If you are considering teaching English/ESL online then it is important that you know that there is a steep learning curve and that not everyone will find it easy, however, for those that persist this can be the start of a highly rewarding and worthwhile career path.
Teaching ESL online is easy if you have prior teaching experience, are tech savvy, have the discipline to organise yourself working from home and have the know how to attract new students at a decent hourly rate.
The good news is that if you lack any of the above then support is available and with a bit of application most people with the right attitude can get themselves started in the online ESL/English industry. Let’s take a look at some of the required attributes in a bit more detail and see where both the shortcuts are and where you should not cut corners.
Teaching English Online Will Be Easier If…
1. You Have Prior Teaching Experience
Any prior teaching experience will help you here. As long as you have had some sort of teaching experience so you know that you are not going to freeze when you take your first lesson and that you have developed some confidence in talking in front of others then you are good to go.
Obviously ,the more experience you have the easier it will be and the more specific your experience is to teaching English, likewise the easier it will be.
If you have experience of teaching subjects, such as, Maths, History, or whatever, then you will definitely find that helpful but you may not be used to speaking to students for whom English is a second language.
If that is you then here are a few quick pointers for when you teach your first online ESL/English lesson:
- Start by speaking slowly so that they can get used to the sound of your voice and then you can gradually speed up until you find the speed at which is about the limit of what they are capable of following. To slow and they will feel insulted/demotivated, too fast and they will get frustrated and start to switch off!
- Don’t hide your face, students need to see the visual cues of your mouth moving and any facial expressions and body language in order for them to comprehend what you are saying. Using visuals, google images, for example and short video clips can also quickly convey the meaning of a new word or concept.
- Keep teacher talk time to a minimum. Remember, we are aiming to get them talking rather than you. Ask open questions and follow up questions to keep pushing them. Finally, keep instructions as short and concise as possible, you may even want to write them down on a shared doc so they can read them as well.
- Get experience. if you don’t have any teaching experience at all then I suggest you get some as soon as possible! The quickest way would be to sign-up on italki. You can create your profile as a teacher and register yourself as being available for general conversation lessons.
This is the easiest type of teaching. Essentially you can get away with just talking with a student, find out what they want to learn and talk about those topics.
As you talk with them, note down any mistakes they make when they are speaking and stop every ten minutes or so and go through those mistakes with them.
Avoid the temptation to correct every mistake as they go as you will lose the flow of the conversation which is what they actually came for. On italki you generally have to provide a short trial lesson for just a small payment.
This works well for the students in terms of gauging whether they want to have future lessons with you but it also works well for you as you get to do a bit of practise teaching with no pressure.
And, there you go, voila you now have some teaching experience to add to your CV and give you a bit of confidence that you can actually do this thing!
2. You Are Tech Savvy
To be honest, if you can log into Zoom, or Skype and make phone calls then you pretty much have enough knowledge to get going.
The difficulties tend to come when you are trying to get the students to use a different website to do some new activities on. For example, I like to get my students using Quizlet.com. However, the first time they use it students always have difficulties signing up for it regardless of how easy it actually is.
And, if one student cannot log on to the site what are you going to do? Forget about them and focus on the others? You better not if you want to get a repeat customer. So, you always need to stick to simple websites if you are planning to not just teach face to face.
But in general, I’m pretty sure you can handle the tech required to teach English online.
3. You Have Self-Organization and Discipline
Working from home in your pajama’s sounds all well and good but in reality it is not as easy as it should be.
First of all, your lesson times are whenever the student, or the school you work for want you to teach and if you are teaching students in a different time zone, which is a distinct possibility then be prepared to be working at some anti-social hours.
Secondly, you need to look and act professionally at all times. Some people struggle with this without having a boss around to keep them focused.
Remember, your students will be judging you from the moment they log-on and if you teach young learners then their parents may also be watching or hanging around in the background to see if they are getting value for money or not!
If you are regularly late, looking miserable, delivering unplanned lessons then you are not going to last long in this game.
Discipline is the key and you can work on this and improve quite rapidly when you realize that teaching is actually pretty fun when you do it well and your paycheck depends on your ability to stay disciplined!
4. You Have The Ability To Attract Students
OK, so to be honest this is probably the most difficult thing about teaching English online! Everything else I have mentioned so far can be dealt with with a bit of application.
