 Hello everybody. So, Lizard here and I'm super glad to welcome you to today's session. I'm excited that it didn't take long after the previous one. And by the way, if you didn't see the previous live session, I strongly recommend you to do that, because last week we discussed teaching in China. And I know that many people are interested in going abroad to teach and to discover new cultures. So if you want to know a little bit more about it, feel free to check out the previous live. And today we're actually going to talk about a slightly different approach to teaching, which is online teaching. It is also super valuable and today's session will take approximately 45 minutes. So we'll cover first, we'll cover some of the teaching modes in online teaching, because there are actually a couple of them. Then we will consider various online teaching resources, like where you can apply to start your teaching career. And finally, we will move on to the Q&A session. Okay, and right now let me just enlarge the screen. And before that, by the way, before I move on to the first slide, please let me know where are you guys from. I'm staying in Russia, in a beautiful city of Lukaterinburg. It's right in the middle of Russia, actually, quite close to Siberia. And it's finally getting really warm, so I feel happy every day because our winters are just really gloomy. And it's hard to stay cheerful, so this period is actually getting really awesome. So where are you guys from? Let me know in the comment section, because I can actually see everything you type in. And yeah, this way I'll know that somebody is there, not alone here, and we will have a lively chat. Okay, alright, so there is a person from Scotland. I'm not sure how to pronounce your name and I don't want to make a mistake. So nice to hear from Scotland. I actually have been to Scotland as a teenager many years ago, and that country is beautiful. I really love that part of the Great Britain. Yeah, alright, so here is Gondolin from Malaysia. He's actually an old comer. Yeah, thank you all for coming again and again. I really appreciate your effort, and I really appreciate your interest in this live session, because I really want to be helpful and give you as much value as possible. So I believe there are many people from different corners of the world, so yeah, let's just move on to the main part of today's session. Okay, alright, some people from Peru as well, not from Peru, from Delhi, India, that's glad to know. And I can see a user from Algeria, that's cool as well. Nice to see from your pages every time. And yeah, just let me quickly switch to this banner, because I want everybody to know the name of the session, because I'm just going to skip to another slide, and it won't be seen. But just as a reminder, every time we give this 30% discount, and it's a great opportunity to start your taffle course actually, if you're really interested in investing in your taffle career. So this incentive might be really helpful to you, so don't forget about this opportunity. And now let's see what's going on in the online teaching here. So as some of you probably know, online teaching is in great demand these days. And as I see this job market, there are two various ways to teach online. So the first one, you can see it on the left, yes, like this on the left. There are some online teaching companies you might work for. At the same time, there are some market places, actually a lot of them. So it's just really simple to dive into teaching and start as soon as possible, as soon as you finish your taffle course or maybe bachelors. So it is really convenient at the same time, because you don't need to go anywhere. You can just set up your home classroom and stay safe at home. Yeah, like that. And if we go to some examples of online teaching companies versus online teaching platforms, like market places, you would see that there are VIP kids, magic years, QKids. And these companies are like descendants of online teaching business, because they are well known and reliable. They have been present in this business for a long time. But they have some challenges. I should put it like this. And if we talk about online teaching market places, there are also some really famous platforms, for example, IPOC and Cambly. But again, they have some problems. It's not just as easy as it might seem to start working for these companies. And let me just dwell upon that and explain what's the problem. So if you, for example, a non-native English teacher, it would be difficult to get into an online teaching company, like VIP kids, because they still prefer to hire native speakers. However, for example, magic years, they have simpler requirements. They write something like we hire fluent speakers, fluent with speakers and native speakers, or non-native English speakers who are like at the C2 level. But still, it is again a little bit challenging, because they have this threshold and they have this requirement, you are supposed to meet. If we talk about ITOC and Cambly, for example, these platforms are more flexible, so they hire, they don't hire, they just provide you with a marketplace, with a placement, and you can just advertise your services there. However, if we take ITOC as an example, unfortunately, they have a few openings around the year for the English language. However, you can actually consider teaching some other languages. For example, if you are proficient in French, or I don't know, maybe some more sophisticated languages, which are not taught by any people, then it can be a really good place to start. However, for English teaching, it's a bit complicated. You have to constantly check their website and write up the open positions for English teachers to apply for it. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that at any time, because they still have just a few opportunities for both native speakers and non-native speakers. As for Cambly, for example, they have actually a different approach, and they offer this marketplace for various English teachers, and they even prefer people who are skilled and experienced in some other fields. For example, if you are a marketing manager or an entrepreneur, you can actually try to apply for Cambly and start working for them, because they offer a little bit different type of lessons, like lessons for business people and professionals from different fields. For Cambly, you would probably think of a special strategy to advertise yourself. But again, they have openings around the year, and it's not that difficult to get into it. But those were the most famous online platforms and online teaching companies. Here, on this slide, you can see some less famous ones, less popular ones. I believe they are really interesting, especially for those who start their careers. If you look at the online teaching companies, you can see