How is one-to-one teaching different to teaching a group of students? Most online teachers teach on a one-to-one basis, and it’s a totally different ballgame to teaching groups of students such as those you’d find in a classroom. In this article…
Blog Archives
Niche English: the secret to getting the highest rates of pay, and for finding students the easy way
The major concern for prospective online English teachers is usually “how do I find a student?” The thinking goes on the lines of, I’ll get a student, then I’ll work out what to teach them. Finding students this way means…
Posted in How to
How much bandwidth do you need to teach online?
One concern understandably raised by people considering teaching English online is whether or not their Internet connection is going to be fast enough. You don’t want to go to all the trouble of finding a student and preparing a lesson…
Teaching Unplugged Activities (Part 4)
Dreams and Schemes In Part 4 of our series about using activities from the book, Teaching Unplugged, in online English teaching, I’m going to look at activities for encouraging your learner to talk with you about their dreams, hopes and plans. These…
Teaching Unplugged Activities (Part 3)
Sharing and Comparing In Part 3 of our series about using activities from the book, Teaching Unplugged, in online English teaching, I’m going to look at activities for encouraging your learner to talk with you about sharing and comparing ideas. This was…
Posted in Activity, Lesson Tagged with: activity, conversation, speaking, students, teaching unplugged
Teaching Unplugged Activities (Part Two)
Talking about Feelings In yesterday’s article, I introduced the ideas behind Teaching Unplugged and described some activities from the book, adapted for use by the online English teacher. If we follow a coursebook, which almost all classroom students and many…
Posted in Activity, Lesson Tagged with: activity, conversation, feelings, lesson, Scott Thornbury, speaking, teaching unplugged, whiteboard
Teaching Unplugged Activities for the Online English Teacher (Part One)
In my time teaching in language school classrooms, it’s always been a common sight to see teachers staggering into classrooms armed with piles of photocopied worksheets, laminated cards, DVDs and, increasingly, trays full of iPads – this in classrooms in…
Posted in Activity, Lesson Tagged with: activity, conversation, featured, interviews, Scott Thornbury, teaching unplugged
Simon’s Cat: lesson ideas
Just been reading Larry Ferlazzo’s excellent English language teaching blog and one post that jumped out for me was using Simon’s Cat videos in your lessons (actually I found his blog because I was Googling this topic!) Simon’s Cat is…
Buy the The Online English Teacher
Available now, The Online English Teacher eBook, containing everything the current or aspiring online English teacher needs to know. How to set up your computer for online English teaching How to find students How to get paid How to teach…
News Lesson on Sony’s ePaper Watch
Here’s a great resource from Breaking News English, based around a news report on Sony’s up-and-coming e-paper watch. The news story is written at 3 different levels of difficulty, and comes with a lesson plan and activities underneath the news…
Lesson Warmer: Anagrams
Here’s a great way to start a lesson, to warm your student up for the lesson ahead. Choose a 9 letter word that your students should be familiar with (e.g. Christmas, vegetable, furniture, xylophone, Wednesday). You can either type the…
IDroo User Guide: Basic Tools Part 2
Here’s a quick demonstration of IDroo’s sharing, chat and uploading tools.
How to use IDroo (Part 1)
IDroo is a great whiteboard for using online with your student. Here’s a quick video outlining its basic tools. Here’s a quick demonstration of IDroo’s drawing and moving tools.
Why teach English online?
A short animation about the benefits of becoming an online English teacher.
Needs Analysis
Doing a needs analysis helps you find out about what your student wants to do with English, what their language needs are and what they are interested in. Click on the link below to find an interview template. You can…
British Council Image Bank
We like the British Council’s Image Bank lessons – simply pictures with lessons based around them. Here’s one about a remote house in Scotland for lower level students. There’s a complete lesson with resources on the British Council site…
Snack facts – recording vocab
Here’s an interesting lesson for teens and young adults about snack foods from the British Council. It aims to develop reading skills and develop new vocabulary. Snack facts – recording vocabulary.
Keep the conversation going
In an online lesson, we usually find that we are teaching one to one classes and the student will want to practice speaking skills over everything else. Sometimes it can be very difficult to keep a conversation going. The internet…
Tense Timelines
Explaining grammar is something that, if you are anything like us, will make you break out into a cold sweat. But it doesn’t have to be like this. First of all, grammar is best understood by seeing how it…
Kindle Book now available
We’re delighted to be able to announce that our ebook, The Online English Teacher, is now available for Kindle devices and apps through Amazon websites around the world. and all other Amazon sites worldwide.
Posted in eBook Tagged with: ebook, listening, needs analysis, reading, speaking, vocabulary, writing
Build a career as a successful independent English teacher online. Learn all the essential strategies in this complete, step-by-step guide.FIND OUT MORE
Also available from Amazon for reading on a Kindle device or on the free Kindle app, available for PCs, Macs, tablet computers and smartphones.
and all other Amazon sites worldwide.
