Teaching English Online - 16 Months Later

Hi guys. So a while ago on my Instagram I asked you for things that you wanted to see on my channel, like videos you wanted me to make. One of the things that came up was an update on teaching English online. So it's been about 16 months now that I've been teaching English online, which is crazy when I really think about it. It doesn't feel like that long. But yeah, I thought I'd just do a quick update. I don't think it's going to be a very long video. I do have two other videos if you want to know a bit more detail about the initial stuff, so like the platform or the experience of doing the certificate in learning how to teach English. But I will do a very quick recap for you now. So I started off with doing the teaching English as a foreign language certificate. Now, obviously I'm a native English speaker, but the teaching English as a foreign language certificate just teaches you how to teach, if that makes sense, and also gives you the basis of like grammar, etc, which as a native speaker, you don't really focus on. Like I was never taught that there are like 12 tenses in the English language in school. So it was interesting to see that. Now, I personally don't really teach grammar. I do a little bit because I can tell you how something is meant to be said, but in terms of explaining the tenses and when to use them, a bit rusty. So on my profile, I do say that I don't really focus on things like exam prep and learning the tenses and things like that. So the majority of the students that I have are more conversational students, which is partly why I charge less. If I was going to be teaching proper grammar and going through that kind of teaching, I would charge more. But because the majority of the lessons are just conversational and learning vocabulary and how to say things and how to be a little bit more fluent, I'm just happy to charge less because it's pretty much a pleasant conversation and I'm earning a little bit more money on the side through it. So in terms of the questions that I do get asked a lot in my DMs, one of them is how easy is it to actually find students? From my experience, it's really, really easy. There are so many people worldwide who want to learn English. English is like the international language. Now, I do think that if you have a second language, it's an advantage because pretty much all of my students are Polish. So I do think the fact that I've written my profile half in Polish really helps because whilst during the TEFL certificate you are taught not to use the student's native language to communicate, actually a lot of adults prefer to be able to communicate in the native language. So if you do have that, use it to your advantage because then you can just almost target that niche of your native language speakers. Now, I had my profile initially open not for very long and I got a whole bunch of trial lessons and if you don't know, I use a platform called Preply. So again, I've made a video going through Preply. They do take a pretty hefty commission, especially when you first start. So do bear that in mind if you are thinking about this. The first lesson with every student is essentially not paid for the tutor. So Preply take 100% commission for it. That was a bit rubbish if I'm honest, but you know, they do help you find students and they do prepare all your lessons. So I'm not as fussed about the commission because I don't have to spend my own time preparing materials as such. I can just log onto the platform and talk to people. Now, I essentially took on a lot of trial students because I didn't think that the majority of them would convert into regular students, but they did. So initially I was quite overwhelmed with the number of students. As time goes on, people drop out for various reasons and now I've got six students per week that I teach. I do try to have just one a day where possible. Now, the reason for me that I do that is because my job is a little bit unpredictable, which means that sometimes I have to change lessons last minute. Thankfully the majority of my students are okay with that, but sometimes I have to, I don't know, stay online a bit later, which means I can't start a lesson when I'm meant to start it, so I just push it back to a bit later. Sometimes I just have to change the day completely. And with some students, we set up the lesson for the next week on a regular basis, if that makes sense. So it's not just, oh, we'll meet every, I don't know, Monday. We'll meet sometimes on Monday, sometimes on Thursday, etc. So it is really good that you can essentially set your own hours. So this is another question I actually had recently, was about setting your own hours. And of course, you can set your timetable on Preply, so you could just have an open calendar with the times that you want to teach every week. So for example, if you know that every Monday at 8, you can do a lesson, have your calendar open for Monday at 8, and then the students can book in. For me, it's more of an ad hoc thing, which I just agree with my students, and that's the beauty of it. As long as your student is flexible, then you can be flexible also. But obviously if someone wants to do lessons at a time when you're not available, then it doesn't make sense. So I did have one student previously who wanted to do lessons during the workday. So obviously they worked and I worked, so we always tried to do a lunchtime lesson, so that when we both had our lunch break, we could have a lesson. But it wasn't really working, because we both had busy jobs, which often came up with last-minute asks or last-minute meetings. Quite often, we had to cancel the lessons from both our sides, so it just didn't really work. Another question I get asked a lot is income. So you basically set your own rates. Yes, you kind of have to go with the industry averages. Obviously if you go too low, then you're underselling yourself. But if you go too high, then people won't really pick you. Obviously once you build up your ratings and things like that, you might be able to up your prices, but you kind of have to go with the average. Now I think I'm pretty below average in terms of pricing. Like I said, I just mostly do conversational lessons anyway, so I'm happy with that. You could set your rates to whatever you think your time is worth, and then see whether you get students interested. The better you are at teaching, the more you're going to be able to charge. Just