top online teachers, Vibra English and Lingua TV, and you can also see that I stated the level of students they work for. As for top online teachers and Vibra English, they are focused on young learners. If you are specialized in teaching young learners, these two websites would probably be the most interesting for you. As for Lingua TV, I believe it's a website from Germany. They provide various types of English lessons from adult students to business English and exams. It's actually a great platform to provide your services, especially if you are focused on exam preparation, I believe. As for some online teaching marketplaces, you can see Pratly, Lingoda and Cafe Talk. I would draw your attention to the last one particularly. Cafe Talk is an interesting platform, quite flexible one, from Japan, I believe, but it actually covers these Asian countries like Japan, South Korea and South Asian countries. If you want to work with those students, with students from those countries, it's a great place to start because you can actually test your own price. By the way, when I found this platform the first time, I referred it to my colleague, Linda, and you can actually see her comments in the comments section right now. She started teaching there and she says it's really awesome. If you want to try online teaching, Cafe Talk might be the first place to refer to it, especially if you consider going to Asia, probably in some coming years, in your future. I think this is the greatest way to get to know students from Asian countries, their needs, and maybe some challenges they face. I think it's extremely important for teachers who think of going to teach in a real classroom. As for the next point, I found the requirement for all of these platforms. I mentioned I didn't add the requirement for italki or Cambly because they still don't have those openings. You can actually see that as for Zidra teaching, you have to be fluent in English or no English at an idiomatic level, which means it's important to be C2 level or maybe C1, but still show that your English skills are at the highest level. At the same time, they require you to have a bachelor's degree or above. If you think of teaching for this company, you are supposed to have a university degree authority. They also have a really specific requirement like you must be allowed to work in the US or Canada. This option might be more or less interesting for teachers who hold those countries' passwords. Of course, TEFL and PSOL are extremely important if you want work for this provider. However, if you look at the last one mentioned, talk online teachers, they have less requirements. It just varies. If you want to work for a specific company, you can always go to their website and check the requirements they list for English teachers. Still, it's always quite flexible. Sometimes even if they state that they hire native speakers only or, for example, bachelor's degree holders, I think you still can try to contact them and try to ask if you could work it out, if you could be more or less flexible. Let's see the requirements for marketplaces. Here are not that many of them. For teaching on preply, you should be at least fluent in English. TEFL or PSOL would be better. You can simply consider preply if you want to find direct students and work with them without any companies, especially if you are able to create your own lesson plans and materials. This service is just extremely convenient. Lin Goda would ask you to pull your C2 level but still, I also believe that it's flexible as well. As for cafe talk, there are no specific requirements but there is a huge competition. You might probably want to show that you are professional and you have credentials. Let's see the next point. Speaking of grades, it's actually quite normal that companies set some specific fees. They set some specific grades for English teachers. I would say that the numbers which you see here are quite common to ZBrush English, VAT kids, so it's like a gold standard. The other platforms would provide you with some alternatives. For example, on Lingua TV, you would probably get your results like you will get your rates after the interview. Again, it's quite valuable if you are professional and you can prove that you worth it. Let's see the numbers for online marketplaces. There are actually none of them but before setting your price, setting your rate, you should make a research and see how much other teachers charge there. I would say it's almost the same as for example, the VAT kids or ZBrush English. Usually teachers set the price at $16-$18 or something. I want you to know that all platforms take their cut. They have these service fees and sometimes they are pretty high. One of my friends who has been teaching on Preply says that at the very beginning, those service fees on Preply are like about 40% or something. But they decrease as long as you stay with the company and as long as you get more students. Of course, if you find the students in a market place, there is an option to add them to work directly. But again, this online platform also guarantees you with some safety and working through them you will definitely know that you will get paid. Otherwise, sometimes there might be a situation when students don't pay you and you're like, what's wrong? Okay. That is all for the main part. I'm going to look at the comment section right now because I can see there are some questions. If you guys still have questions or concerns on online teaching, please feel free to ask me in the comments right now. I'll try to be helpful and address every response. The first question is does it require a degree as teaching experience? As I have already mentioned, some companies don't have those two points as their requirements. So it is always important to check a particular company and see if you need their standards, their requirements. Yeah. But for example, in case of capital, there are more requirements. Okay. So there is a question on teaching online versus teaching in a real classroom. I believe that online teaching will be in demand many years after the COVID. I think that it's just an alternative mode to the get even more interested in taking online classes because this way they can be really flexible. For example, I have a student from Moscow and I say in Dekaterinburg. So we have this huge distance but we still can touch and practice what else. So this might be one of the reasons. At the same time, online teaching provides students with some great options. Sometimes it's pricey to go to a real classroom to taking classes online, especially with one. Well, let's see. If you, for example, want to try teaching online, if you are not sure that it's your cup of tea, you can definitely start teaching online and then see if it's something you really want to do for living as a student. So I still believe