Teaching English/ESL Online?

December 14, 2010 7:53 AM

Teaching English Online? So I hear about people making okay money teaching English online through Skype or Google Chat, etc and taking payments through PayPal. Anyone have experience with this? I'm considering a transition to becoming an ESL teacher and wanted to know if this was a good way to get my feet wet or a waste of time.
posted by caveatz to education (2 answers total)

I'm a "in-person" ESL teacher, but while I've considered it, I haven't yet ventured into the world of Online teaching. I poked around on Dave's ESL Cafe a bit, and there doesn't seem to be the wealth of information that there is for other parts of the ESL business, but this thread has a list of online opportunities, and this discusses Online teaching in general.

If you have any specific questions you might want to post a question there... Dave's is easily the best resource for anything ESL
posted by hasna at 9:17 AM on December 14, 2010 [1 favorite]

I've done this before, but only with one student. At the time, I was living in a non-English-speaking country, and had placed an ad online for in-person lessons. I got a response from a student living in a very different part of the country who wanted to do conversation practice on Skype.

I'm not sure that it would be a good way to get a sense of what teaching ESL is like (if that's what you mean by "get your feet wet"). It tends to be one-on-one, and in my opinion lends itself more to conversation practice, so I think it's quite different even from a one-on-one real-life lesson. But as I said, I've only done it with one student (and that student was relatively advanced and specifically wanted conversation practice).

The technical side was not an issue at all--Skype and Paypal worked smoothly.
posted by equivocator at 3:46 PM on December 14, 2010