Teach English via Skype
The future of teaching English is here
Why teach English via Skype ?
Why not ?
As opposed to 10 years ago, Skype and the internet connections that exist today are perfect for teaching English using Skype.
Today you can talk to anyone anywhere in the world with great sound quality, and that is all you and the student need.
The obvious advantage is that you can teach students from all over the world, whom you would never be able to teach without the Skype technology.
The other advantage is that you do not need to travel anywhere like to a language school to teach English, and neither do the students.
Last but not least, you can teach at almost any time of the day and night, because your students will be in different time zones.
And you will also be amazed to find out, that you will even end up teaching your local students, those who live even in the same town as you, via Skype for the same reasons.
Why travel 3 miles in the evening, search for parking space etc, when both the student and you can do it from home.
And teaching English via Skype is EXACTLY the same as teaching directly person to person, because the student doesn't need to see you or be in the same room as you.
Oh, and did we mention that speaking to someone for 45 or 60 minutes from another part of the world using Skype doesn't cost anything ?
Teach using a webcam ? You gotta be kidding !
We have to laugh when we see people advertising their language teaching services and use the 'webcam' as their main selling point.
And from time to time, when we get students who want to use the webcam, we just tell them to forget it.
85% percent of your potential Skype students today will have a wifi internet connection in their homes, or some will even use their mobile phones to connect with you via Skype.
And you may probably be using similar technology.
Basically, not everyone has broadband, and a webcam is your worst enemy as far as using up the precious bandwidth speed when connecting to someone using Skype.
A webcam can drastically slow down everything, distort the sound quality and quite often even interrupt the connection.
Besides the speed and sound quality issues, your English language students DO NOT LEARN English by looking at your nice face. Students learn a language by listening, repeating and reading. And the webcam can also be a complete distraction to both teacher and student.
Use a webcam by all means when you first 'meet' the student for the first chat or even for part of the first ever lesson you give them, but then just turn it off / unplug it.
Skype sound quality when teaching English
Now this is important, and if you the teacher, or the student, or both have bad sound quality then the lessons are going to be unpleasant.
You must be able to hear the student pronounce and speak English clearly, so as to be able to correct her pronunciation, and vice versa, the student must be able to hear your teaching clearly.
Otherwise one or both will find it frustrating, and from our own experience, bad sound quality especially from the teacher's side is one of the main reasons why students either cancel or stop their Skype lesson.
And don't forget, you don't only have to be able to talk to the student, but also have to play the course books audio files to the student and be able to hear them yourself, and this is one of the most important things we will show you how to achieve in our course.... How to get the best sound quality via Skype, from both your computer set-up, your microphone and your speakers.
And once you have this important know-how, you in turn can then help your students to also get the best Skype audio set-up.