English teaching has long been a popular way for backpackers to start and maintain a life overseas. With little more than a birth certificate proving you were born in an English-speaking country like the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, you can find work almost anywhere in the world. However, it can also be a profitable side hustle that doesn’t require you to leave your country. Or even your home.
Through teaching English online, you can tutor young students around the world (though especially China), earning a steady and not inconsiderable income without too much effort or specialist skills.
TL;DR
- Rewarding – the pay can be very good and it’s generally a pleasant experience to teach
- Low barrier to entry – you can theoretically start teaching with no qualifications or experience
- Flexible – you can choose your own working hours
- Some work required – while it’s not especially difficult, teaching is not a passive income
- Commitments – while you can choose when to work, you will be expected to stick rigidly to the times you choose
- Language barrier – most of the companies and students are Chinese, which can create some confusion in cross-cultural communication
What is online English teaching?
What online teaching is should be fairly obvious; you help students develop their language skills through the internet. Specifically, you use a VOIP system to communicate with individuals and classrooms in China. Depending on the system you use, it could be other countries, but the overwhelming majority of companies focus on China because that’s where the money’s at right now.
How you actually find students and classrooms to teach is as challenging as you want to make it. In theory, you could set up a website and work on marketing yourself and your services as a teacher, but that is a lot of work and doesn’t guarantee success. Significantly simpler is to join an online school – VIPKid and QKid being excellent examples. They provide a marketplace where you can promote yourself and, as they have established relationships with schools, getting jobs this way is significantly easier.
In theory, you could get work with no more qualifications than the ability to speak English. You might not get quite as much as you would if you had a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) or equivalent qualification. If you have a teaching certificate and experience in the world of education, you will never want for work.
The earning potential is excellent when teaching English online – potentially as much as $22 per hour. The huge advantage of the online approach and using systems like VIPKids as opposed to getting a job in an overseas school is that there is very little work to do outside of the hour that you are paid for. You don’t need to make lesson plans or grade papers – that’s all done for you. You can also work to your own schedule, taking holidays whenever you like.
In theory, your class could consist of students as young as just a couple of years old, which can be a little more challenging as keeping their attention on their studies for the entire duration of the class is a lot harder. However, the majority of students are of normal school age – about 5 to 12 years old. Being mostly highly motivated to learn, they will generally prove to be very diligent and eager students. Depending on the company you work with, you could also choose to only teach adults.
How To Start Teaching English Online?
It takes a little bit of work to get started with teaching English online, but not so much that it becomes a serious obstruction. You are effectively getting a job and, as with any job, the company needs to make sure that you’re serious about working for them and that you are capable of doing so to a satisfactory level.
The first stage is to send in your application, listing your qualifications and experience (if any). Some schools demand that you have at least a bachelor’s degree in any subject. As a rule, the ones that demand more qualifications also pay better.
If your application is accepted, the next step is to do an interview, just as you would with any job. The interview process will also include a mock lesson, which will be a slightly surreal experience as your adult, professional interviewer will pretend to be a 5-year-old. However, you should only have to endure that awkwardness for about 15 minutes at most, after which they’ll give you feedback on what you did well and what you can improve on. You’ll be given the lesson plan in advance, so you will have time to prepare yourself for this test.
Assuming the interview was successful, you’ll be asked to sign a contract. You will be agreeing to complete training courses and practise lessons. The courses are very easy – often consisting of just a selection of YouTube videos with a quiz at the end to prove you watched them – but the practicums are your trail by fire. As with the mock lesson in the interview, you’ll be “teaching” an adult who is pretending to be a student. In this case, the awkwardness lasts the full duration of the class – 25 minutes. You’ll get feedback halfway through and you might get two chances to convince the school that you’re ready for the real thing.
As a general tip for passing this stage of the process, it helps to look up TPR – Total Physical Response. Put simply, be animated while you are talking, moving your hands and body around. If you just sit in front of your webcam and barely move, you will have a harder time passing. Being bubbly and smiling a lot also helps. Children respond better to this style of teaching, so the interviewers will, too.
Assuming you make the grade, you’ll be granted access to the teacher’s portal of the system where you can create your profile and select the days and times you’re available to teach. Be sure to take some time making your profile as enticing as possible as this will get you more work.
Things to consider before teaching English online
For the most part, teaching English online is relatively simple to do and, once you’ve got some experience behind you, the pay is pretty good. Being simple doesn’t necessarily mean that you can coast through it – you still have to put some effort in to be an engaging and effective teacher. You will have to have very good people skills and be prepared to work with children, some of whom can be very young and easily distracted. In other words, this is most certainly not a source of passive income. On the other hand, it can be very rewarding work, especially if you see your students’ language skills noticeably improving.
You will generally have the option to view the lesson plan the evening before you’re due to teach it. Given that most of the teaching companies are based in China and run by people are not themselves native English speakers, the instructions can sometimes be a little unclear. Additionally, communications from the company can sometimes seem a little blunt if you’re more used to working with western bosses. Put this down to cultural differences and you should be fine.
One important point with these teaching systems is that, while there is a lot of flexibility over how much time you commit to doing the job and exactly what times you work, you will be expected to keep your commitments. If you say you’ll teach a lesson and something else comes up, you will not generally have the option to reschedule – only cancelling and your contract limits how many times you can do this before they terminate you.
Cost to get started teaching English online
There is technically no cost to getting started as an online English teacher. However, you will often require a bachelor’s degree and having a TEFL or TESL (or similar) qualification will significantly help your progress.