Ross and online teacher trainer Alex Li talk about some of the biggest differences between teaching offline and online, common mistakes teachers make teaching online and their favorite online teaching activities.
Alex and Ross with masks on
Dos and Donts For Teaching One to One Online (with Alex Li)
Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the TEFL Training Institute Podcast. I'm Ross Thorburn. Again, this week, we are doing something coronavirus‑related. We're talking about teaching language online. We've got dos and don'ts for those of you who are now making the transition from teaching offline to teaching online.
To help us with that this week we have my friend and former colleague, Alex Li. Alex, for the last year‑and‑a‑half or so, has been a trainer, training teachers to teach online.
In this episode, Alex and I will go through some of the differences between teaching English online compared to offline, some of the opportunities and a lot of common mistakes that teachers tend to make.
More and more schools, it seems like, across the world are switching their classes to online for the time being. If that's you, listen on. We've got some great tips for you. Enjoy the interview.
Ross: All right, let's start. Alex, thanks for joining us and doing this.
Alex Li: Yeah.
Ross: This is also the first podcast I've ever done while wearing a face mask.
Alex: [laughs]
Ross: We're obviously doing this because lots of teachers now are making the transition, we don't know for how long, from teaching offline to online. You did that yourself, obviously. You used to be a teacher offline, and then you started working in an online company.
Maybe we can start off by talking about some of the differences. What first struck you as being some of the differences between teaching online and teaching offline?
Alex: That would be personalization. Personally, I didn't do that when I was an offline teacher for young learners. Frankly, I don't know 80 percent of my students that much, while the rest of 20 percent I've probably talked to them after class. For one‑on‑one class, that gives teachers those opportunities to know their students more.
Ross: When we are teaching kids offline, you're right. Usually, as a teacher, you don't learn that much about them. As soon as you're teaching students in their own homes, the setting gives you the opportunity to talk about so much more, doesn't it?
Alex: Yeah. As you said, in a brick‑and‑mortar classroom where everybody's in the same place and the same city, if you ask how's the weather that would be pretty dull, because everybody knows that. After five students, they will be like, "Oh teacher, I know..."
Ross: [laughs]
Alex: ..."it's sunny."
Ross: Or you have to pretend and make up like it's snowing...
Alex: You show your flash cards.
Ross: ...maybe when you're living in Africa and it snows. Online, there's all these natural information gaps. The teacher and the student are always going to be in different places...
Alex: That's true.
Ross: ...often in different cities or different countries, there's so many opportunities there to contrast and compare what's going on in the two locations.
Alex: That can happen throughout the class. You can do it at the beginning as we talk about weather. You can also talk about certain target language.
Ross: I remember when I was an offline teacher, and I used to teach kids. I remember sometimes trying to get kids to bring in something into the class, to do a show‑and‑tell type thing.
One time it was like, "Bring in a photo of somewhere that you've been on holiday." Always, like two students would remember and the other 14 wouldn't. It would never work very well.
I feel this is one of the other huge opportunities for teaching online. Students have all this stuff around them, especially for low levels. For example, if you're teaching clothes, the student can open their wardrobe and, for example, bring out their favorite clothes.
You can show the students your favorite clothes as well. There's so many opportunities for personalization that you would never get if you were doing it offline.
Alex: Yeah. I think you mentioned one good thing or one good model, is that the teacher gets to show the student if we are talking about clothes, his or her clothes first if it's a lower level. That's something I noticed some teachers are not doing online.
Teachers have got to keep in mind that you're teaching one‑on‑one. You're still teaching, and giving appropriate model is important and essential.
Ross: Offline, if you've got a class of 15 students, you might pick the strongest student to come to the front and demo that for the rest of the class. If you've only got one student, there's no opportunity to do that. What do you have to do instead? As the teacher, you have to model both parts.
That's one of the biggest differences maybe, between teaching groups offline and teaching one‑to‑one online. The teacher has to take on so many different roles compared to teaching offline. For example, if you're doing group work or pair work or something offline.
You put the students in pairs, and the students are conversation partners to each other. The teacher, you're still kind of in this teachery role where you're going around and monitoring. As soon as you go online, you've got to switch into a different role of being this...
Alex: [laughs]
Ross: ...conversation partner. That's quite difficult to actually do.
Alex: Yeah, that's true. Some teachers ignore that part. There's no other kids in this classroom, so they ask their student to read both parts if we are having a dialogue.
Ross: I wonder why that happens if the teacher just thinks like, "Oh, I'm going to get my student to talk as much as possible?"
Alex: Or they just think that those students need to read before anything.
Ross: Another thing that teachers are influenced by is increasing the amount of student's talking time in the class. That's one way to do that, is to get students to play both parts of a dialogue. I feel you're losing so much in terms of it being a natural or authentic conversation. It's much better for the teacher to assume one of the roles in the dialogue.
Alex: Exactly. As a teacher, if you're talking about a lower‑level student, you can select the part that is easier for him or her to read. After he or she turns into an intermediate student, you can have him or her pick the role he or she wants. That's the way personalization occurs.
Ross: You could do the same role‑play twice. You guys could just switch roles halfway through. Like if it's someone asking for directions first of all, the teacher provides the answers. Then you can switch it around and give the student in the more challenging role after they've seen a model.
Those are all things that teachers would do naturally offline, giving a stronger student the more challenging role in a role play. I guess you have to be the strong student if you're the teacher during those activities. [laughs]
Another common problem we see a lot online is teachers getting students to read whatever is on the screen out loud. Often, it's just a page of a course book, or something. I've seen teachers that even ask the students to read the title of the page. [laughs]
Alex: And the instructions.
