In this post I go through all the basics of everything that I’ve learned in the last 12 years teaching English online one to one. A good one-to-one tutoring or English class online is going to contain some serious work between you and the student. You’re also going to need to give your students some academic advice about how to improve.
Before teaching online, you need to decide which video conferencing tool to use. Check out my post here comparing Zoom and Google Meet before making a decision.
Variety
The first point I want to focus on is variety. Make sure that you’re doing a variety of activities and practicing a variety of skills. The vast majority of students usually want to practice their speaking and listening but you can also practice their reading and writing skills in an online English class.
When you decide to do speaking practice with your students, don’t repeat the same activity over and over again. There are lots of different ways you can test the speaking skills of your student.
- question and answer sessions
- role plays
- practicing presentation skills
For listening practice, don’t just use the audio from the course book. Incorporate other media like:
- podcasts
- videos
- a story told by you the teacher
The same goes for reading. There are lots of online resources that you can use that are free.
If you don’t know about those go and check them out right here.
Recommend a book to your student to read while they are your student. Check in with them and how they’re finding the book and what difficult vocabulary they’re coming across.
Finally with writing, encourage your student to practice whenever possible. If you’re having to communicate with your student via email make sure they’re writing all emails to you in English. Practice different formats and different types of writing.
- short stories
- cv
- news articles
- film or restaurant review
Authentic materials like this are great when teaching advanced level students, if you are unfamiliar with teaching this level, then check out my post right here.
Start strong
Point two I want to focus on is to start each class strong. Do the piece of work that is most difficult or most important first. At the beginning of the class your student has the most energy and is paying the most attention. Avoid spending the first 15 to 20 minutes on informal chat or conversation. Do these kinds of activities at the beginning:
- reading tasks
- functions of a tense
And at the end of the class, these tasks:
- play those games that you love playing or even to
- review vocabulary or grammar
Show progress
Point number three is to show progress. Your students want to know how they are making progress. Demonstrate how they are improving. I have another blog post on how to do your first class with an online student one to one which is right here. It’s important to have a benchmark to start with so do a level test before that first class. Compare all the improvements they make against that benchmark.
Every time you introduce new vocabulary to the class, show your students’ what level that vocabulary is. I’m referring to the CEFR (common European framework reference). Basically, levels A1 to C2. For example, when I introduce vocabulary of a B2/C1 level to a student who is a B1 level, I always get a great reaction. I then take that new vocabulary and I put it on a platform like Quizlet.
Two websites which show you the level of every single word in the English language.
https://www.englishprofile.org/wordlists/evp
https://www.english.com/gse/teacher-toolkit/user/vocabulary
Another way to show students that they’re progressing is self-assessment. In this post I talk about how you can use these online text checkers to submit a pieces of writing and see how the level improves.
Ending the lesson
The final point I want to touch on is ending the lesson. It’s so important that before you end the lesson that you give a student an idea about what is going to happen in the next lesson. Talk a little bit about what you achieved today. Giving the student an idea of what to expect in the next class demonstrates you have everything planned and organized.
If you feel that the next class is going to be particularly challenging for your student, why not give them some homework? This will help them prepare for that class.
So, to recap, these are the four things you need to do you in your online class:
- Have a variety of activities
- Start each class strong
- Show progress to your student
- End every lesson by showing the student what they achieved in that class and also what’s ahead in the future
I hope this post helps you when you come to teach English online.