Teach English in Chengjia Zhen - Chengdu Shi

I am Teacher Beverly, an online English tutor. I'm going to share very useful tips for teaching online. My first tip is TPR. I'm going to give some tips and how to do it. I will also share the varieties of TPR that online tutors can use in their class and some examples. TPR means Total Physical Response. It is the coordination of your language and your physical movement. It is the connection between your body and your mind. It is very popular with beginners with young learners, primarily we can use it with students of all levels and all age groups. However, why is it so important? You are going to teach how to understand things. For example, sometimes we need to verify the equipment. We can show it by saying "Can you hear me?", "Can you see me clearly?", "Yes", "Great Job!". It makes your class more fun. Using TPR every day will make your class more exciting and engaging as well. For example, you can give them a high-five (high-five hand), a good job (thumbs up), and well done (clapping). This is how I make the class more fun by making or using gestures and facial expressions. And don't forget to give them rewards. So, how do we use TPR? There are two kinds of TPR that we could use in our class. First one is Instructional or we could say the Guiding and Ordering. We use hand gestures to make the student understand the meaning of a word or a sentence. For example, "Can you circle your answer? (Draw a circle using your finger)", "Draw a line (Draw a diagonal line using your finger)", "Look at that (Look gesture)". Sometimes, if I want to hear the student's answer, I put my hand hear my ear and I will say "Can you say it?" and I am going to listen to them. "Wow! That's a great job! (Clap)", "Very good! (Thumbs up)". Another example is "Can you see me well? (Looking gesture)", "Can you hear me? (Hand near to the ear)". Those are instructional TPR. The second type of TPR is Educational or we call it the Teaching and Explaining. There are five steps on how to do that. The first step is Preparation. We need to prepare a word first. For example, if I want to teach them the word "Tiger" (Roaring with hand gestures). So, I prepare a word which is the "Tiger" and the gestures. Next step is Teacher Modeling. You need to do it first like this "Dear, look at me, I am a Tiger (Roaring with hand gestures)". I am using hand gestures and my facial expressions to tell them that I am a tiger. Next step is that we want them to do it. We call it Student Modeling and we want them to repeat it. I will just say "Dear, can you do this? (Roaring with gestures) a Tiger. How about you? (Look gesture) a Tiger (Roaring with gestures)", "Yeah, just like that (clap). Very good (Thumbs up)", "Now I will do it (Point to yourself) and then after me, you'll do it too okay (thumbs up)", "Thank you so much (clap)". We call that Student Participation. We want them to engage in the conversation and do it as well. And the last step is Repetition and Practice. We want them to repeat the words by saying it maybe three times. Repeat it like "Tiger Tiger Tiger (fingers counting from 1 to 3) (Roaring with hand gestures)". We need to have full of energy every single day. I know it is hard to be active all day long but as teachers, we need to overcome it. We need to keep our lovely smile and use our gestures and facial expressions. Make sure that your TPR is easy to understand so that the students can follow you. My second tip for teaching online is the Reward System. As an online English tutor, do you always keep giving trophies to students as rewards? Do you always keep saying "Very Good" to students? Those actions can make students bored and they can not be encouraged. But dear co-tutors, do not worry. I will share different types of rewards which you can give to your students. There are mainly eight types of rewards. Pictures, props, toys, gestures, stickers, drawings, certificates, and language. Type one, Pictures. You can download different series of pictures such as animals, fruits, dogs, dinosaurs, stars, and cartoon figures from famous cartoons. For example, if students are crazy about dogs, you can show them one kind of dog as a reward each time. Type two, Props. You can make a lot of different props like "Good Job", "1st", "Super Kid", "Thump up", and "Smiley face" to surprise your students when praising them. Type three, Toys. You can prepare some toys in advance. For instance, for boys, you can reward your students by giving them cars, robots, swords. and so on. For girls, you can reward them by giving them dolls, bears and so on. Type four, Gestures. You can also praise your students by doing gestures to them. Use TPR (Total Physical Response). Type five, Stickers. You can also give stickers to your students. First, you can buy some plastic stickers like stars and diamonds in different colors. Second, you can make ice cream reward. You give students several choices or ask their flavors in advance. And let them make their ice cream when giving rewards to them. Type six, Drawings. You can prepare a whiteboard. When you give rewards to students, you can draw stars, flowers, fish, dogs, and so on for them according to their likes. Type seven, Certificates. You can make several kinds of certificates like Certificate of Good Work or Certificate of Progress to reward your students after some time. You can make some templates in advance but remember to change the name and date when giving to students. Type eight, Language. For language rewards, you can use words like good, very good, good job, great, super, super good, pretty good, well done, wonderful, excellent, perfect, amazing, awesome, brilliant, terrific, incredible, and fantastic. Please try to use different words to praise your students instead of using the same word such as good and very good. These are eight types of rewards. I hope your rewards can refresh and surprise your students. These are my teaching techniques as an online English tutor. It worked for me and it made my booking rate high. I do hope that you'll find it helpful too.