#italki

Teaching on italki is very rewarding in my experience. That's not to say it's a breeze all the time, but I have more good experiences than bad for sure. There's a huge market for teaching children English on italki too, so if that's your specialisation then you should be able to get plenty of classes (note that Chinese parents are unable to book classes listed as kids classes bc it's illegal in China to seek online tutors for children under 12, but that doesn't stop them by any means lol).

When I first started I struggled a lot because I had no experience, no idea how to plan lessons and no bank to pull on. Nowadays it's less time-consuming because I already have a lot of my own materials, so I can reuse them or tweak them slightly and I don't make as many things from scratch. But I'm always updating my material as I learn what works and trying to improve my lessons, so it's still time-consuming (but a lot of that's due to my poor time management skills rather than it actually taking that long to put together a lesson plan). It depends on what kind of teacher you are though; many teachers just focus on conversation practice and don't have many (or any) materials at all.

I'd say my biggest challenge though was not knowing how to pitch my lessons at the right level. I ended up subscribing to Linguahouse to get worksheets (which I normally use as starting points for creating my own lesson plans rather than using the worksheets themselves) so that I had more of an idea of what I was doing. Engoo is also a good website for finding news articles suitable for B1-B2 level students (they claim to be up to proficient level, but honestly I think even their level 10 articles are C1 at best). Again, I mostly use it for reference or if I have lots of lessons to plan and I need something quick (because using free resources that students can look up themselves feels a bit cheeky to me).

Some general tips:

1) You'll want to set your prices low to start with. It doesn't matter how much experience you have offline; when people are browsing profiles, they'll see only see the number of lessons you've taught on the platform. You can increase them quite quickly, but remember that number of lessons really counts when people are making a decision choosing a tutor.

2) Because your prices are low, you're going to get some shitty students at first. By that, I mean you get students who aren't prepared to do the work but expect to become fluent in 2 weeks because they're ~PaYiNg FoR a TuToR~. They never last long. Just give them the best lesson you can, be as encouraging and enthusiastic (but also realistic) as possible and wait for them to drop off.

3) Be prepared to be a little flexible with your schedule to start with. I said I wasn't going to work after 4pm or before 6:30am and Tuesday would be my day off. I then ended up teaching 6am-9pm on Tuesdays. After a while, I concluded that teaching before 7am just wasn't for me, and it certainly wasn't something I wanted to do regularly, so I took those slots off my calendar. I also found Wednesdays weren't a popular day, so I made that my day off and now I stick to it. If I'd stuck to my original plan, I wouldn't have a lot of my current students. (This is the problem with working for yourself: on paper you get to set your own hours, but in practice you have to work whatever hours gets your the most customers).

4) Plan breaks in your calendar. You need food and bathroom trips, as well as time to recharge your brain! Some people leave their calendar completely open and then remove slots as they get booked up (e.g. if they're teaching 1-3:30pm and then 4-6pm, they might remove 3-3:30 from their calendar to make sure they get a break in that time). I prefer to have them already pre-planned so I don't have to update my schedule every day. Either way, don't let yourself wind up teaching for 6 hours on the trot.

5) Do not assume that the language level on their profile corresponds to their actual level! Some people list themselves as A1 despite being C1/C2, and some people list themselves as native speakers despite being barely A2. If they say they're B1/B2 then that's more accurate, but it still doesn't help much because those levels are so broad. I always send them a message asking about their goals/current level (sometimes their response is less than helpful, but usually you'll get some idea of what they want.)

6) Use the trial lesson to assess their level, but make sure it's not just a needs assessment. I watched a bunch of "how to run a trial lesson" videos on Youtube, and lots of them were just like "interrogate your student about their English level and studies" and while that's all important and good information, your students are much more likely to rebook if you give them a demonstration of what your lessons are like. I usually plan a trial lesson based on what the student's goals etc are. If they don't respond to my message or don't give me enough information, my trial lesson looks like this:

Start with general pleasantries/introductions and a little small talk (how are you? How is your week? What's the weather like?)

I then ask them why they want to improve their English, a bit about how they study at the moment (do they read books? Watch TV shows?) and what do they find most difficult/want to improve most. I also ask how they prefer to be corrected (should I interrupt them or wait until the end of class?)

I tell them I want to assess their level so I know what our starting point is. I then bring up a PDF with 4 pictures related to either the city (if I think they're low B1 or lower) or sleep (if I think they're high B1+) and ask them to describe their pictures. I might prompt them to say more (what season do you think it is? What time of day is it? Why do you think that? Where are those people going? What are they wearing?) I always try to suggest one or two words they could use so that they feel like they learned something.

The next slide is agree/disagree statements (e.g. it's better to live in the country than the city), and we discuss the statement and what we think. (I'm actually going to update this so it's more like advantages/disadvantages questions because I've noticed that some people don't like discussing their opinions. It's a big part of the IELTS test though, which is kinda what I based it on to start with).

Then I ask them if they have any questions/what else they would like to do in classes. I leave at least 5 minutes for this part.

If I have time left over, I ask them what they'll do later/for the rest of the week and just make a little small talk about that.

7) Keep a document with details about your students. Because you will forget shit (especially if you have students with the same name/other similar details), and it doesn't look very good if you forget for the third lesson in a row what they do for a living or where they live. It also helps you keep track of what you've studied and what resources you've used with each student so that you don't end up redoing exercises you've already done.

8) Google docs are great! Start one for each student and use it to keep track of new vocabulary, corrections and homework (if you choose to set it - not everyone wants it, and it's extra work for you to do too. I only set it if people ask for it).

9) People might offer to pay you outside of italki. This would mean more money because italki isn't then taking a 15% commission, but it's against italki's policy and I never do for fear of being caught (eg if I have a dispute with a student who's started paying me outside of italki, they could report me to italki and I'd get banned from the platform). Of course, you can do what you like! But if you get asked and would prefer not to take the risk, here's what I say:

"Thanks for the offer, but I prefer you booking the lessons through italki. It helps me keep track of all my lessons. Also, I hope to work in a school someday, and it will help a lot if I have a high number of lessons taught on my italki profile. I'm very happy that you offered though!"

10) Check out other people's videos on youtube about how they run their classes and what tips they have. Not all of them will apply to you - you have to figure out your own style! - but it's good to have some ideas. I really like English Teacher Ryan's videos.

11) Don't bullshit if you don't know something. Just say you're not sure, but you'll look it up and get back to them. Chances are your students will find grammar loopholes and complications you never knew English had and will come to you asking why this person used the past simple when according to your last lesson it should have been a present perfect etc.

12) If you're teaching grammar, revise it before the lesson. And revise it from lots of different resources too, because different resources will say different things, and you want to know that grammar inside out.