that online teaching works this, but for example, when I had this interview with my friend who's teaching in China, he mentioned that he doesn't like online teaching. He had to teach online during the quarantine time in China especially because of the student stage. He had to deliver online lessons to children as young as three years. It's really complicated, right? So for online teaching you probably look at students who are older or have like longer attention span. That's it. If you talk about a real classroom, the situation is quite similar. However, for example, teaching in China is different from this perspective because your lessons are usually suggested by someone and teachers help you to organize kids even if you're Chinese. But it really depends. Okay, what's next? Okay, so as for recruitment agencies in specific countries I'd recommend you going to tafflecourt.net website. There we have a section devoted to jobs and we keep it updated and post jobs country-wise like you can choose the country you're interested to work in and check if there are any openings. Okay, let me just quickly copy and paste the link to our job section but check it out right now. So follow this link on the chat box. I have just sent to you and you will be able to see if there are any options for Cambodia. And by the way, thank you for the questions. There are not many questions from YouTube usually so I'm really impressed that this platform works. Okay, all right. So if you apply for jobs on some specific services for example like the VAP Kids one they take some time to review all the applications they receive and then they respond. I actually tried to apply for VAP Kids some time ago and I received the rejection like after a couple of months. So I believe it's something normal happening in this business world but still if you are interested in the job offer you probably want to send it once again but make sure you apply not only with your resume include your cover letter as well because this is the way recruiters consider the application reliable. Okay. What's the biggest challenge in online teaching? I say that it's quite challenging to work with groups online. So this is something I have just started trying I'm not that experienced in teaching groups even in a real classroom but in online teaching mode it's extremely different. So working with groups for me but still it depends on you as a teacher maybe you are skilled in teaching large groups and it will be a piece of cake for you. The next challenge is sometimes equipment doesn't work the way you want it to work so you have to think of it ahead make sure that your internet connection is stable that all the applications that you are going to use won't work when you start using them and stuff like that. Apart from these two points I don't see any other issues maybe one of the minor challenges would be that sometimes if you want to work with students from other countries it might be challenging to charge them for your work if you don't work through machine platforms if you work with them directly but there are still ways to overcome this challenge ok so this is a great question thanks for that how to be a professional teacher online practice it and also invest in your education I know that people believe that being fluent in English or just knowing English at the advanced level or something is enough but it's not true you have to be proficient in your teaching approach in your relationship building methodologies and stuff like that and it's vital to invest some money into your teaching qualifications so as I have mentioned many times already it's a great choice to start with TEFL that was something I did many years ago so I was just a graduate at my university and then I just realized that I was trained in translating from English to Russian or from Russian to English but translating was not that career I wanted to keep up so I decided that teaching would suit me best however I didn't know how to teach because I wasn't trained to do that so I started my research and came up with taking this TEFL course and it was really helpful because I just could start my teaching to various groups to them both both privately and in a classroom so yeah it is really important to invest in your teaching qualification and then if you are a non-native speaker it's also important to increase the level of your English and as for me it is one of the most challenging things because English is not stable and you have to keep updated constantly and yeah it's just super challenging even if you're at the highest level as an English learner okay so if you are a TEFL and people certified and you have this master's degree and experience the next step would be create a perfect resume write down a cover letter and start sending your application to different companies so as I mentioned you can either start teaching for a company or find a place on an online teaching platform but this is almost the same so you have to pack yourself you have to create your profile to show everybody online who you are and like what are you professional in and then just start constantly looking for students at the same time do not over underestimate the power of social networks it's a great idea to write something like I teach English as I have this experience so if you want to have lessons direct message me and post it on youtube not probably on youtube but on facebook or instagram this is the way it also works and word of mouth works as well this is the way I found one of my students I just mentioned to her mother that I am an English teacher when we worked out in the gym together and she was like oh my god I need a teacher for my daughter and that was the way I started teaching her online it's a great way to find clients as well that's not true actually as far as I know South Africans are considered to be native speakers on the first place and it's much easier for native English speakers to find jobs especially if you are professional in teaching if you have all those qualifications it shouldn't be an obstacle so I still think that in online teaching there are no boundaries for people from various countries from different countries and even if you are a non-native speaker you still have this opportunity to teach online just 100% depends on you be proactive and work as much as it is possible and go towards this goal okay alright this question is awesome so yes online platform provides teachers with lesson plans and materials however if you take for example Cafe Talk they don't have I believe they don't have any materials it's on you you have to get repaired and do it yourself but for example on Pratly they have special courses designed so you as a private tutor as a private teacher you can choose one of their courses and just follow it or there is also an option to create your own materials and work with