12/14/2021
hey guys it's liza here and it's been about two weeks since the previous live
stream session so i am super happy to be back here
and i hope that today's live stream will be helpful and you will find something
insightful uh in my tips and tricks uh so today we will discuss
uh five useful uh things you could apply to your online teaching classes
in 2022 so this new year is coming and it is really
important to make sure you can enhance your english classes somehow and
i am here to share several tips that uh you can actually utilize
uh so um stay tuned and we will discuss all of them right here on the screen you can
actually see uh the topic of today's session uh but uh if you have any
further questions related to the point uh feel free to use the comments section
and at the same time um if you want to ask me anything related to temple or t
soul uh feel free to do so during the the session as well
so let me uh change my screen a little bit
and um let's start okay so uh basically every time i start with
my uh short introduction my name is lisa if you don't know me yet
um yeah hey everyone thanks for joining in um yeah just
send me a couple of questions a couple of words about yourself in the comments section because it is always more
pleasant uh to um deliver these live stream sessions to the audience who is
active and um can communicate with me uh because it is more motivating for me
as a speaker you know so i am an esl teacher and a teflon tesol expert at itt
um i'm located in yukatanburg russia so it means that i am a non-native esl
speaker um so i've been teaching for many years already and um for the past three almost
three years i've been working online completely so
i find it easier and more convenient and that is why i go live
and talk about online lessons um a little bit more uh compared to some
other topics so i hope that today's live stream will be
insightful for you because i will actually share uh several trends and something
which is surely have to be implied by um
esl teachers who are like you know modern teachers so stay tuned stay here with me
and yeah don't be shy to introduce yours yourself in the comment section
uh so where are you from um how long have you been teaching it's
really interesting to to learn especially if you are new to this live
stream sessions um because most of the time you know we have like
old um visitors those who participate regularly but if you haven't seen these
live stream sessions before uh just go ahead and introduce yourself
uh if you are not new to these live stream sessions just feel free to say your greetings to me i'm always happy to
see familiar faces you know i know all of those avatars so i can recognize you
guys um all right so i think it's the time to
start um the main point of today's presentation and um let's dive into right right into
the topic so the most important point um i believe every teacher has to
apply to their online lessons and maybe maybe not just to online lessons but
to um offline classes as well it is gamification uh so basically this um
idea isn't new uh but i can surely see that not many teachers um use it
not many teachers uh try to apply uh this idea to their online classes
and uh here are several reasons why you should try it
uh so basically a gamification uh helps to engage students uh with content
better uh it um allows them to get more motivated and
engaged during the lesson and during the course as well uh
if you have like as um a sequence of classes uh which are somehow um
connected with each other um and it is usually like that um so
basically um if you try gamification it makes your um
teaching and students learning fun fun and interactive
um another factor which is also really meaningful to us
english teachers is that uh gamification helps to create this addiction to learning and we surely want
our students to come back regularly and to be um inspired uh to study with us uh
so if you uh apply this trick in your online teaching classes
uh it will surely boost your um
boost your progress boost your students progress and they will
stay with you much longer uh it works actually not just with
younger students but with adults as well so if you work with um students who are
like over 18 years it is also all right to use some
games some activities that are interactive and seem
to be fun and maybe even funny because
some laughter helps a lot um another points of gamification is
that there are some uh special motivators you know um so you have to
think about um helping your students to achieve something so maybe if you um
create some milestones or create some uh achieve
achievements or like rankings it would also help your students to get uh more involved
it works with groups it works with individual students and this is like
a number one trend in esl teaching online so make sure you try it uh if you
want um some more information about gamification uh you can actually uh google it there
are a lot of useful tips on the internet uh but i can also share uh different
resources uh that might be helpful uh if you want to make your lessons more
engaging and interactive um i will let you know how i'm going to share
these tips a little bit later at the end of the session but i will definitely share
um a little bit more um content with you
um on this topic so stay tuned uh all right let me quickly check the
screen uh no not the screen the chat box so there is rare watching from japan thanks a lot
for coming to this live stream session and by the way guys feel free to
