How to Teach Online: Offer a Free Lesson

By David | July 27, 2010

This is a reprint of my article at ezinearticles.com

How-to-Teach-Online—Offer-a-Free-English-Lesson

One of the best ways to find students to teach online is to offer a Free Trial English lesson for first-time students. Everyone loves something for free and this is your chance to show the student your ability as an English teacher and that the student will enjoy working with you. This is a great way to market yourself and is one of the first things I talk about in my how to teach online webinars.

When we buy a car, we expect to be able to take the car out for a test drive. This is basically what your student will be doing here: testing your teaching ability and. It is your potential student’s chance to kick your tires and for you to shine as an English teacher. The most important thing you will need to learn about how to teach online is how to attract students.

I suggest a fifteen minute lesson on Skype or one of the other free video chat services. Fifteen minutes is enough ‘free’ minutes to get a student interested in trying a lesson. It also gives you enough time to introduce yourself, give a short lesson and then give your sales pitch to your potential customer.

In your introduction you need to smile a lot, be friendly come off as professional and kind. Yep, it’s that old first impression thing; if the student immediately likes you, then you will have a better chance of making a sale. You just need to take a few minutes introducing yourself and asking some questions about the student. This is important to help the student feel more comfortable with you before you begin the short trial lesson.

It’s best to keep your prepared lesson to about seven or eight minutes. Make sure it is a lesson that you have prepared well for and are comfortable with. You don’t want to stumble during this part of the trial. You want to come off as professional and well prepared.

Once the actual lesson is over this is your time to switch hats from English teacher to salesperson. Have your sales pitch prepared. Not all of us are comfortable selling and that is why practicing your sales approach is important. Practice your sales pitch out on a friend or family member first. Learning how to give a good sales pitch and attracting students is going to be your first goal in learning how to teach online.

The free trail lesson will be essential to marketing yourself to potential students online. When most people think about how to teach online they only think about teaching, but learning how to market your self is as important! Offering a free lesson will bring students to you!

If you want to join one of my weekly webinars, on how to start a Teach English Online Business…

Click here to join a free webinar

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Teaching Online: Developing an Online Teaching Persona!

By David | December 15, 2009

Over the years some of the better and the most loved teachers I have met, have been either trained actors or people with just a natural ability to act. Their classroom persona was often very different from the person I knew in the teacher’s room or outside of the school. They had developed some type of persona for the classroom that worked for teaching students. This is what Jay Parini, the author of the The Art of Teaching, calls a “teaching mask.” Developing your own teaching mask is a good device for teaching online.

Parini suggests teachers need to develop a persona or a teaching mask, that will not just serve their personality, but also the material they are teaching. His theories are meant for the classroom, but they are adaptable to the online environment. So although you will have students that need an entertaining teacher that has a lot of energy, you will also find students that are quiet and you’ll need to tone down that energy.

Is that hard to gauge?

Well yes, but like everything else with practice and time you learn how to do it. So you can use your different masks with different students. (Yes, I need to insert an image of Jim Carrey here)

However, like Parini and most other teachers, when start off  to my class, I would be a little nervous. I would always think, did I prepare enough material? Do I know the material well enough? Should I try some of my humor? And most of all, I am going to look and sound like an idiot? I think, I probably often looked like an idiot, but my students usually responded well. Parini calls this “donning the teaching mask”(pg. 68) Having that personality for teaching and putting it on as you fo to class or open up Skype.

But is it faking it?

Parini doesn’t think so. He compares it to putting on a “suit of clothes”(pg. 59). At home, most people like to wear jeans and a T-shirt, a sweat suit or their pajamas, but at work a lot of people have to dress up and wear a suit or a jacket and skirt. Does that mean their faking it? No, it is just their professional persona dressed up for work. And that is what you need to show for teaching online.

Parini says most people begin teaching by emulating “a favorite teacher, or several of them.” That is a good place to begin. Think about what some of your favorite teachers were like. What was their teaching style? Were they relaxed? Were they funny? Over the top? Intellectual? Calm? Comforting? Try to find the things you liked about them, that also fit with your personality. Then try to bring a piece of that into your own classes. It doesn’t mean you have to fake it! Just try to emulate the parts of what you liked about your favorite teachers and your students will like it too!

Your teaching mask or Teaching Online persona is just you, dressed up and giving your students the best you have learned from your favorite teachers!

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The First Steps to Teaching Online!