everything so it's actually up to you as well okay how do you bring learners to order in case a learner is obstructed without an assistant that's a really funny question because I no longer teach in a real classroom I teach English online and privately mostly I have already got my first group but the students in that group are adults so I don't have this challenge however when I was when I taught in China and when I worked with those young learners and there were like 30 of them it was just impossible so they on the first place they don't speak the same language as you do so they completely ignore your direction but what is important is to build some connections at the very beginning it is especially helpful with like classrooms from 15 to 30 students if you get your friends around them among them it will be easier to manage them that was the only thing helped me when I taught them in that real classroom but apart from that that was really really frustrating especially when they got going and when they got naughty it was really really difficult it also was because it also happened because I worked with them I was just like 22 or something 21 and I didn't know how to communicate with children so I had some some favorite students who listened to me who paid attention but I couldn't make it up with the majority of them so I believe personal experience is also important so if you have a chance to communicate with different children it is really important to get to know them to build this trust and relationship and this is probably the only way to order them and to be seen as a like a person because otherwise they just ignore you okay it's even something sad to remember because I failed at that time okay the best game for online teaching guys I believe this question could be addressed in a different live stream because there are many ways to play with children online and in class I would only mention that some tools the first one is called Wordwall it's a tool to design online games and they actually have a library a library that is filled by work that other teachers create so you can definitely use Wordwall and other apps is called learning apps yeah I think so so these two tools I've been using to create games and interact with children and with adults as well and sometimes I also design just games from Cratch and I use Nero you can actually see some of my previous online sessions because I covered the points of game design it's probably a couple of weeks ago so check those out there are some videos related to game design for online teaching okay so as for online teaching equipment and tools I use just two of them at the regular basis some other tools are used every now and then but as for my lessons delivery I work via Zoom there is an alternative which is Skype good old Skype it's completely up to you and the other tool I've been using is Nero online collaboration it's super convenient if you want your students if you want your online students to get involved in your lessons because this is the way you share all the materials this is the way you can engage them into some activities like writing or painting something so it's super convenient I really love it and I also had a live stream devoted to Nero so check that one out as well so is the ESA method practical? of course it is so basically every time I create my lesson I consider some engagement at the beginning then the interface and activities as the last point this is not the only framework this is not the only approach to organize your lessons so you can actually choose any other methods which you like but yeah generally speaking, engage study, activate is the best approach especially for online teaching because it's super easy and it helps you to structure your lesson and make sure students follow every step and you understand their challenges and any problems they might have so my personal point of view the ESA method is really effective but there are so many teachers who prefer to use some other approaches for example there are few people who implement grammar translation approach grammar translation methods sometimes I also use this but as part of my ESA strategy okay alright guys so I can see that there are no other questions so let me just move on to the next slide so this is what I wanted to mention earlier but I just guess that it was not the right time so this is my friendly invitation to the Facebook group I created for English teachers and those who are interested in English learning because we all are non-native speakers maybe there are some native speakers on my session but usually there are non-native ones so just feel free to keep in touch with me if you are interested in this tackle topic and English learning you can scan this QR code or you can also follow this link I'm gonna send you alright so this is the group to keep in touch and be on the same page so if you want to communicate with me in this real time mode feel free to contact me feel free to add me I'll be glad to talk to you and maybe if you have any questions related to tackle or English learning as well so we can talk on Facebook we can chat with you so I feel like there are no further questions but still if you have any if you have any concerns or maybe you want to give me your feedback feel free to write everything down on the comment box right now I'm gonna stay with you for a couple of more minutes and yeah I really appreciate you guys coming to my session thanks a lot I hope that you find them helpful and that the information I try to share with you is useful and valuable so yeah thank you so much Philip thank you so much I'm usually really nervous especially when I have to share my personal experience and some tips mostly because of my speaking skills I still have to practice a lot of speaking and yeah this is something really challenging for me to communicate with such a great audience but I can feel that there are so many people who can relate to it and who support it and who might give me like kind response alright thank you guys thanks for thanks for joining my group yeah for those who want to yeah to join feel free to send your code or follow the link I just sent to the chat box alright so I think this is the time to wrap up to finish the session it was quite productive and I really really appreciate that you guys come and you spend some time with me hope to see you soon again so just let me remind you that my session takes place every Tuesday last week was a little bit different because I had to interview my friend from who is teaching in China and he didn't have any other time but still check that live stream out really valuable if you want to teach abroad if you want to go to China so make sure you watch that recording it's really valuable alright guys so that is all for today thanks for coming thanks for joining and see you next week bye bye