introduce yourself we are a nice um community here um of motivated english
teachers and i hope that this live stream session isn't just this
one-sided presentation but it's also like a networking uh thing where we can get to
know each other better and i don't know maybe make some meaningful connections
um as professionals so feel free to write something about
yourself maybe how long you you are working as a teacher
so yeah just something and i'm going i'm
moving on to the next point uh which is the second trick in my opinion um that
is also extremely important um in online teaching
it is individual individualization so you want to make sure as a teacher
that you deliver classes um in that are pretty individual that are pretty
straight forward for your um english students uh even if you work with groups you
still want to craft your uh lessons and your course to some specific
needs and what you have to count um is that
is your student's personality students needs and uh you also have to include
meaningful content based on these two um first points
so as an example i work with a group of
students it's a small group of three people they all are teenagers of
12 to 14 years so two of them are like 12 13
and um another girl is almost 14. so we have this nice small group and we are um
studying uh we are preparing for um a cambridge exam uh which is called key
um so it's like an a2 exam um in this
sequence of exams and uh what is challenging for me as a
teacher there is that um those students they have something in common in common
but on the other hand they are completely different and when i work with this group
i always try to come up with some strategies when i involve all of them
uh how to do that uh it is to provide this individualized
content for them uh even if they are different they still have something to
share and um that's how i um
approach this group um before each class we have like uh before
the main part of the class we have uh several minutes of a up
when we discuss uh some topics that are related to all of them
and at the same time we play some games that are based on their common interests
but sometimes i help them to come up with their own ideas that are not that
familiar to the rest of the group and this is how we
interact with each other and how we um facilitate
all of their um different personalities so it is not that
challenging basically but you have to uh spend some time um
getting to know your students even if there are even more than three like if
you work with a huge group you still have to learn a little bit about each of
your participants how how you can do so
you can offer them some question areas some individualized
tasks where you can see how they work what are their styles what are
their interests and so on and after that you of course have to um
analyze this content uh and understand what are their personal needs
and then you have to like somehow include it into the course
uh it is always pretty um specific for each group uh it is much
easier if you work with one-on-one students uh but basically
individualization it is something we have to count uh it is something we have
to focus on uh when we um even if we don't work with students yet
even if we like start promoting our services and if you look um
if you research the market you would see that there are actually
uh a lot of offers uh that are crafted specifically for
individual peculiarities it is a common trend this day but it is
more common to online schools that have you know
more resources to provide something like that
we freelancing teachers also have to try it uh and um it will definitely uh work for
us uh in terms of income in terms of um popularity
of our services so if you wanna make sure that you have this um
stream of students coming to um ask you for services you need to provide
something individual so basically uh just to read to review the ideas that
we have already discussed uh the number one thing to try then
in 2022 is gamification the next thing is individualization
these two ideas are very trendy and if you don't apply them
right now um you won't probably make it next year um and you will
probably uh fall behind and some other teachers or online
schools will um you know they will just
um take the stage and you won't make sure that you have enough students so
you have to be up to date in this perspective
the next idea uh which is also pretty uh interesting and
at the same time quite obvious charting your course
so what it means you have to uh provide um
a better understanding what you are going to do with your student um
like a quick example um there are a lot of english teachers on
sites like italki or prepley who offer their services but never specify
what is the path uh it's a mistake it's a huge mistake because students um
if they are interested in studying um sometimes they still don't know why
they need it um and you as a teacher are there to explain them that um there is this
specific clear goal uh you will uh have these specific milestones or
like benchmarks and they will do it with this amount of comfort it will be done in this way not
in that way uh so it will be for example interactive uh you will work
on the course with different um materials with different games and so on
um but not with this um black and white book
so this is how it should be organized uh when you offer this service on this uh
cold audience when you um when you actually provi um you know
promote your services on a teaching marketplace for example
um because this way your potential clients will see
