Andromeda Jones's Blog: The ESL teacher blog

As side hustles go, online tutoring must be one of the easiest. Working from home and to your schedule, four-to-five hours of tutoring a week provides a relatively easy income which can pay for a large purchase or help build savings. Having that extra income stream is also a safety net if you lose your job, or can help tide you over when things get tough. In addition, with online tutoring, your students go where you go, meaning you take your income stream with you when you move cities or even co...

It’s 5.45am and my morning alarm rings. Living in Scotland and this being November, I awake to a pitch-black sky and almost freezing temperatures. I groan, not quite silently, (unfortunately for my husband) and force myself out of bed. Today I am exam invigilator and my shift starts in just over an hour.

The monthly exam I invigilate is the Occupational English Test (OET); an English as a second language (ESL) exam for health professionals who wish to work in an English-speaking country. The ...

This summer I opened my home to two people I had never met before for a homestay language-tuition experience. Under this arrangement, I provided thirty hours of tuition over two weeks, plus a room, meals and some simple excursions. For my trouble I was paid £700 a week ($930 USD), plus add-ons. My question is: would do the same and, if not, why not?

For most of my colleagues, the idea of having a stranger to stay strikes horror, and it’s true – if you balk at the thought of hosting a dinner p...

Republished from TEFL Insider on Substack.

With the prospect of Alexa-style tutors on the horizon, online language training companies are looking to AI to bypass human teachers and maximise profits.

While removing the human element of teaching has obvious consequences for tutors, what are the costs to students? And if we are taught by bots in the future, what impact will it have on learning outcomes?

Well, as a language teacher I have my thoughts, but first up, let’s look at current dev...

It’s been a tough year for ESL tutors. Coronavirus has closed academies around the world, robbing ESL teachers of opportunities overseas opportunities. Meanwhile in China, the new ban on companies that profit from teaching school curriculum subjects, has decimated its enormous online young-learner ESL market overnight.

The second factor has arguably had the biggest impact for ESL tutors. At its height VIPKID (it claimed) had 100,000 teachers on its books. The likes of GoGo Kid, DaDa English, ...

What do I teach C1 English students? This is the question many TEFL teachers ask themselves. At a C1 level, the student already knows all of the grammar (although does not always reproduce it perfectly) and the standard words for most topics.

And yet, they still have gaps in their English knowledge. So, what to teach them? Well, first of all, let’s explore what a C1 student wants

An advancedEnglish student m...

What do I teach C1 English students? This is the question many TEFL teachers ask themselves. At a C1 level, the student already knows all of the grammar (although does not always reproduce it perfectly) and the standard words for most topics.

And yet, they still
have gaps in their English knowledge. So, what do you teach them? Well, first
of all, let’s explore what a C1 student wants

An advanced
English stude...

There is a lot of abuse in the online TEFL industry. Capitalising on the online education boom, new companies spring up, funded by venture capital money. When the investment dries up and the business cannot support itself, however, they can disappear overnight, leaving both tutors and students out of pocket.

Plenty of tutors have horror-stories like this.

Before joining the platform I work for, one of our tutors worked for a Chinese ESL company which suddenly stopped trading and ne...

There is a lot of abuse in the online TEFL industry. Capitalising on the online education boom, new companies spring up, funded by venture capital money. When the investment dries up and the business cannot support itself, however, they can disappear overnight, leaving both tutors and students out of pocket.

Plenty of tutors have horror-stories like this.

Before joining the platform I work for, one of our tutors worked for a Chinese ESL company which suddenly stopped trading and never ...

I’ve been teaching English online since 2014. I work for a decent company who pay me $25+ per hour to teach adults and most weeks I am almost completely booked out.

I feel tremendously lucky, but it took a long time to get here. The online teaching industry has exploded these past few years, hiring thousands of English teachers. However, for every good company there are many others who pay badly and take punitive action such as fines and instant firing if a tutor can’t make a class.

I’ve...