Teach English in Longhua Zhen - Linfen Shi

As a person born into an era of rising technological advances, I have found communications via the internet to be both convenient and inconvenient. Making a video call to the other side of the world to my mother, who currently lives in South Korea, would have been almost impossible decades ago. Taking language courses online from the convenience of my home has also benefitted my life and career greatly. Students in foreign countries can also learn languages from the comfort of their homes, yet in all of these scenarios, we lose the advantage of physical presence to the instability of internet connections and technical difficulties which can lead to skewed interpretations. When teaching English online, this can hinder our ability to sufficiently understand our students’ understanding and progress in learning English, and the lack of physical presence can make accommodating to learning curves quite a challenge. To combat this, teachers can engage in educational and instructional total physical response, the use of props, elicitation techniques, and appropriate pacing to our advantage. I currently work for Qkids, an online program in which I teach English to young students in China. My students are from five to twelve years old, and each age group has its challenges. I find the largest challenge on the Qkids platform is that I teach groups of four students rather than one on one classes. In these lessons, I must ensure that each student’s microphone and video are functioning and, at times, must control the volume level on each student’s screen and even turn off their microphones if they are disruptive. The parents of the students can also intervene too much and unintentionally distract the student. Both of these issues would not be a problem in a physical classroom in which I would be able to teach an even larger group of students in a less distracting environment. When students physically go to a classroom, they know they are there to learn and, although younger students are usually prone to some distractions, they do not have their home surroundings to divert their attention. Despite these challenges, online teaching can be very convenient. It is globally accessible and can be a more affordable option for some families or more convenient for families who cannot transport their children to physical language learning schools. I have found that a benefit to teaching online in groups of children is that the students have opportunities to explore and demonstrate their conversational English-speaking skills with other students. As a mediator, I can correct their pronunciation and grammar during the conversations, and I find that working in pairs or groups enhances the learning experience because the students can simulate a conversation they would have in real time. On the Qkids platform, we also engage in group games. Some of these games consist of student versus student challenges where they try to form a sentence before the other does or group games where the first person who matches all the pictures to the correct word earns a prize. These games stimulate the students’ abilities to remember words or sentence patterns and actively engages them in the learning experience. There are often students who are hesitant to participate in the lesson because they are shy or distracted, but the games always regain their attention and inspire them to stay aware, so they can win. In conclusion, mastering teaching online English classes entails consistency, awareness, and experience. Being consistent in arriving early to class to fix any technical malfunctions before class starts is crucial. It is also essential to be consistent in the “I do, we do, you do” approach to teaching because this technique helps the student learn confidently and adherence to this pattern can make learning less confusing in the future. Being aware of why a student does not understand the lesson is also very important. Sometimes it can be the result of distractions from their homes or parents, but also the teaching method. Evaluating the way I teach a lesson after each class, and its results are crucial for me to become a successful teacher. All these skills come with experience and the more challenges one faces in the online classroom, the more efficacious they can become in adapting to individual student needs and learning different effective teaching strategies.