uh some of the benefits why they should work with you uh and to demonstrate it let's have a
look at these two examples so for example um one teacher whose name is mary offers
just english one-on-one uh she doesn't specify anything maybe
she says something like well uh apart from english one-on-one we can also prepare for ielts for
uh cambridge exams uh you will be able to work abroad and stuff
but nothing specific on the contrary teacher alice uh offers
a 12 lesson online course about ielts after which um you were students will
get seven plus band score so if you compare these two uh types of teachers
who provide their services uh you will see that the second one is more specific uh it is easier for um
their potential clients to understand how long it will take to prepare for
ielts and what result they will get after this course
so in this case um probably more students will go to the second
teacher compared to this to the first one that is why you have to be really
specific on the other hand if you work with
individual classes or even group classes and
you have been doing it for some time already so you have your clients
you still have to set some goals and explain uh what it will take to
like what efforts it will take to achieve those goals because setting up
goals helps students to keep focused and stay motivated
much longer compared to those situations when students don't have a
specific goal so in my practice when i worked as a general english teachers i
kept failing all the time um my students stayed with me like for
several months uh to one year and then they left for somebody else just because
um they didn't see a point in those lessons uh we prepared for nothing we
just drilled some uh activities but they didn't have any specific goals in their
mind these days what i do is um i offer
a specific specific course which is a preparation course for
cambridge exams so i have uh different types of students who prepare
for different exams like some of them are younger
and some of them are a little bit older but anyway i work with um
those similar types of exams uh and my offer is that um
we are going to prepare for cambridge exams for one year uh or for nine months
for example after that you have to go and pass this exam go and take this exam
and just bearing this in mind my students stay
focused during the whole course uh and by the way i work with teenagers who are
usually really challenged um really challenging for students for
teachers to work with because they lose their motivation they don't know
how to um they don't know sometimes why they study
and so on and so forth so make sure you prepare some specific
goals or maybe you even set those goals goals together with the with your
students um so for example it might be a nice idea for the
um introductory class for the you know for that class when you get to know your
student for the first time like a trial lesson um and
just to make sure uh he or she will come back next time
uh you can offer to set those goals that are important and mean
meaningful for uh those specific students and then you will like um highlight some
key uh points what they have to look at um together with you and so on
uh all right the next uh stage the next uh trick that
you have to try next year or maybe even this year
don't lose any minute it is attention how to keep
your students attention proficiently so first of all you have to um learn
some strategies of content delivery uh we all know this um
you have probably already tried to study yourself this way like when you are
showed um a piece of paper or like a course book pdf
file and during the whole class you are just going from one exercise to another
exercise in that pdf book this isn't a proactive approach to
delivering classes uh for teachers but and at the same time it's a daunting way
uh to um consume information especially if it is new to
students so usually they of course they lose their attention
um especially considering the fact that our attention span online is just about
seven minutes compared to attention span of 18 minutes uh in a real classroom
so um there is this huge gap between studying online and studying in a real classroom
uh we tend to lose our attention and when it comes to teenagers and younger
students they will probably uh be focused on your um lesson during five
minutes or so even less i suppose um in my experience when i worked with um
young students of like seven to nine years uh in an online school uh they
um couldn't be focused for more than five minutes so
uh what um what we offered at that time was uh versatiling the content so if you come
up with some exercises you need to make sure you
provide them in different ways and at the same time you have to make sure that
there are many uh different tasks in your toolbox
when you deliver this class so basically uh once again
gamification is helpful to keep attention span uh so
just make sure you apply this strategy to this another idea
and what is um also helpful is uh giving some surprises during the whole uh
lesson so surprises might be something
very simple like putting your students names uh in a bowl you know and
um picking one out of the ball and asking that student
so if they know if they expect um they are going to be asked
then there uh for you as a teacher it will be easier to keep their attention
so your students are more likely to be focused on the lesson
flow on the lesson content uh and the last
thing i would like to repeat because this is something i have already um
talked about in one of my previous uh live stream sessions um it is narrow narrowing down your
