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When teaching English online, it would be a wasted opportunity not to put to use the technologies at hand to enhance your students’ learning experience. Here are some of the advantages that technology can bring to the classroom, and some tips on how to harness the power of tech.
Teaching English online – illustrative photo. Image credit: LinkedIn Sales Solutions via Unsplash, free license
Table of Contents
Getting qualified
One of the most obvious benefits of how technology enhances the learning experience is that prospective English teachers can train online from anywhere in the world. Had location been an obstacle, students may have missed out by not having the online teachers that teach them today.
Moreover, alongside the industry-standard 120-hour TEFL course, teachers can benefit massively from online supplementary courses, including those on how to teach English online. By getting the opportunity to finesse their teaching style via this additional training, they can guarantee that they’ll deliver their students the best possible online lessons.
Beyond getting qualified, landing your first job as an online English teacher often depends on having experience. Through online resources that provide more information on the various locations you could head to, you can find out about the best English teaching programs, such as Jet, for new teachers. If this is something you could be interested in, here are a couple of suggestions to get you started.
Easier communication
Utilising something as simple as an email to send lesson material and homework is a great way to both stay on top of your workload as a teacher and stay in touch with your students. A quick search of your email will confirm whether or not you sent something to students too, which is one way to nip the excuses for not having done homework in the bud.
In addition to this, instead of downloading document after document onto your computer for marking, you can set up folders on your email. These will allow you to keep track of the pending marking to be done and also prevent emailed homework from getting lost in your inbox.
When it comes to communicating on platforms used for online teaching, such as Zoom, private message functions will allow more reserved students to contact you without needing to speak up in front of the entire class. By being able to avoid potential embarrassment, you’ll be able to check in with students discreetly to make sure that no one falls behind.
Accessibility
Much in the same way that you won’t be limited to teaching clients in your local area as an online English teacher, online English lessons make the language accessible to students from all across the globe. This enhances their learning in a few ways.
The possibility to learn English may not be a given for students across the world, be it because of a lack of locally available lessons, extremely large school classes or disabilities. Online lessons thus offer a solution that might not have otherwise been available. This idea of technology creating access to education is not new and is something that the world felt acutely during the pandemic, as elaborated by technology.org.
Granting that access to the language through online lessons can also cause a ripple effect beyond the classroom. Having the internet at the touch of a button means that by teaching your students how to use the English language, you are giving them access to a plethora of online content they may not have otherwise discovered.
Student-led learning
Through the use of technology, as a teacher, you can choose to take a flipped learning approach. This will give students more responsibility when it comes to their learning and reinvent the classroom as a space in which they can discover and play with the language.
This practice is dependent on your students’ participation and willingness to study outside of class, and won’t always work with every topic you’d like to cover. It will also require some research on your part when it comes to sourcing appropriate material for your students to engage with before attending the lesson.
Nonetheless, the strengths of this approach are that you’ll be able to focus on spoken production and correction during class time as well as get the chance to dedicate more of your time to supporting weaker students.
Creativity
Technology is an opportunity to keep your students engaged by keeping things fresh, as opposed to working your way through a book. While there may be a syllabus that you need to follow, there’s no reason why you can’t shake things up a bit by including some more interesting material such as videos or even games to help students revise vocabulary or grammar.
For older students, you could also let them take the reins when it comes to their learning and set creative group tasks or homework that involve creating presentations using tools like Google Slides or Sheets. In a world where the use of AI is on the rise, you could encourage your students to utilise it to create some of the material.
Tracking progress
How students are assessed and feedback is given has been made easier than ever through technology. Templates for attendance, tests, and progress reports are readily available online on sites such as Canva which can be edited and then recycled for future classes.
Gone are the days of rifling through stacks of paper. Digital records like these can be shared in a matter of seconds via email, making a teacher’s life that little bit easier, especially should they need to handover to another teacher.
You could even go a step further and create a shared Google Drive folder with all your class reports and assessments. By giving the parents of your students access to it, technology can do the heavy lifting and you’ll also save yourself the time you would have spent sending out individual progress report emails.
Overall, the best way to set your students up for success when utilising technology is to lead by example. Technology enhances the learning experience by being beneficial to both the online English teacher and their students, but they can only learn to use it as a tool if it is presented that way during their lessons.
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