaging content for students and teachers, it was still a little challenging to get such material accepted. These days, more entrepreneurial English teachers are attempting to carve out their own niche and offer a variety of courses. For those that use platforms to connect with students, some English teachers still seek out material to help them structure their online lessons, with websites available for teachers to help them with their lesson planning such as LinguaHouse, ESL Brains, and Fluentize.
In this post, I shall be sharing how I source and use LinguaHouse material for my online classes with an example of an intermediate English student based in Mainland China through the platform of Preply.
1. Sourcing Appropriate Material
When planning your lessons for students, it is important to find suitable material that would benefit the student. For example, if you are helping students to pass an examination such as IELTS, then finding relevant material would be beneficial. What I have discovered with LinguaHouse is that they organise material depending on the key focus for lessons, such as Business English, Exam Preparation or General English.
In the example video, I was looking for General English material for the student as they have no desire to pass an exam and are just wanting to develop their fluency. Therefore, I search for material which was more general and would engage the learner, despite the minimal preparation that I left myself for the lesson. As they had recently starting working out at a gym, I thought a sports-related worksheet would engage them.
2. Delivering Material
Once material has been sourced, the tutor must consider how best to go about delivering the content. In the video above, I briefly (perhaps a little too briefly) looked at the different tasks and considered there and then how best to get the student involved in the activities. Having taught the student previously and given a little more time on training them up to speed on the Preply whiteboard, I was confident that the student would be able to complete any tasks set before them with minimal disruption. I would always encourage tutors to consider the best approach and to give any time towards the delivery of any course content by asking the following questions:
Has the student completed any previous activities like this before?
Will the student be able to follow my instructions so that they can undertake any tasks set?
If I try anything new, is the student trained appropriately and effectively with the online tools?
If you are teaching students online, then a little training on the tools is a worthy investment later down the line as students should be able to complete a variety of tasks such as matching, gap-fill or marking stress patterns.
3. Reflect on Your Teaching
One thing that strikes me between teachers who are mediocre and great teachers is the ability for the latter to reflect on their craft. I was very candid with how my lesson went and was very quick at determining how little I prepared prior to the lesson. Perhaps I relied too heavily on the technology working without any anticipation for it not to be so. Anyhow, for those that seek to improve themselves as practitioners, reflection is crucial. The time when one stops reflecting is the time one decides not to be human. I am very candid with my experiences as I genuinely believe that it will improve my ability as a teacher, which is perhaps one reason I do not mind recording and sharing my lessons – I have nothing to hide and we are fortunate in this profession to be amongst many other great individuals.
I hope you enjoyed this post and apologies if this was perhaps a little too candid at times. It is just nice to share my experiences in the hope it benefits others. It was nice to share the material that I use from time to time with online students as well as how I deliver lessons. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
At the beginning of term or starting a new class can be rather worrisome for both teachers and students. However, I was happy to contribute my favourite ice breaker with Twinkl a few weeks ago, which included some ideas from other English language teachers. I hope that you find the ideas there useful. However, in this post, I am sharing two favourite icebreakers for new classes.
1. Student Name Cards
The first favourite icebreaker that I use for new classes is to get learners to create their own student name cards. I am terrible at names, and this is more so when I have large classes of students. To get around this, I get learners to create their own student name cards which they can then bring to each class and display to all until I (as well as some others) get better at recalling each person’s name.
I hand out a piece of A4 paper to each student and ask them to fold it in half length ways, while also demonstrating to the class. Next, students write their name on the folded paper. Do not worry if students make any mistakes, such as writing their name but then it being upside down, but hand out another piece of paper for them to continue. The main focus is for students (and teacher) to relax and have fun initially.
The next step is to ask students to draw four things that are important for them on each corner of the name card. Students can be as creative as they wish, but give them around five to ten minutes to complete this. Once students have finished, get them to mingle with each other, introducing themselves and encouraging them to ask potential follow up questions. After giving students enough time to mingle with all, get them sitting back down and then get them to introduce their partner to the rest of the class as well as something interesting about whom they are introducing.
2. Know Your Students
I believe that all teachers should learn as much as possible about before they enter the classroom. This should allow teachers to get to learn about their students and so get to know your students. If you have a new class, I like to share an online Student Survey to all new students and this gives me ample opportunity to learn more about anything that is unique about them.
Some common questions included in the Student Survey could be: ‘What is something that you enjoy doing in your free-time?’, ‘Have you ever met a famous person?’, etc. What you really want to do is find out as much as possible – not just about their language ability or reason for studying – about the students themselves.
Once students have completed the Student Survey, I then personalise a “Find Somebody Who …” task based upon the results of the aforementioned survey. So, if a student has mentioned that they have met a famous person, I would include this in the worksheet. If a student has a unique talent or hobby, I would also incorporate this too. It is probable that students may not know each other, but getting students to share their experiences to the class will ensure a relaxed environment conducive to learning English. Students will obviously be interested in their teacher, so try to include anything unique about yourself into the “Find Somebody Who …” worksheet. Personally, I am happy to share about my musical achievements to the students and it is always nice to include yourself into the activity.
Finally, a possible extension of this is where you can create a quiz for the class to see how much they can remember about each other: “Who has met a famous person?”, “Which student has never travelled abroad?”, etc. You will have all this information available through the online Student Survey and would be easy to create an engaging and relaxing activity for all students to feel comfortable at the beginning of the term or during first classes.
Final Thoughts
You may find some of my favourite get to know you activities in the following post, but feel free to share some of your preferable first lesson activities with new students in the comments.
One of my most popular videos on YouTube is an arranged trial lesson for Preply. I created this video for one purpose: to help other professional online tutors deliver better first lessons to potential students. The video is available below for those that have not seen this.
I decided to record a real-life, authentic first lesson with a potential student. He booked a first lesson with me but did not share much information about himself, nor about his language goals. I thought this would be the ideal lesson to record and share, to demonstrate how I develop rapport with someone that I have never met before. Furthermore, this was not a pre-arranged trial lesson with a person pretending to be a student but it was authentic as it could be.
In this post, I will be sharing ways to teach students online (but it is also applicable for face-to-face teaching) whom you know nothing about. Read on for more ideas and there is also a video at the end of the post where I share exactly the same scenario with a real-life student.
Getting an English teaching job in South Korea can be fraught with challenges which could include finding a reputable employer, getting the expected remuneration, as well as getting all the documents required for the visa.
In this post, I shall share my personal recommendations for finding and securing an English teaching job in South Korea but feel free to watch the video, from my YouTube Channel, above where I share such insight.
We would all appreciate it if Cambridge provided us with an updated framework that reflects these changes (I correct my…
I found your reflection very interesting as it describes my personal experience. In 2020 I switched from face to face…
This post has really given me something to think about—thank you!
I’m glad you enjoyed my post and I shall be creating more in the coming weeks. Thanks for your comment.
sorry i meant English, my computer is set in Spanish so yeah.