niche uh so what i mean by me by a niche so we
all english teachers tend to work with general things
um especially those who are you know newbies uh if you got your tefl
certificate like um i don't know yesterday you will probably
go on the market with this uh common service of um
general english teaching uh it is all right in terms of getting
this first experience but anyway um even if you are not experienced i
would uh recommend that you narrow down your niche straight away
uh don't focus on this general group which is really big uh peop all people in the
group like those thousands and hundreds people
they have various needs various um pains i would say
uh that you won't probably be able to satisfy um that is why
it is always better to offer something which is specific and
which targets um this smaller audience so for example if you
like to work with young students but not with adults then
make sure you offer your services to young students only
and if you um want to narrow down even even more uh find
something that is important for your young students and offer that to them so in my case it
was offering teenagers this exam preparation
uh usually teens don't know that they have to prepare for exams but um it is
when it when you start working with their parents because basically you target two different um groups of people
students on the first place and those who pay for those students
aka their parents so make sure you give some specific
services and you target is a specific audience and uh you will see
that um this trick will help you to provide higher quality services
it will bring you more opportunities for professional development because you want
you will no longer need to spend time on i don't know some general things for
preparing for general uh teaching methodologies or stuff like that uh you
will focus on the group you work with uh it it works
brilliant uh it is much easier for um us as
teachers in terms of preparation as well uh for example uh because
last year my one of my other students uh prepared
for the same for the same type of exam this year i just copy most of the
activities and then i just add something individual for those students who work
on the same exam preparation course this year so
for me it is easier to copy something and to add something more
specific uh and in individual than to start everything from scratch
and it is how it is usually done if you have many different types of students if they
are from um like different age groups if they have different uh learning goals
learning styles and so on so make sure you try to at least try to narrow down
your niche and um eventually you will see that uh it also
works really good in terms of increasing your hourly rate and um as a consequence your
income so this is probably one of the best tricks
that i really like um but of course you have to try to combine
this one with everything that i have mentioned previously that i have
mentioned earlier and um well basically this is the end of
my um presentation but it's not the end of the live stream
session so if you have any questions related to
um tefl teaching related to online teaching feel free to ask me in the
comments section i will stay here for another five to ten minutes uh and just to
mention uh this live stream session is provided by itttt we are a leading tefl and t
sole provider and if you are willing to increase your professional skills
in english teaching feel free to check out our website let me drop
out the link in the chat box so if you follow this link from the chat
box you will get a 30 discount of any tefl courses especially if you got
interested uh in this uh narrowing your niche
um if if you think about it you could also check out one of our
specialized tefl courses for uh online teaching for teaching
young learners and teaching business english which is actually the best
out of all of them so yeah just go ahead and check out this
website and also if you
if you see this qr code in the top right corner it is basically the same
the same link so if it is more convenient for you to um
just click on the not click to scan the qr code go ahead and do that
it is also a nice opportunity uh all right and let me change the slide
quickly and see oh no this is the last slide so let me probably do like this
yeah and here we go so right now let's do this q a time um i
will answer your questions from the chat box let me quickly see it
um all right um
emran uh shared his kind um feedback with me thanks a lot for uh
sending your nice and warm words i really appreciate it
and there is also philip who is our regular um viewer thanks a lot for
tuning in okay and there is a question from aaron i
hope to pronounce the name correctly if not please let me know how to do it better
so let me do the following [Music]
so how to find online jobs for those who have a tefl
um for those who have a tefl certification so the first idea is to go to our
website we have this section uh which is called jobs let me show it
actually i can do that by sharing my screen
one second yeah so here we go
i think i have to expand it a little bit
so if you see this section right here you can click on it
and then you will be able to see some of the options we have
there is even this online section which is called online jobs so you can start
from this part um and just get some
understanding how uh to apply for jobs how to find
jobs and so on and um on the other hand how you can do
it um even more proactively probably i always suggest