Ross: And the instructions, right. What are some of the problems with that?
Alex: It's not effective. The instruction is not the target language. I get it why they would do that. They probably think that they read it. They probably can't understand the instructions. The more they read it, the more they will get to know what's going on, but actually no.
Ross: It doesn't work like that. If I'm asked to read something out loud, I always find I don't know what I've just read. I'm so focused on getting the science right that I don't actually process the meaning. With those, it's better to get the student to read it silently, which is also just much more natural.
You don't see people [laughs] walking around with their phones or reading things out loud. We read in our heads most of the time. Or the teacher reads it out loud for their student to listen, and they can follow along.
We started talking about the materials. Another issue with teaching online that doesn't happen so much offline is that teachers will tend to use every page, if we can call it that, of a lesson of the course book. We often online call it the "courseware." They'll go through it in order rather than jump around.
It's interesting, because I noticed myself doing this with having the same book on my Kindle versus having the paper copy. I find that on the paper copy, it's so much easier to flick through and read chapters out of order. On a Kindle, I find I don't do that as much. I go through it in order.
Teachers teaching online will tend to do the same thing of follow every page rather than what you might do in a course book, which is skip some activities or you might do the last activity first, that kind of thing.
Alex: I don't know. Maybe somebody told them that, "You've got to finish the courseware." They just feel like, "Oh, by finish, you probably mean I need to complete each page."
I once had a survey with some teachers, some call‑ins. They were like, "I didn't finish those activities. I didn't finish all those pages. Is that OK?"
Ross: [laughs]
Alex: I actually observed this teacher's class. She was doing fine. You can see that she's got some preparation. First and foremost, she identified what to teach, what the teaching objectives are. She did that, but she didn't complete the pages. Some teachers who are listening might not notice that.
Ross: It's like offline teaching where the main thing is, "Teach the students. Don't teach the plan." You're totally right. A lot of teachers feel like, "My job here is to get to the end of these pages on this PowerPoint," rather than to help the students learn something or achieve something.
Up until now we've mainly been talking about speaking, but I wanted to touch on writing for a moment. This is definitely one of my pet hates online, is teachers asking students to write something using the mouse. It's not a useful skill to practice.
Alex: [laughs]
Ross: Writing using a mouse and writing using a pen ‑‑ I mean, just try it ‑‑ they're very, very different. I can write quite well with a pen. I cannot write well with a mouse.
Alex: I really show my respect for those teachers who can write perfectly with a mouse.
Ross: [laughs] Perfectly with a mouse.
Alex: If your student has this learning need which is to practice their handwriting, you can ask them to prepare a notepad. They can write there, and they can show you.
Ross: Something else that I rarely see online is teachers or students actually moving the camera. Most people, when they're teaching online, they're using a laptop.
Usually, the screen, it's on a hinge. It's pretty easy for the teacher or the student move the screen down. You could write, and the other person would be able to see what you're doing. I feel for teaching writing online, it's pretty challenging.
Alex: We can agree that the priority of teaching online would be speaking and listening.
Ross: Maybe we could talk about some activities that we think work particularly well. I can start out. One of the activities I've seen that works really well is a creative activity where you get the student to make something. The teacher has to do the typing, and the student has to do the telling.
You've almost got the student describing the creative thing that they want, and the teacher drawing and filling things in. One of the examples I've seen work quite well is a shopping mall. Here's a floor plan of a shopping mall. The teacher asks the student, "What shops do you want in the shopping mall? What do you want them to be called?"
The student has to say them, and the teacher types them in. You got a lot of communication happening in that activity, but also the student ends up being quite motivated.
Alex: You're creating something.
Ross: Absolutely. The teacher has to understand what the student is saying. If the teacher doesn't and makes a mistake with writing something, often the student's very quick to correct their teacher...
Alex: [laughs]
Ross: ...which is great because you're getting a lot of real communication happening there.
Alex: I have two personal favorites kind of related to teaching texts. After you go through all those comprehension questions the courseware offers you, if you still have time, if we're talking about Bloom's Taxonomy, higher audio thinking skills at the level of evaluation, you can ask your student what are their perspective of the character?
How do they think of this character? Ask why afterwards. You don't want to sound so much like what the courseware would offer. You can start with your own model. There is a stereotype going on, which is Chinese students, they are reluctant to express their opinions. This can be something to model.
You can have different views on something, on somebody. It's OK. We're not judging somebody.
Ross: [laughs]
Alex: We're just expressing our opinions. Another one is for those classes there are texts about different cultures. Some students might be unfamiliar with those. After going through the text, say the setting is in Brazil and it's about carnival, then you can change it to the setting of Chinese New Year.
That would be something that they can relate to. Back to Bloom's Taxonomy, you're creating something different with your student.
Ross: With that second example there you're also taking advantage of that real information gap. If you're a teacher and you've not been to the same country as your student, you're probably not going to know very much about the culture. It's a real motivation for the teacher to be genuinely listening to what the student's saying and for the student to genuinely communicate with the teacher.
Again there, we've got that thing of the teacher taking on another role, being the conversation partner and not just prompting the student to try out some target language but actually communicate something that the teacher wants to listen to.
Alex: A suggestion for teachers would be to ask questions that they don't have answers to.
Ross: Again everyone, that was Alex Li. If you enjoyed that, go to our website, www.tefltraininginstitute.com for more podcasts. If you really enjoyed it, please give us a good rating on iTunes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you again next time. Goodbye.