bear in mind those commissions when you set your rates. I actually worked out the other day that I could earn a full-time income in Poland enough to live on if I was teaching full-time, and I wouldn't even have to do 40 hours a week, which is cool because it means I'm in a position now pretty much that I could just leave my job and teach. It is worth bearing in mind that it is something that you can turn into a career, and it might not be a glamorous career like, I don't know, working in finance, but it's a more rewarding career, and much much much less stressful career. So it is something that I am thinking of doing in terms of when I do quit my job and move to Poland, something that is worth considering because you could do what I did and just start off doing it on the side, and then see if you enjoy it, see if you're getting students, see if you're any good at it, and then you could decide to transition into it full-time. A couple of tips that I would give you from my experience is firstly, keep notes for every student, and this is something that I didn't start off with. It just got muddled trying to remember what you've done with each student, especially at the start, and especially if you have a lot of students. So it's a little easier for me now, so I don't really have notes for them, because like I said, most are just conversational, so it is less important that I keep track of what we're doing. So I have certain notes, for example, where I say, oh I need to do this with this student, but when I had students previously, where we were going through materials for grammar etc, Preply as a platform doesn't really, like I think they try, but it doesn't quite work. It's not as perfected yet, it doesn't really tell you what materials you've worked through with each student as well as it should. So sometimes I might open something that I think we're going to do, and then it turns out that we've already covered it. So a platform like, I don't know, Notion or OneNote or any sort of platform where you can have multiple tabs for each student would really, really help you stay organised. And the other main thing is actually keep time between your lessons. So I used to have back-to-back lessons and it never really worked well because you do get students who like to chat and they're overrun and that's okay. I mean obviously you could be very, very strict and be like, sorry we have one minute left, I'm going to stop. But because my lessons are conversational and it matters to me that my students keep up the fluency, I don't really want to be like, sorry can you stop talking right now, my lesson's over. If I run over by five, ten minutes, it doesn't matter. And yes that decreases my pay rate, but I'm not really doing this full time and for me student satisfaction is more important. So yeah, basically don't do one lesson straight after another. I always give myself now half an hour. So like I said before, I try to schedule one lesson a day. Where I can't and I have to move lessons and have two lessons in one day for example, I will have half an hour in between so that even if I overrun by 10 minutes, I've never overrun by more than 10 minutes, but even if I overrun by 10 minutes, I've got 20 minutes in between to grab a drink, nip to the loo, maybe grab some food, something like that. So yeah, definitely do that. The other thing I would say is be prepared for getting additional students through your students, if that makes sense. So one way that I've grown my student base is that I've had, I think it's three students refer other people to me, which is great, but had I still had all those students that I got from Preply at the start, I would be kind of struggling to do this on the side now, just because obviously I've still got my full-time job and I've still got the YouTube channel and the other things I'm doing. If you transition to doing this full-time, it's great because you can easily then grab more students, just something to be aware of. The final thing that I keep getting asked is whether you need to be a native speaker to teach English, and the answer is of course not. You do not need to be a native speaker. It helps, and a lot of people want native speakers as their tutors, but if you are good, it doesn't really matter. The thing that matters is that you connect with your students, that you know what you're talking about, and that you can teach them. There are multiple platforms, there are still a couple that I want to try, but again, just because I already barely have time for the students that I have, I'm not venturing into new platforms. But when it comes to doing this properly and making this my main source of income, I will try the other platforms, because there are platforms like Cambly where they have priority hours, for example, where they have these windows where they have the most students online, and if you just mark yourself as available and you sit there and wait, you may get inbound calls, so students may call you, and then maybe they become a full-time student, or not a full-time student, but a regular student, or if no one calls you during that hour, they still pay you for 15 minutes. So I think that's a good way of boosting your income if you do do this. Well actually, it doesn't really matter whether you're doing it full-time or part-time, it is a good way of boosting your income. And then you've got other platforms, I think there's one called italki or something, which again is based off of having conversations, rather than actually teaching the structures and grammatical things, etc. Overall, I do really enjoy it, and I do think that teaching grammar is a completely different aspect and experience than just conversational English. So maybe try both, make sure you do put in your profile which you prefer to do, and you know, everything like that, because you don't want students who just want grammar and you can't really teach it properly, because then you'll just get bad reviews. So make sure you're very clear on your profile about your preference. I absolutely love it, I think it's really far less stressful than my day job, and it's great to see that it is something that I can make a stable income from, and set my own hours, which is great. Okay, I think that's all I wanted to cover. If you have any other questions that I haven't covered, just pop them in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer them. Otherwise, thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye!