10 Reasons a Modern Tutor Needs an English Teaching Platform
It often happens that a person has real talent but does not know how to “sell” it. For example, an artist paints professionally, but nobody knows about their work. Meanwhile, another artist creates works from random splashes of paint and sells them for millions. The same can happen to a great English teacher who knows how to connect with students, explains complex grammar rules clearly, and inspires and motivates by example, but lacks the organizational skills to plan lessons and cut the time spent on creating courses and preparing for classes. As a result, the teacher spends days planning and has only a few lessons a week. Today, though, there is a solution for such specialists: interactive English teaching platforms for tutors with all the features needed for lessons, textbooks and even ready-made lessons. In this article we describe them in detail and explain why every teacher should use such a platform.
Contents
1. What you need to know about interactive English teaching platforms
2. 10 reasons to use an online English teaching platform if you are a tutor
2.1. All the apps you need on one website
2.2. Ready-made lesson plans and interactive textbooks
2.3. Saving 20% of a tutor’s time
2.4. Automated homework checking
2.5. The option to upload your own teaching materials
2.6. Quick lesson preparation
2.7. Access to the platform from any device
2.8. The option to run group lessons
2.9. Different access plans for the English teaching platform
2.10. Less load on your laptop
3. Online schools also choose LMSs for teaching English
What you need to know about interactive English teaching platforms
First of all, it is important to understand that this is not a program you install on your computer. It is a cloud-based LMS (learning management system) that you access through a link. In practice, you go to a website, sign in to your own workspace, and there you can browse ready-made learning materials, prepare for lessons and run video lessons.
Interactive English teaching platforms help tutors move fully to remote work, or you can use them in face-to-face lessons to show learning materials. These sites also let you create a workspace for students who will study without a teacher. Just imagine: you develop ready-made self-study lessons, upload them to the platform and then share them with hundreds and thousands of students. You will agree this can significantly increase your income. What is more, such a platform usually has a ready library of textbooks you can use for flipped classroom lessons, so you will hardly have to work on creating a curriculum.
Online platforms make distance learning convenient and interesting
Another advantage of interactive English teaching platforms is that they are convenient and easy to use, which lets a tutor work with students of different ages. To connect with a new student, you create a personal profile for them with their name and contact details, then send them a link to their personal account. Through this link the student also gets to the platform, where they can see learning materials, join lessons, do homework and use the lesson calendar. Anyone with basic computer skills can figure out how to view content and join a lesson.
10 reasons to use an online English teaching platform if you are a tutor
Online learning appeared and started developing actively about 10 years ago. Tutors usually use the most accessible programs, Skype or Zoom, to connect with students, and at the same time figure out how to show learning materials. This makes the whole learning process much harder and demands a lot of organizational skill and inner energy from the teacher. Online English teaching platforms were created to make the learning process easier and simpler. And we have 10 reasons why you should connect to such a platform right now.
All the apps you need on one website
A really good online English teaching platform has these basic features:
- video calls;
- a calendar with the lesson schedule and the option to divide students into groups;
- interactive textbooks or learning materials you can work with directly on the platform.
This way, an online English teaching platform lets you keep all communication with students and all teaching on one website. You will not need third-party resources even to watch videos or listen to audio, because you can upload such content to the site too and give your students access to it. You will not even need a separate dictionary with pronunciation, because the interactive textbooks on the platform already have this feature. And a convenient calendar with sync will not let either the tutor or the students forget about a lesson.
Ready-made lesson plans and interactive textbooks
A modern online English teaching platform is also a huge library of textbooks developed with modern methods for students at every level.
What is an interactive textbook? It is an online textbook that contains not only text but also lots of videos, audio, infographics, word lists, diagrams and tables that help students dive into English more effectively and with more interest. For example, you can first learn a few new rules and phrases, then listen to a podcast where native speakers use them in real conversation, and then do exercises to practice. The exercises, by the way, come in several game formats so that students find learning easier, more interesting and more effective. Checking does not require a teacher: the process is automated.
Saving 20% of a tutor’s time
Only tutors know how much time it takes to prepare each new lesson, no matter how hard-working the student is or what level they have. With access to an online English teaching platform, the teacher no longer has to put together a course program, write out each lesson, or find videos and dialogues to match students’ interests. All these materials have already been collected by professional teachers and methodologists and uploaded to the platform. This lets a tutor save up to 20% of their working time every week.
Both children and adults enjoy learning English online
Automated homework checking
Another task that steals a lot of a tutor’s time is checking homework. You need not only to check that the exercises are correct but also to analyze which topics or rules the student struggles with, so you can fix this later. Interactive platforms for remote English teaching make this easier because they contain many ready-made tasks and tests whose answers are checked automatically. If they want, tutors can also create their own tests on the site.
The option to upload your own teaching materials
If you have a lot of experience teaching English, you probably already have many lesson materials. You can upload all of them to the teaching platform so that students can use them during and after lessons.
Quick lesson preparation
To start a new lesson, you only need to look through it in the interactive textbook on the platform. In practice this takes about 5 minutes, which saves even more of your working time.
Access to the platform from any device
If necessary, you can teach an English lesson even from your phone. The main thing is to have the link to your personal account and your login details. Your students can do the same. What is more, you can sign in to your personal account even from someone else’s computer, and you do not need to install any special programs: just open a browser, go to the platform’s website and start the lesson.
The option to run group lessons
If needed, you can put your students into groups and run group lessons. An interactive teaching platform makes this very convenient: just press the call button, choose the group you are teaching and watch the students join the online lesson.
Different access plans for the English teaching platform
The core of an interactive teaching platform is a website with personal accounts for the tutor and students, plus features for running video lessons, uploading learning materials and creating a lesson schedule. If you already have ready-made curricula, you can use only basic access to these features and save on the platform fee. If you are just starting your career and need access to interactive textbooks, you can choose a slightly more expensive and much more useful plan. In other words, you pay only for what you use.
Teaching English should bring a tutor satisfaction, not fatigue
Less load on your laptop
When you install lots of programs for remote lessons, you use up a lot of your device’s memory, which can slow it down. These programs may also work poorly on an unstable internet connection. Using an online English teaching platform, by contrast, requires no third-party software, and the site itself opens quickly even if the user does not have fast internet.
Online schools also choose LMSs for teaching English
In fact, online schools were the pioneers in creating such platforms, because they need not only a system for organizing learning but also tools for monitoring teachers’ work and students’ attendance. Another benefit English teaching platforms bring schools is the ability to protect their course materials from theft and from becoming publicly available. Materials uploaded to the site cannot be copied or shared with other people.
For using interactive online platforms, they also have an admin panel that the head of the school can configure. Through it, they can add learning materials, choose which features to open for teachers, and create personal accounts for teachers and students.
So if you work as a tutor and dream of creating your own online language school, you definitely need to connect to a platform. It will reduce the effort you have to put into organizing learning and help scale your still small business.