5 Major Challenges Of Teaching English Online (Tips To Handle Them)
Needless to say, teaching English online offers the opportunity to live anywhere you want, travel and earn money at the same time. Many people feel it like the perfect digital nomad gig. As the world is becoming a global village, teaching learners online offers positive as well as negative consequences.
Online language learning isn’t right for everyone! Therefore, as a certified TEFL educator, it is important to be aware of several challenges and ways to battle them to ensure that the students have the highest chance of online learning.
Major Challenges Of Teaching English Online & How To Face Them?
Here are some of the major challenges of teaching English online along with various ways to handle them ---
- Children Can Be Distracted
Discipline is tough even in person and while teaching English online, your students can be super distracted. With so many things coming at us continuously and struggling for attention, it’s difficult to not become just another contextual video. You will see that at least one Facebook tab or any other tab is open. Once your students find a loophole in the system, they will be all over it. It is not uncommon for kids to become bored, easily side-tracked, or not be interested in the lesson in the first place.
Try to make your lessons more and more engaging. Or even better — talk to the student’s mother. You can chat with her simple and the student will be on his best behaviour from then on. Hone up your online teaching skills.
- Random Classes
Unfortunately, there are some companies that assign teachers to classes randomly. This also means that there is no certain way to know the true level of your student’s English skills. Therefore, engaging the phase of the lesson is very significant.
You must decide how well the students will be able to complete the tasks in that lesson either before the lesson starts or during some allotted time. That’s why before joining any company or institute, make sure you do your own research, read the contract very well and know your recruiter well.
(Credit - oberlo.com) - Low Pay
Sometimes companies don’t pay on time and sometimes, it is underpaid. Making it hard to earn enough to be able to have a good life. There are schools that pay very little. It is common even in non-online English teacher jobs. Moreover, online English teachers don’t have the option to go scream without effect at accountants.
The best solution is to give private lessons. You can charge per hour, depending on your experience as well as skills. Nevertheless, to be able to earn enough money you need to get enough clients per month and that needs a lot of work.
- Time Consuming
Online teaching is both time-saving and time-consuming. It takes more time as students need self-discipline and are not able to implement time management appropriately. Also, too many interruptions, multitasking, and lack of a selected study area can lead to poor setting up.
Therefore, it is necessary to brush up on your online teaching skills and techniques. Time management skills are needed along with online classroom management practices.
- Technical Glitches
Even if it’s not your responsibility, missed lessons typically mean no payment and lower student satisfaction rates. Tech issues can occur at any time. The worst thing about sudden internet loss, microphone failures, video camera blackouts, etc. makes teaching English online tough work to do. And the sad part is you can’t do anything about it!
This is why triple-checking all equipment before each class and finding a stable place with dependable internet is so important to overcoming teaching English online challenges.
The Bottom Line
In spite of the above-mentioned shortcomings, there are plenty of reasons that teaching English online is the current trend. It is attractive to learners of all ages as people do have busy schedules. These problems can be mitigated significantly if you know how to deal with them. 280 hours International Advanced Diploma in TEFL program prepares teachers to manage an online classroom successfully. Happy learning!