researching yourself there are so many different offers so many different uh online teaching uh
marketplaces like italki properly and so on uh you can check out those
uh if you haven't seen my uh preview one of my previous live stream session about
online teaching websites uh just make sure you find this live stream in the
folder on youtube or on facebook so there is one live stream
that is devoted to everything related to online teaching jobs
and another idea is to um starting offering your services
online um to your um friends to your um you know relatives
uh and asking them to share your information with somebody else so the
word of mouth it is actually the best thing to um
promote your services um i i would say that it is the best the best thing for me so i now have um
i don't remember how many exactly so i have a lot of students
uh i found uh one online only so um
they found my article on a social media and
that's how they got connected with me and started working with me and after
that they started recommending me to their friends and relatives and i got um
i think after them i got two more students so from that network
um and yeah that's that's how i did it
okay uh there is another question uh what is your advice about teaching in
china uh so it depends uh if you wanna work um
with the chinese market online um there are some challenges these days
because of um this new chinese policy that um blocks that um
that blocks to um this uh work for online teaching schools like um
well vip kid and stuff like that if you want to go abroad and
work in china in a real classroom uh you still have to research because um of the kovid
restrictions uh they are probably still not hiring um
because it is impossible to enter the country um
so basically my advice about china would be to go to the chinese embassy
and check out for updates this is how it's done uh and another thing is um
what you have to check is if they um if they invite um
non-native esl teachers these days because some time ago um it was also a
challenge uh some teachers could work in china without that
american or english passport but then they restrict it
they limited uh num the number of countries who um whose citizens can work there
so it it is really subjective uh you have to check um the most updated information on their
embassy website all right um are there any further
questions to me guys let me know uh because we are 40 minutes live um and
that was the end of my live stream session not of the live stream session of my
presentation so probably you have anything else on your mind
if yes oh by the way let me uh invite you in my facebook group as well
so i have this uh facebook group and it's like um as a close teaching
community um so uh you can actually
um join in i will be really really pleased
if you become a part of this small teaching community and if you have any further questions
uh you will be able to ask them in the group there are many other teachers who
can be also helpful um all right and i see another question
about those old live streams uh let me send you a link to the
youtube folder i think it is easier to find that live stream on youtube
[Music] i will be really quick
okay just one second
so we store all of the live stream sessions uh in this folder
uh it is right here
how to how to share this link i'm not sure
okay there are actually 89 events that's because we go live every week twice
so i go live on tuesday usually and my um colleague
linda goes live uh every friday or thursday it depends
um so by the way if you are interested uh in
um another type of advice uh which is like
linda is more professional in terms of um teaching abroad
because she worked in china she worked in korea i
actually also worked in china but still my knowledge right now is a little bit
limited because i haven't researched the country and the
regulations uh after i left it and it was like three um no two years
ago yeah but almost three um in 2022 it will be
three years uh since i stopped working in china so linda is more professional i suppose
uh so if you have any uh questions related to teaching abroad check out uh
some of her previous um streams so here is this link uh to
um our folder on youtube uh in this folder you will find uh
all previous live stream sessions and there is actually one video one
interview done by me in april so um i would say that it is
once again slightly outdated but anyway um i gave a lot of tips not i but my friend
uh gay gave a lot of tips um related to teaching in china uh as a
non-native esl speaker um so you can check out that live stream
it is actually really popular and i also done another interview with
my friend who works on prepley so if you want uh to start working
online uh you can check out that live stream as well because my friend gave a lot of tips how
to create that profile how to find students on the marketplace and so on
uh so yeah just check out some of the previous streams and i hope uh if they also will
be useful and informative for you and i hope um the same can be said about
today's live stream uh for me it was a really nice talk guys thanks for your
activity thanks for asking questions um i think that is the end of today's
live stream session but if you have any further questions you can direct message
me or ask me on the group on the facebook group i will try my best
to assist you and also um i think that um i am going
to share several uh ways to gamify your classes uh in um in a blog post
on my facebook group so um join in and stay tuned thanks a lot
guys see you next week bye bye