The reason it is difficult to acquire students is because there is such fierce competition out there. The three main ways to get students are to:
- Work for a company. A couple of big names, such as VIPKID and DADA are worth checking out to see if you meet their requirements. These type of companies tend to be a little fussier about who they have teaching for them so you may not ‘get in’ with them straight away but don’t give up. Get some experience elsewhere and try again later.
- Create a profile. As I mentioned earlier there are a lot of community type websites where the website provides a platform for teachers to try and sell themselves via their profile and for students to browse for exactly the type of teacher they are after. The downsides are that their are lots of teachers doing this which naturally forces the average hourly pay down.
- Become a freelancer. This method is awesome if you can make it work as you will then have total flexibility as to who you work with, when you do so and how much you charge.
The downside is you are going to have to do the leg work in finding the students and without some marketing skill this is difficult to do, and even with some marketing skill you are generally going to have to pay for that marketing in financially as well as in time spent.
This is why many teachers try and fail at this method. You could try advertising on Craigslist, Facebook, or Google AdWords but it’s just too much hassle for most people.
So, overall I would say that ‘yes’ teaching English online can be easy if you can nail those four factors quickly. Otherwise, be prepared to experience a steep learning curve before you see success.
Is Teaching English Online Legit?
Teaching English online is a legitimate industry projected to be worth $2.7 billion by the end of 2022 with the overall ESL industry set to generate 56.2 billion by 2022 (source). There are a growing number of reputable companies directly employing online ESL teachers, such as: VIPKids, DaDa, Qkids, iTutorGroup, and Skooli.
This question tends to be asked by those people who have the perception that anyone can teach English and that it must be dead easy to jump online and earn money, and therefore, online teaching must be too good to be true and not legit.
Multinational companies recognize that English is the language of global trade and English language websites account for 80% of all content on the internet. It should come as no surprise then that good English language teachers are in high demand which is only going to be heightened further by the COVID-19 pandemic.
All things considered, teaching ESL online is similar to any other career. It is not for everyone, it requires hard work, dedication and no little skill, but, the rewards of location dependence, flexible working hours and no commute all make it well worth your consideration.
Can You Really Make Money Teaching English Online?
VIPKid pay $14-22/hour as do most companies employing online ESL teachers. On italk.com teachers charge around $17/hour on average for general conversation lessons but teachers who offer some sort of specialism, such as Business English, or IELTS preparation are charging around $40/hour.
Whilst, learning to teach online might not be a walk in the park the money is definitely there, and there is currently a growing demand for good online ESL/English teachers.
And finally, you could work for ‘freelance’ for yourself and set whatever price you can get. I would be looking to offer specialist exam preparation services and would charge at least $30/hour.
Just for a bit of proof, check out this teachers profile on italki. You will see that in the last 8 months he has taught 307 lessons and made $11,375. That annualizes out at $17, 062 for the year giving a monthly average salary of $1421.
Now, doing the math further, this teacher has been teaching 9.6 lessons/week. Sure, he is probably preparing for these classes but he has plenty of time spare and I bet he either has a full time job doing something else, or he is teaching on another site too!
So, I reckon he could also be doubling that number by teaching another ten lesson per week somewhere else at similar rates so that means an annual salary of $34, 124 per year or $2843/month without leaving the comfort of his own home!
Not bad at all, so you can definitely see that ‘yes’ you can really make money online teaching English!
Is Teaching English Online A Good Job?
Teaching English online is a good job. You can build relationships with students and have a positive impact on their lives whilst enjoying not having to commute to an office and working from the comfort of your own home.
As well as the financial side which we have already mentioned above, there are fringe benefits that you need to seriously consider. For example, I could never work full-time online teaching English because my current ‘real world’ school offer free tuition to my children which could not be replaced online.
Then there are things like health insurance. If you work freelance or on a community website such as italki then you are not going to get any health insurance not to mention holidays, and what about sick days, are you going to get paid for those?
Pensions is another thorny subject. If you work for a company then you may be lucky enough to get one but you definitely aren’t if you go the freelance route so you need to be thinking about financial planning for the future too.
And what about when a student does not show up because believe me this happens a lot in the world of online teaching. You better have a strict policy in place to deal with this otherwise you could end up losing money and time.
Of course, the flexibility of the working hours, location dependence and the generally low stress nature of the job can make this very appealing work.
Personally though, I feel you would need to have a financially secure partner who is the main breadwinner if you really want this to work long term. However, if you are a single person looking to travel and live a low cost, low stress life then this could be the ideal job for you.
You may also be interested in reading: Start Teaching ESL Online in 5 Steps for a quick start guide.