By David | October 14, 2009

Some people may look to the online business world and feel they do not have the skills to develop a business online. However, they may have overlooked one basic skill that they possess that is very marketable; that is their ability to speak English.  As I have mentioned before, English is the lingua franca in so many places around the world. That means people need to speak English to communicate with each other and when you are thinking about how to teach online, you need to be thinking about this market.

Even in this current economic turmoil, the market is growing.  The competition for jobs is currently so intense, that many jobseekers realize speaking English well, may be their edge to getting that job or promotion they want. So there are a lot of motivated students out there.

So what is the first step? Well many people worry they have to be some kind of computer expert to teach online. You can check out my ezine article, How to Teach Online: Do I Have to be a Computer Expert? http://tinyurl.com/y9gem6c

Other people may be concerned about their own grammar skills. So a good place to start is to look at how English students are evaluated. Google “English assessment” or click here http://tinyurl.com/yj3vpbe . You will find a number of free English assessment tests.

Try one of the tests. This is good for two reasons: you will see how ESL and EFL students are evaluated and it also gives you a chance to evaluate your own English language skills. Don’t worry if you feel you have forgotten all your English grammar! Most people feel that way when they begin language teaching online. The evaluation may point out some areas where you may need to brush up on your grammar skills. You can do that online as well or even use one of your old school books. For most native English speakers it becomes an exercise of “Oh yeah! I remember this!” or “Oh O.K. I see.”

We all use the grammar in our everyday conversations and sometimes just takes a gentle reminder to remember how it works. When we begin teaching English we begin looking at our own language a little differently and this will help you when learning how to teach online.

Don’t stress about the grammar too much! Most of your classes you will be teaching conversation, not grammar. If you are asked a question about grammar and you don’t know the answer, simply tell the student, “I don’t know, but I will get back to you with the answer.” or “Let me think about how to explain that and I’ll get back to you”. Then do some research and get your answer before the next class. You can even e-mail your student an explanation or a web site with a good explanation before your next class. Your student will appreciate your honesty and help.

So don’t put it off! Try an English assessment test right now! And take another step towards learning how to teach online!

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What is the Size of the Online English Langauge Market?

By David | October 5, 2009


The size of the market for English is enormous. It’s estimated that over 1 Billion people are currently learning English worldwide. Back in 2000, it was estimated there were about 750 million EFL (English as a foreign language) speakers and over 375 million ESL (English as a second language) speakers. The EFL speakers would likely use English for business or pleasure while the ESL speakers would need to use English on a daily basis.

The numbers are impressive! Most of the people studying EFL are adults who need to use English to communicate at work. It is a widely held misconception that these people need the language to communicate with native English speakers, but the fact is most of the EFL speakers use English to communicate with other EFL speakers. English is there common language and therefore the language they use to communicate in. That is why when your thinking about how to teach English online you have to consider this group: the people who use English as their lingua franca.

The demands on these EFL speakers is so high that David Graddold’s 2007 book, English Next , written for a British Government agency, says that the ability to speak English is “creating new global patterns of wealth and social exclusion”. This is an important point! This shows the pressure that these EFL speakers feel; their ability to communicate in English with their customers and clients directly affects their ability to conduct business!

And not all of these people are able to attend language classes in a regular classroom! Many of them have such great demands on their time from work and family they don’t have the time to commute to a class.  This is why they are seeking a less time consuming alternative to the classroom  and are looking to studying English online.

This is important when your thinking about how to teach English Online; the market is enormous, but the industry needs to address the demands and needs of these motivated students!

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What is Teaching Online?

By David | September 7, 2009

Teaching online is a form of distance education; it can be taught partially or wholly over the internet. To begin with many instructors don’t feel comfortable in this new environment. However, the World Wide Web and the new technology offers a number of benefits to the instructor and the students. And the technology changes fast and there has even been a backlash against the technology in ESL online teaching and a lot of students want to take their English classes on their phones.

Of course the biggest benefit to the instructor is they do not have to be in a classroom at a certain time and, depending on the type of course, don’t even have to be online at a certain time!  The internet offers incredible opportunities in time and space and communication with your students. You don’t have to be in an office or a classroom or even in front of your computer.  And you don’t have to live in a major center! It is as easy to teach online from a small city in Colorado as it is from a beach house.  Suddenly the mobile teacher has  emerged.

Online classes offer a lot of benefits to students as well. Students are offered a myriad of courses on line and they can register and participate in the class from almost anywhere on earth. If the student has a computer and an internet connection and they can join, listen to the lectures, hand in their assignments, sit in on virtual classrooms and take their exams.

Online teaching is not just the future, it is the now!

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