 Hey guys, it's Lisa here and it's been about two weeks since the previous live stream session So I am super happy to be back here And I hope that today's live stream will be helpful and you will find something insightful in my tips and tricks So today we will discuss five useful things you could apply to your online teaching classes in 2022 so This new year is coming and it is really important to make sure you can enhance your English classes somehow and I am here to share several tips that you can actually utilize so Stay tuned and we will discuss all of them right here on the screen. You can actually see the topic of today's session But if you have any further questions related to the point Feel free to use the comments section and at the same time If you want to ask me anything related to temple or T. So I feel free to do so during the session as well so let me change my screen a little bit and Let's start Okay, so basically every time I start with my Short introduction. My name is Lisa if you don't know me yet Yeah, hey everyone. Thanks for joining in Yeah, just send me a couple of question a couple of words about yourself in the comments section because it is always more pleasant to Deliver this live stream sessions to the audience who is active and Can communicate with me? Because it is more motivating for me as a speaker, you know So I am an ESL teacher and a tough on T. So expert at I TT T I am located in Yekaterinburg, Russia. So it means that I am a non-native ESL speaker So I've been teaching for many years already and For the past three almost three years. I've been working online completely So I find it easier and more convenient and that is why I go live And talk about online lessons a little bit more Compared to some other topics So I hope that today's live stream will be insightful for you because I will actually share several trends and something which is Surely have to be implied by ESL teachers who are like, you know modern teachers so stay tuned stay here with me and Yeah, don't be shy to introduce yourself in the comments section So where are you from? How long have you been teaching it's really interesting to learn Especially if you are new to this live stream sessions Because most of the time, you know, we have like old Visitors those who participate regularly, but if you haven't seen this live stream sessions before Just go ahead and introduce yourself If you are not new to this live stream sessions, just feel free to say your greetings to me I'm always happy to see familiar faces. You know, I know all of those avatars so I can recognize you guys All right, so I think it's the time to start the main point of today's presentation and Let's dive into right right into the topic So the most important point I believe every teacher has to apply to their online lessons and maybe maybe not just to online lessons, but to Offline classes as well. It is gamification So basically this Idea isn't new But I can surely see that not many teachers use it not many teachers try to apply this idea to their online classes and Here are several reasons why you should try it So basically a gamification helps to engage students with content better it allows them to get more motivated and engaged during the Lesson and during the course as well if you have like a Sequence of classes which are somehow Connected with each other and it is usually like that So basically If you try gamification it makes your Teaching and students learning fun fun and interactive Another factor which is also really meaningful to us English teachers is that Gamification helps to create this addiction to learning and we surely want our students to come back regularly and to be Inspired to study with us So if you apply this trick in your online teaching classes It will surely boost your Boost your progress boost your students progress and they will stay with you much longer It works actually not just with younger students, but with adults as well so if you work with Students who are like over 18 years. It is also all right to use some games some activities that are Interactive and seem to be fun and maybe even funny because Some laughter helps a lot Another points of gamification is that there are some special motivators, you know, so you have to think about Helping your students to achieve something so maybe if you create some milestones or create some Achievements or like rankings. It would also help your students to get more involved It works with groups. It works with individual students and this is like a Number one trend in ESL teaching online So make sure you try it if you want Some more information about gamification You can actually Google it. There are a lot of useful tips on the internet But I can also share different resources That might be helpful If you want to make your lessons more engaging and interactive I will let you know how I'm going to share these tips a little bit later at the end of the session But I will definitely share a little bit more Content with you on this topic. So stay tuned All right, let me quickly check the screen Not not the screen the chat box. So there is Rare watching from Japan. Thanks a lot for coming to this live stream session and by the way guys Feel free to introduce yourself. We are a nice community here of motivated English teachers and I hope that This live stream session isn't just this one-sided Presentation, but it's also like a networking thing where we can get to know each other better and I don't know maybe make some meaningful connections as professionals So feel free to write something about yourself. Maybe how long you you are working as a teacher so Yeah, just something and I'm going I'm moving on to the next point Which is the second trick in my opinion that is also extremely important In online teaching, it is individual Individualization so you want to make sure as a teacher that you deliver classes in that are pretty individual that are pretty straightforward for your English students Even if you work with groups, you still want to craft your lessons and your course to some specific needs and what you have to count is that is your students personality students needs and You also have to include meaningful content based on these two First points So as an example, I Work with a group of Students, it's a small group of three people. They all are teenagers of 12 to 14 years so two of them are like 12 13 and Another girl is almost 14. So we have this nice small group and we are studying we are preparing for a Cambridge exam, which is called key so it's like an a to exam in this sequence of exams and What is challenging for me as a teacher there is that? those students they have something in common in common, but on the other hand They are completely different and when I work with this group I always try to come up with some strategies when I involve all of them How to do that? It is to provide this individualized content for them even if they are different they still have something to share and That's how I Approach this group Before each class we have like before the main part of the class. We have several minutes of a warm-up when we discuss some Topics that are related to all of them and at the same time we play some games that are based on their common interests but sometimes I Help them to come up with their own Ideas that are not that familiar to the rest of the group and this is how we interact with each other and how we Facilitate all of their different personalities So it is not that Challenging basically, but you have to spend some time Getting to know your students even if there are even more than three like if you work with a huge group You still have to learn a little bit about each of your participants How how you can do so you can offer them some questionaries Some individualized Tasks where you can see how they Work what are their styles? What are their interests and so on? and after that you of course have to Analyze this content and understand what are their personal needs And then you have to like somehow include it into the course it is always pretty Specific for each group it is much easier if you work with one-on-one students But basically individualization it is something we have to count It is something we have to focus on when we Even if we don't work with students yet even if we like start promoting our services and If you look If you research the market you would see that there are actually a lot of offers That are crafted specifically for individual peculiarities It is a common trend this day, but it is more common to online schools that have you know more resources to Provide something like that we freelancing teachers also have to try it and It will definitely work for us in terms of income in terms of Popularity of our services. So if you want to make sure that you have this stream of students coming to Ask you for services you need to provide something individual so basically Just to read to review the ideas that we have already discussed The number one thing to try then in 2022 is gamification the next thing is individualization these two ideas are Very trendy and if you don't apply them right now You won't probably make it next year And you will probably fall behind and some other teachers or online schools will You know, they will just Take the stage and you won't make sure that you have enough students So you have to be up-to-date in this perspective The next idea Which is also pretty interesting and at the same time quite obvious Charting your course. So what it means you have to Provide a better understanding what you are going to do with your student Like a quick example There are a lot of English teachers on sites like italki or Tripoli who offer their services, but never specify What is the path? It's a mistake. It's a huge mistake because students If they are interested in studying Sometimes they still don't know why they need it and you as a teacher are there to explain them that There is this specific clear goal you will have these specific milestones or like benchmarks and They will do it with this amount of comfort. It will be done in this way not in that way So it will be for example interactive. You will work on the course with different Materials with different games and so on but not with this Black and white book So this is how it should be organized when you offer this service on this cold audience when you when you actually You know promote your services on Teaching marketplace for example Because this way your potential clients will see Some of the benefits why they should work with you And to demonstrate it. Let's have a look at these two examples. So for example One teacher whose name is Mary offers just English one-on-one She doesn't specify anything. Maybe she says something like well apart from English one-on-one we can also prepare for IELTS for Cambridge exams you will be able to work abroad and stuff But nothing specific on the contrary teacher Alice offers a 12 lesson online course about IELTS after which You or students will get seven plus Ben score So if you compare these two types of teachers who provide their services You will see that the second one is more specific. It is easier for Their potential clients to understand how long it will take to prepare for IELTS and What result they will get after this course? So in this case Probably more students will go to the second teacher compared to this to the first one That is why you have to be really specific On the other hand if you work with individual classes or even group classes and You have been doing it for some time already. So you have your clients You still have to set some goals and explain What it will take to like what efforts it will take to achieve those goals? because setting up goals helps students to Keep focused and stay motivated much longer Compared to those situations when students don't have a specific goal So in my practice when I worked as a general English teachers, I kept failing all the time My students stayed with me like for several months to one year and then they left for somebody else just because They didn't see a point in those lessons. We prepared for nothing We just drilled some Activities, but they didn't have any specific goals in their mind these days what I do is I offer a specific core a specific course which is a preparation course for Cambridge exams. So I have different types of students who prepare for different exams like some of them are younger and Some of them are a little bit older, but anyway, I work with those similar types of exams and my offer is that We are going to prepare for Cambridge exams for one year or for nine months, for example after that you have to go and Pass this exam go and take this exam and Just bearing this in mind my students stay focused during the whole course and By the way, I work with teenagers who are usually really challenged Really challenging for students for teachers to work with because they lose their motivation They don't know how to They don't know sometimes why they study and so on and so forth. So Make sure you prepare some specific goals or maybe you even set those goals the goals together with with your students so for example, it might be a nice idea for the Introductory class for them, you know for that class when you get to know your student for the first time like a trial lesson and Just to make sure He or she will come back next time You can offer to set those goals that are important and meaning meaningful for those specific students and then you will like highlight some key points what they have to look at together with you and so on All right the next stage the next trick that you have to Try next year or maybe even this year Don't lose any minute It is attention How to keep your students attention proficiently So first of all, you have to learn Some strategies of content delivery We all know this You have probably already tried to study yourself this way like when you are showed a Piece of paper or like a course book PDF file and During the whole class you are just going from one exercise to another exercise in that PDF book This isn't a proactive approach to deliver in classes for teachers But and at the same time, it's a daunting way to Consume information, especially if it is new to students. So usually they of course they lose their attention Especially considering the fact that our attention span online is just about seven minutes compared to attention span of 18 minutes in a real classroom. So There is this huge gap between studying online and studying in the real classroom We tend to lose our attention and when it comes to teenagers and younger students They will probably Be focused on your lesson during five minutes or so even less I suppose in my experience when I worked with Young students of like seven to nine years in an online school They Couldn't be focused for more than five minutes. So What What we offered at that time was Versa tiling the content. So if you come up with some Exercises, you need to make sure you Provide them in different ways and at the same time you have to make sure that there are many different Tasks in your toolbox When you deliver this class so Basically, once again Gamification is helpful to keep attention span so Just make sure you apply this strategy to this another idea and What is Also helpful is giving some surprises during the whole lesson So surprises might be Something very simple like putting your students names in a bowl, you know and Picking one out of the bowl and asking that student. So if they know if they expect They are going to be asked Then they're for you as a teacher. It will be easier to keep their attention So your students are more likely to be Focused on the lesson Flow on the lesson content And the last Thing I would like to repeat because this is something I have already Talked about in one of my previous live stream sessions Um, it is narrow narrowing down your niche Uh, so what I mean by By a niche so we all English teachers Tend to work with general things Um, especially with those who are, you know newbies, uh, if you got your taffle certificate like Um, I don't know yesterday You will probably Go on the market with this Uh common service of General English teaching It is all right in terms of getting this first experience. But anyway Um, even if you are not experienced, I would recommend that you Narrow down your niche straight away Uh, don't focus on this general group, which is really big Uh, people all people in the group like those thousands and hundreds people They have various needs various Pains, I would say That you want probably be able to satisfy Um, that is why It is always better to offer something Which is specific and, uh, which targets This smaller audience So for example, if you Like to work with young students, but not with adults Then make sure you offer your services to young students only And if you, um, want to Narrow down even even more Uh, find something that is important for your young students And offer that to them. So in my case, it was Uh offering teenagers This exam preparation Usually teens don't know that they have to prepare for exams But um, it is when it's when you start working with their parents because basically You target two different Groups of people students on the first place and those who pay for those students Um Aka the parents Uh, so make sure you give some specific services and your target is a specific audience And, um, you will see that, um, this trick Will help you to provide higher quality services It will bring you more opportunities for professional development because you want You will no longer need to spend time on I don't know some general things for preparing for general teaching Methodologies or stuff like that, uh, you will focus on the group you work with Uh, it it works Brilliant It is much easier for, um, us as teachers in terms of preparation as well For example, uh, because last year, uh, my one of my other students Prepared for the same for the same type of exam This year, I just copy most of the activities and then I just add something Individual for those students who work on the same exam preparation course this year. So, um For me it is easier to Copy something and to add something more specific And individual done to start everything from scratch And it is how it is usually done if you have Many different types of students if they are from, um, like different age groups if they have different Learning goals learning styles and so on So make sure you try to at least try to narrow down your niche and, um Eventually you will see that it also works Really good in terms of increasing your hourly rate and um as a consequence your income So This is probably one of the best tricks that I really like But Of course, you have to try to combine this one with everything that I have mentioned previously That I have mentioned earlier and, um, well, basically this is the end, uh of my, um presentation But it's not the end of the live stream session. So if you have any questions related to Tefl teaching related to online teaching Feel free to ask me in the comments section. I will stay here for another five to ten minutes And just to mention This live stream session is provided by ittt where a living Tefl and TESOL provider And if you are willing to increase your professional, um skills In English teaching, uh, feel free to check out our website. Let me drop Out the link in the chat box So if you follow this link from the chat box, you will get a 30% discount of any Tefl courses Especially if you got interested, uh in this, uh narrowing Your niche, um, if if you Think about it, uh, you could also check out one of our specialized Tefl courses for, uh, online teaching for teaching, um, young learners and teaching business English, which is actually The best, uh, out of all of them Uh, so yeah, just go ahead and check out this, um, website And also If you If you see this QR code, uh in the top right corner It is basically the same, um, the same link. So if it is more convenient for you to, um, Just click on the Not click to scan the QR code. Go ahead and do that Uh, it is also a nice opportunity Uh, all right, and let me change the slide quickly and see. Oh, no, this is the last slide So let me probably do like this. Yeah And here we go So right now, let's do this Q&A time. Um, I will answer your questions from the chat box. Let me quickly see it Um, all right, um Emran, uh shared his kind, um Feedback with me. Thanks a lot for, uh, sending your nice and warm words I really appreciate it And there is also Philip, uh, who is our regular, um viewer. Thanks a lot for tuning in Okay And there is a question from Aaron I hope to pronounce the name correctly. If not, please, uh, let me know how to do it better Uh, so Yeah, let me do the following Um, so how to find online jobs for those who have a TEFL Um, for those who have a TEFL certification So the first idea is to go to our website. We have this section Uh, which is called jobs. Let me show it actually Um, I can do that by sharing my screen One second Yeah, so here we go Uh, I think I have to expand it a little bit So if you see this section right here, you can click on it. Uh, and then You will be able to see some of the options we have Uh, there is even this online section, which is called online jobs So you can start from this part. Um, and just get some understanding How to apply for jobs, how to find jobs and so on And, um, on the other hand how you can do it Even more proactively probably I always suggest Researching yourself There are so many different offers so many different online teaching Marketplaces like italki properly and so on You can check out those If you haven't seen my One of my previous live stream session about online teaching websites Just make sure you find this live stream in the folder on youtube or on facebook So there is one live stream That is devoted to everything related to online teaching jobs And another idea is to, um, starting offering your services online To your, um Friends to your, um, you know relatives And asking them to share your, uh, information with somebody else So the word of mouth It is actually the best thing to, um Promote your services, um, I would say that it is the best The best thing for me. So I now have, um I don't remember how many exactly so I have a lot of students I found, uh, one online only so, um They found my article on social media And, um, that's how they got connected with me and started working with me And after that they started recommending me to their friends and relatives And I got, um, I think after them I got two more students. So from that network Um, and yeah, that's that's how I did it Okay, uh, there is another question Uh, what is your advice about teaching in China? Uh, so it depends, uh, if you want to work, um, with the Chinese market online Um, there are some challenges these days because of, um, this new Chinese policy that, um, blocks that, um Um, that blocks to, um This, uh work for online teaching schools like, um Well, VIP kid and stuff like that If you want to go abroad and work in China, uh, in a real classroom, uh, you still have to research because, um, of the COVID restrictions They are probably still, um, not hiring, um Because it is impossible to enter the country um So basically, um, my advice about China would be to go to the Chinese embassy And check out for updates. This is how it's done And another thing is, um What you have to check, uh, is if they, um If they invite, um Non-native ESL teachers these days because some time ago, um, it was also a challenge Uh, some teachers could work in China without that, um, American or English passport But, uh, then they restricted, uh, they limited, uh the number of countries who, um, whose citizens can work there So it is really subjective, uh, you have to check, um, the most updated information on their, um, embassy website All right, um, are there any further questions to me guys? Let me know Because we are 40 minutes live, um, and that was the end of my live stream session Not, not of the live stream session of my presentation So probably You have anything else on your mind If yes, oh, by the way, let me, uh, invite you in my facebook group as well So I have this, uh, facebook group and it's like, um, a closed teaching community um, so You can actually, um Join in I will be really, really pleased if you become a part of this small teaching community And if you have any further questions, uh, you will be able to Ask them in the group. There are many other teachers who Can be also helpful Um, all right, and I see another question about those old live streams Uh, let me send you a link to the youtube folder I think it is easier to find, uh, that live stream on youtube. Um, I will be really quick Um Okay, just one second So we store all of the live stream sessions, uh, in this folder Uh, it is right here How to, how to share this link? I'm not sure There are actually 89 events. That's because we go live every week twice. So I go live Uh, on Tuesday usually and my, um, colleague Linda goes live Uh, every Friday or Thursday. It depends So by the way, if you're interested, uh in Um, another type of, um advice, uh, which is like Linda is more professional in terms of, um, teaching abroad Because she, uh, worked in china. She worked in korea. I actually were also worked in china, but still My knowledge right now is a little bit limited because I haven't Researched the country and the regulations After I left it And it was like three, um, no two years ago. Yeah But almost three In 2022 it will be three years, uh, since I stopped working in china So linda is more professional, I suppose. Uh, so if you have any, uh questions related to teaching abroad Check out, uh some of her previous, um streams So here is this link, uh to Um our folder on youtube In this folder you will find, uh all previous live stream sessions and there is actually One video one interview done by me Uh in april So, um, I would say that it is once again slightly outdated, but anyway, um I gave a lot of tips not I but my friend, uh gave gave a lot of tips, um Related to teaching in china, uh as a non-native esl speaker Um, so you can check out that live stream. It is actually really popular And I also done another interview with my friend who works on preply So if you want, uh to start working online, uh, you can check out that live stream as well Because my friend gave a lot of tips how to Create the profile how to find students on the marketplace and so on So, yeah, just check out some of the previous Streams and I hope They also will be, um useful and informative for you And I hope, um the same can be said about today's live stream For me, it was a really nice talk guys. Thanks for your Activity. Thanks for asking questions Um, I think that is the end of today's live stream session But if you have any further questions, you can direct message me or ask me on the Group On the facebook group. I will try my best to assist you and also um, I think that um, I am going to share several Ways to gamify your classes Uh in um in a blog post on my facebook group. So Um join in and stay tuned. Thanks a lot guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye