TEACHING ENGLISH ONLINE

CAMBRIDGE ASSESSMENT ENGLISH

1.1 Getting Started
Introduction to the course and welcome to week 1 - Welcome to our Teaching English Online
course. This course will help you transfer your teaching skills from the face-to-face classroom to a
digital environment so that you can deliver effective lessons to your learners.

In the first week of the course, we’ll look at the online teaching context, examining who learners
might be, why you might want to become an online tutor, and the pros and cons of working for an
employer or working for yourself. We’ll also help you to understand what you need to get started with
technology, tools and resources, and key skills.

In week 2 of the course, we’ll focus on planning and delivering effective online receptive skills
lessons. We’ll give you practical ideas and suggestions for tools, resources and activities that will help
learners to develop reading and listening sub-skills.

In week 3 of the course, we’ll focus on planning and delivering productive skills lessons. We’ll give
you practical ideas and suggestions for adapting speaking and writing lessons for an online context.
We’ll also suggest ways to help learners with pronunciation and recommend some useful resources
for developing pronunciation.

In week 4 of the course, we’ll focus on planning and delivering language lessons online with useful
tools for setting context and practising using language. You’ll also have some practical ideas and
advice on how to set up and run your business. Finally, we’ll consider ways that an online teacher can
continue their professional development.

Outline of week 1 - This week we’ll start with some introductions and then we’ll answer these
questions:

 What do we mean by teaching English online?

 Who might the learners in an online lesson be?
 Why become an online teacher?
 Is it better to work for a company or for yourself?
 What equipment, tools and resources do you need to get started?
 What key skills do you need as an online teacher?

The tasks this week will take you three to four hours to complete.

1.2 Getting to know us

You’ll be guided through the course by Lindsay Warwick and Marie Therese Swabey, who are the
lead educators on the course. Here’s a bit of information about them.

Lindsay Warwick - Lindsay is a teacher, trainer and materials writer, and has been teaching
English for 20 years. She is a CELTA trainer and has delivered teacher development courses
in the UK and abroad on topics such as ‘Train the trainer’, ‘Using technology in the
classroom’ and ‘Expert teaching’. She is co-author of several coursebooks.

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Marie Therese Swabey - Marie Therese is a teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer. She has
taught in Italy, West Africa, the US and the UK. She’s also an assessor and Joint Chief Assessor for a
range of teaching qualifications administered by Cambridge English. In recent years she has been
involved in the development of online courses including a number of Cambridge English MOOCs on
FutureLearn.

1.3 What does it mean to teach English online

Online language teaching can be all sorts of teaching. It can be teaching groups, individuals. I've
taught a number of different learners one on one and in groups. Most recently, I taught a group of
refugees who were based all over the world in lots of different time zones. They were all a similar
level of English. They were all intermediate level. It can be teaching on a platform, so that means an
online school where you sign up as a teacher, and then you deliver lessons to their students, much
the same as you would do in a face-to-face chain of schools. For one thing, they help plan your
lessons for you.

So a lot of the different online platforms have different structures already built in. Some online tutors,
they own their own business, so they will be finding students and teaching them and managing all that
process themselves. My online tutoring is in the context of business English, so it's normally middle
managers who are going abroad. So regarding how much time I spend doing that each week, it
fluctuates. I have certain clients who, if they're going abroad, I'll see them quite a lot. I also have
people that will contact me while they're abroad-- they've heard something when they're out and they
want to ask me immediately.

And that's one of the real benefits of online tutoring, is that they've got that kind of immediate access
to the teacher. They don't have to wait until they return from being abroad. Teaching online is any
teaching that you do online, it can be all sorts of ages-- very young children-- I know of a lot of
teachers who work with three, four-year-olds. The types of classes I teach can vary quite a bit
depending on the ages. So I teach anything from three years old to 12 years old, so you can imagine
there's a really big range in the types of classes they have. For the really little kids, it's really focused
on vocabulary and a little bit of phonetics as well.

So being able to break down the actual sounds, focusing on the alphabet and basic vocabulary of
numbers, colours, toys, things like that. You might work with adults. You could teach business
students, professionals-- really the same range of students that you would get in a face-to-face
context, you could get them online as well. People are studying in their home environments, in their
living room, in their car. I had one lady working from her car. She wasn't driving. A successful online
lesson is a lesson where your student goes away knowing something they didn't know at the
beginning, or being able to do something they couldn't do at the beginning.

What does it mean to teach English online? - Let’s begin by talking about what we mean by online
teaching. Who do you teach? Who do you work for? In this video, some of our teachers tell us about
their teaching contexts.
Task - Watch the video and make notes in your notebook about the type of teaching each of our
teachers describes. Who do they teach? What do they teach? Where are their learners? Who do the
teachers work for?

Name of teacher Notes

Jade

Corrine

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 Ollie

Helen

Why become an online teacher? - There are many reasons why teachers decide to teach English
online. It could be that they want to increase their teaching hours, or that it’s more convenient to work
from home due to personal circumstances. In this step, we’ll look at some of the reasons for deciding
to teach online.

Task - Read the quotes from our teachers and choose the one(s) that is closest to your own
reason(s) for being interested in teaching online. (You can click on the image to expand it.)

1.6 What equipment do you need

Lindsay, let's talk about what you need to get started. Yep, so you need a laptop or a computer with a
webcam and you need a good headset, like this, with, obviously, earphones and the microphone. The
microphone's important, I think? It is, yes, so your learners can hear you clearly. And hopefully they
have one so you can hear them clearly. Fine. And of course, you need a good, stable internet
connection. OK. And then you need a Platform You do, yes. So the platform is the program that you
use to be able to see and hear your learner and for them to be able to see and hear you. Like Skype
or something like that. Exactly, yes.

And if you work for a company, then they're probably going to provide the platform for you. But if
you're self-employed, then you're going to need to find one yourself. If you're going to teach online,
the first thing you need to think about is what platform. Because the crucial elements of any online
lesson are the teacher, the student, and a way to see them and hear them. Those are the basics. So
you need some video conferencing software. So what other tools and resources could we use? Well, I
have a very un-techie white board. For teachers, they can-- while you're teaching, you can write on
the board or you can stick pictures on the board.

A lot of people talk about having lots and lots of props. I, honestly, relay on a really small white board,
and my face, and my hands for almost everything. The one I go back to-- almost every lesson is a
virtual white board. It works just like a real white board. And some of the better ones you can share,
so you're both looking at the same time and you contribute to the white board, as well as I can write
something then I can get the learner, then, to also write on it. In similar way, you can also put texts
onto the virtual white boards and get them to pick things out of it.

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And so that's the two I'd probably go to more often than any other. You can use props around your
house. You can have things behind you, like a map or pictures of relevant sports. Also another un-
techie resource is puppets, especially for teaching kids. Very simple to make and they-- puppets
introduce extra characters into the classroom, into your virtual classroom and kids respond very well
to that. OK, lovely, yeah. You could also bring in real objects, couldn't you? So if you're teaching
clothes and you bring in some items of clothing, you hold them up. You're teaching food or kitchen
equipment or anything like that, then you can show a few things from your home if you're teaching
from home.

It's very easy to do that. Absolutely.

What equipment do you need? - Once you’ve decided to teach online, you need to make sure that
you have the right equipment to get started. You’re going to watch a video where Lindsay, Marie
Therese and some of our teachers outline the equipment and tools that you need to get started.

Task - Watch the video. Which of these are mentioned?

Equipment or tools √ Equipment or tools √

Laptop or a computer with a camera Virtual whiteboard

Headset with microphone Flashcards

Stable internet connection Pictures

Platform for teaching live Puppets

Whiteboard Board pens

Handouts Realia (objects)

1.7 Getting to know your platform

There's lots of platforms, things like Google Hangouts, Skype, Zoom, appear.in. These are quite
simple. Often there's a free version. But basically it's video conferencing. You can see them and they
can see you. I've used a number of different platforms for online classes. One of them was
Blackboard which is a platform which has the traditional elements of a classroom. So it has a
whiteboard that you can use, and you can put up PowerPoint slides. It has functions such as students
can raise their hand. It has a chat box and an audio feed and a video feed. So all of the elements of
your classroom are there.

As well, I've also used some really low-tech things for online teaching such as Skype or Google
Hangouts which don't offer as much flexibility for the teacher. But if you want everyone collected in the
same space, then that's kind of the basics of what you'll get. So the platform that I've been working
with has two camera screens so you can see yourself and also the student. And then on the main
pair-- that's on the left part of the screen-- the main part is going to be actual slides. And I'm the only
one who has control of when we change slides. The student can't change that. I also can control if the
student is allowed to write on the screen or not.

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It's just a simple turn on, turn off switch. I can also type directly on the screen, or we have a little chat
bar on the side. You might find that you've got text chat which is quite useful because you can type
answers or you can ask questions, and then you can review that text chat later. The chat bar I use
usually a little bit more with older students. So if they can't quite think of a vocabulary word, I might
start typing that one letter at a time and see if they can guess it.

And once they have said it, then I'll type out the whole word because that part actually gets saved at
the end of the lesson with the feedback. And so their parents or if they want to look at it themselves
again, they can see what words were more challenging for them then too. Some platforms will have a
way you can record vocabulary where you can share materials and slides. I use the screen-share
function if I'm teaching a point. I like to open a PowerPoint sometimes and I can use that. Or if there's
been a reading, I can refer to the text. I can share my screen so the line is displayed exactly what I'm
referring to.

So a breakout room works in the same way as you would set up students in pairs or in small groups in
the face-to-face classroom. As a teacher, you control the students and put them in another space in
the online classroom so they can accomplish their task or work together in private away from the
other students. Especially if they're teaching very young children, they might have things like filters,
things that you can add to your faces to make it more enjoyable or engaging for the students. You
might have systems where you can add badges or give praise, things like that. There's also an option
to give stars during a class. And so you can encourage your students.

I use it both when they're doing well or maybe even not so well to say, hey, I know that you're trying.
Here you go. Let's keep it going. And they really, really-- kids get really excited about it. It's really
cute. They do little dances and everything.

Getting to know your platform - In the previous step, one of the resources mentioned as essential
for online teaching was an online teaching platform. In this video, our teachers talk about some of the
different types of platforms you can use and some of the features the different platforms have.

Task 1 - Watch the video and answer these questions:

1) What different platforms do they mention?
2) What different features/functions do they mention?

Task 2 - Now let’s see if you can identify some of these features/functions on this screenshot of a
platform for delivering live lessons Look at the screenshot of an online platform and match the words
below to the numbers (1–10) on the platform.

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 Chat box Interactive whiteboard

Video of teacher Video of learners

Breakout rooms where students can work

List of students in the room
privately in pairs/groups

Pointer Hands up icon

Audio control icon Video control icon

Task 3 - Go to this Quizlet to match some activities with these platform features. To match the
activities in Quizlet, drag and drop the matching texts onto each other. To navigate back to the course
please use the back button in your browser.

A: Hands up icon B: Audio icon C: Breakout rooms

D: Interactive whiteboard E: Chat box F: Pointer G: Share screen feature

1.8 Exploiting features of a platform

Great. So let's first correct a phrase. So please type the correct version in the chat box.

OK. You should see a table in front of you. The top is labelled noun, adjective, and the quality of.
Yeah? Uh-huh. Yes. OK. So the nouns and adjectives in the table there, you've seen them before. So
it's kind of a little warm up for you. The ones that are nouns, could you write down the adjective for
me. The ones that are adjective, can you try and create the noun. OK. All right? See what you can do.
I'm just focused on the first two columns, right? Exactly. Yeah. Don't worry about the last one for now.
OK.

If you're done reading, please tick Yes on Zoom.

Wonderful. Now socks, OK? Socks. Socks. Yeah. Now I'm going to draw the socks, Christmas socks.
Oh, my god. They are a little different. They are striped.

They are good Pedro. Come on. My socks are beautiful. So we're going to take a look at a couple
more phrases. And I would like you to fill in the gaps. So you will need to use Annotate.

So please check if you can draw anything on my slide.

Yeah. Please make sure that you have different colours, you're using different colours. OK. Dimity's
colour is purple. OK. Wonderful. So can you please clear what you've drawn?

Thank you. Great. So here are the phrases. Please fill in the gaps. So you can draw or type right on
the slide.

How can I hide our pretty faces?

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I'm not sure where you have them. Right on the top of this end. Just move. You can just move-- Yeah,
you can just move. --this window. Move them.

Because I can do it with pencil. OK.

I can see two versions of the first phrase. We say take was the first one, right? And then took. Uh-
huh. And taken. Because we have three forms. And then we have swim. What do you think the forms
are? What's the past of swim? All right. So is-- "you took a taxi" is it an irregular verb. Very good. So
you're going to work with a partner. And I'm going to open-- I'm sorry. I'm going to open breakout
rooms now. We can speak about it for forever. Forever. I'm sorry. But you only have three minutes to
do this. Oh. Right. So let me open the rooms.

OK. So please join them.

Exploiting features of a platform - Now that you’re more familiar with the features that a platform
might offer, you’re going to look at these features being used in a lesson.
Task - Watch the video which shows clips of online lessons. You’ll see the platform features below
being exploited. How is each one being used? Complete the table.

Platform feature How it’s used

Chat box

Share screen

Tick icon

Interactive whiteboard

Notes

Breakout rooms
1.9 Researching different platforms
Let’s now turn our attention to some specific platforms that teachers can use to deliver live online
lessons. In this step you are going to look at, and do some research on, three different platforms that
teachers use so that you can compare them. We hope that this task will help you to choose a platform
you’ll be able to use to teach your students online.

Task - Here are three platforms that an online English teacher might use.

Skype
Zoom
WebRoom

The first step to choosing a platform is to read about its features so that you can decide whether or
not it’s worth trying out. Click on the links above to visit each platform’s website. Read about the
features of each platform. Find answers to the questions below and compare each platform.

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 Is the platform free, or does it require a subscription/payment?
 Do you have to register and sign in? Do your students?
 Can it be used on all browsers and most devices?
 Can you and your students see each other?
 Is there a (interactive) whiteboard?
 Is it possible to share your screen?
 Is there a chat feature?
 Are there breakout rooms for pair/group work?
 Is there a help section with tutorials to help you understand how to use the platform?

Optional task - Choose one of the platforms you reviewed in Step 1 and try it out.

You can use the video tutorials at the links below to help you understand how to use it although note
that your view of the tool may be slightly different depending on the device you’re using to access it. If
possible, ask a colleague, friend or family member to be your ‘student’ and see how the different
features work.

Skype tutorial
Zoom tutorial
WebRoom tutorial

1.10 Other digital tools and resources

You can use a whole range of digital tools in addition to the platform that you're using. You can use
tools to help you manage what you're doing in the class. If you're talking about one-to-one lessons,
especially, then that's probably really important. Because in a one-to-one lesson, there is the potential
for your lesson to go in any direction. You may decide to focus on a specific grammar point or you
may decide to do a little bit more speaking practise or something like that. Teaching online, I think,
lends itself to having the student do a task. Because if the student has prepared a task and delivers it
during the session, then you've got lots that you can feedback on.

You can use tools that help you to explain the grammar. So if you have the grammar function turned
on, or just open, on your computer, so you can refer to grammar explanations. I'll give you examples,
as well. So while you're actually teaching and having a conversation, you can see the examples and
you don't have to think of them while you're speaking. So before the session, they get ready, they
plan. For example, a talk about their favourite sport or maybe they make a poster with images from
their hobbies. So, depending what they've made, there are different ways to display it.

So you might find that you can SlideShare or you can share screens, or you can use things like
Google Docs so that they can show you something they've written or prepared. Or you can ask your
student to make a video and send it to you. You may have a platform where you have the connection
with you and the learner. But then that's not accessible after the lesson. So you might choose
something which is a notice board or some kind of place-- or documented, even, where you can write
notes, where the learner or learners can collaborate with you on the notes. And then that document or
that board is open to them after the classroom, as well.

So that they have a document, they have a record of what's happened, or they can see ideas and
examples of language. And then they can go back and use those as a stimulus and you might then
use that to set homework or the next learning task, as well. When you're teaching an online session,
you have certain tools you'll use during the session, but there's loads of tools you can use before and
after. So if you want students to do lots of controlled practise, there's really nice grammar, vocabulary
activities, things like Memrise, Quizlet, Flashcard, games, activities.

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That's a really good thing to give for your student to do outside the session, so that they can revise
and work on something they've done in the lesson. So The Digital Teacher is a site where you can go,
it's a free site. You can access it and you can find reviews of tools that-- Cambridge Assessment
English, think are good for language teaching, but then you still have to read that review and
understand how you can use that tool and think about how that would apply to your context.
Other digital tools and resources - In Step 1.6, we talked about the equipment an online teacher
needs and the resources an online teacher can use, such as puppets and realia. In this step, we’re
going to introduce you to some digital tools that help to make digital lessons more successful.

Task - In the video Helen and Mary talk about some digital tools and some ways they can be used in
online teaching. Watch the video and make notes about what they say the tools can be used for.

Teacher Tool Use

A grammar reference tool (e.g.

Helen
Cambridge Online Dictionary Grammar)

Mary Screen or slide sharing

Mary Google Docs

Helen An online noticeboard

Memrise, Quizlet and other

Mary
games/activities

Adding a whiteboard - Digital tools and resources aren’t obligatory in online lessons but some
teachers find them useful and learners enjoy using them. One such tool is a whiteboard. You’ll
remember from your research in the previous step that Zoom and WebRoom have an in-built
whiteboard so you don’t need to use a separate tool if you are using these platforms. If, however, you
use a platform which doesn’t have its own whiteboard (e.g. Skype), you might want to add one.

Miro is an interactive whiteboard tool that teachers can use in live online lessons. The free version
offers three editable boards which you can share with students so that you and they can see what’s
written there. If you’re interested in using this tool, go to Miro’s Help Center to find out how to use it.

1.11 Materials and activities for online lessons

What kind of teaching materials might a teacher use online? Well, I still think of the course book works
pretty well, even for online teaching. Because it still sets out the syllabus, doesn't it, and so it gives
you a curriculum and it tells you what tenses to follow and what vocabulary to introduce and that sort
of thing. And you? Yeah, well you might work for a company who provides teaching materials for you.
So they might provide PowerPoint presentations or something like that. And you may be able to adapt
them, depending on the company's policy. Yeah, and there's authentic materials as well.

Of course, the internet is full of YouTube videos, and Ted Talks, and articles, and newspapers, and
that sort of thing. Absolutely, and, also, you might have learners that bring materials to lessons,
mightn't you? If you're doing a one-to-one class, you might have a business person who comes to you

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and says, I need to write a letter or, I received this email, can you help me to understand it? The
materials I use for online teaching are very similar to what I'd use in a face-to-face classroom. I do try
and keep it simple.

So instead of giving lots of different handouts, I might just give one handout so the students can refer
to it easily instead of having to navigate between different handouts. They might print it off
beforehand. We also try and keep the structure of the tasks as simple as possible, just so it's easier to
manage online. So maybe discussion tasks, such as ranking, or problem solving. Probably the most
important thing to remember if you're taking material or resources that you've used in a face-to-face
environment, is to think about the time. The fact that it will take longer for you to cover the same
amount of material. To think about the appropriacy of the different tasks within that material.

Because, really, if you're doing language practise tests, I think that that's probably better done in the
learner's own time. So, perhaps, taking out the tasks where it's about guidance or giving feedback
and using those in the online session and allowing the learners to go and do the learning, the
practise, outside the lesson. So you might consider flipping your lesson a little bit or thinking about
how a series of lessons will work with online study or independent study in between those classes. I
would give activities like reading to do before they meet me. And then during the lesson, then, we can
discuss the reading together.

Materials and activities for online lessons - We’ve looked at platforms and talked about digital
tools and resources, now let’s start thinking about materials and activities you can use when teaching
online.

Task - Watch the video of teachers talking about materials and resources and complete these
sentences:

1) Marie Therese says coursebooks work because ……..

2) Lindsay says that if you work for a company that provides you with materials, you may be able to
…………..

3) Marie Therese says the internet is a good place for materials, for example, …….

4) Lindsay talks about learners bringing materials to lessons. For example, ……..

5) Jade says it’s important to keep tasks and handouts as ……

6) Helen says teachers need to plan what learners do in the lesson and to decide which activities
…….
1.12 An overview of key skills
Should we talk about key skills that you need as an online tutor? Yeah, and I think actually a lot of the
skills are the same for being an online tutor and a face-to-face tutor. And I think the most important
thing, really, is that you have an objective and you have a clear aim for your lesson. I think it's very
easy to fall into the trap of online learning, equals online chatting. And so you and the learner sit and
chat for an hour and we don't really know why we're doing it, or what the learner is going to get out of
it.

So I think clear planning, clear objectives, and clear learning goals at the beginning of every session
is really important. Yeah, I agree. The ability to really plan well. When you start the lesson, you need
to know exactly what you're going to be doing at every step. You don't want any dead time when
you're online. And also I think that it's the teaching techniques that you use in a face-to-face lesson.
Actually you can use them in an online context too. In fact, you need to use them in online context. So

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not forgetting to give clear instructions to demonstrate activities by eliciting an answer first or eliciting
an example first to demonstrate what you want them to do.

Those are key things that help the lesson to go smoothly. And it's much more difficult, isn't it, online to
make sure that you've understood what is being presented to you. So those checking skills are really
important. I think so, yes. So all the kind of techniques you use in the face-to-face environment, you
might need to adapt them slightly but you still need to be doing them online. And I think that's really
key. And using again, the front gestures can really break it down, so counting the numbers of
syllables with my hands, using this type of gesture to show, I want you to speak, or you need to
pronounce it differently. Using this to say, I'm still listening.

I'm still waiting for you. So these types of things to make sure that they are successful. When we
teach face-to-face, we need to establish rapport and build rapport. But online I think that can be a
harder job. It can be more difficult for the teacher because the learners are in a different country.
Everything seems so distant, so I think teachers maybe have to work a little bit harder at establishing
rapport. Building rapport with certain students, sometimes it's very easy and you have someone that
you just click [with]. Other times, it does require more work. It may be that you have people coming
together from all different places.

So for example, in one class I taught, it was, the people were in the same country, but they all came
from different places in that country. So they never saw each other face-to-face, and they didn't build
the same relationships. So that's another thing to think about is how you get people to form
relationships where they feel safe and confident speaking to the other people in their group. And that
rapport, building that report is probably the most essential thing you really need to work on when
you're starting out with an online class. The key skills I would say you need to have are really, really
bringing a lot of energy to every single class.

So I always thought I had a really good rapport with my students, and that I was always a really
friendly person. But sometimes after giving these classes, my face almost hurts from smiling so much
and from using so many different expressions with the students. But it's really, really necessary.

An overview of key skills - While the principles of teaching and learning remain the same across
different teaching contexts, teaching online requires some new skills, as well as the adaptation of
existing skills to suit the digital environment.

So what key skills and techniques do online teachers need to employ when teaching online? For
example, being able to work with technology is a key skill.

Task 1 - In the video, our teachers talk about key skills and techniques. What do you think they’re
going to say? Which skills and techniques used in face-to-face teaching can teachers adapt for the
digital classroom? Make a list of your ideas before you watch the video.

Task 2 - Now, watch the video and check your predictions. Which skills and techniques do the
teachers in the video mention?

To find out more about the key skills an online teacher needs, read Cecilia Nobre’s article here on the
differences between teaching online and teaching face-to-face. As an experienced online teacher,
Cecilia examines six key teaching skills and suggests useful online tools to help put them into
practice.

1.13 Developing rapport and motivating learners

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Probably it's best to bring in as much of your own personality as you can. It can be difficult when it's
just the camera, but it's really worth making the effort. And of course, making sure you get to know
your learner, as well, asking them questions so that you can address their needs better that way. First
of all, smiling. So just constantly, constantly smiling. And I try, it depends, of course, on the student's
level, but if the student can understand certain things, then I try to make the content relatable for
them. So even for the little, little kids that might only be the three or four years old.

When I'm teaching them fruit, for example, and we're talking about apples, saying do you like apples?
[CHOMPING] And that way can say, yes, or, no. And that way is something that's more personalised
for them and they feel like it's not just a random person making them repeat after them. I build rapport
with my online learners in very much the same way as I would do with a regular face-to-face class. So
lots of encouragement and motivation and praise. Because there's a distance between us, I think it's
important to try and get to know the learners individually as much as possible.

So usually there's-- just as there is in a regular classroom-- there's time before and after a lesson to
get to know people and ask questions. Ask about how their week's been. You start with yourself and
you ensure that what you're saying and the way that you're saying it is the way that you want them to
respond, so try and be as friendly as possible, for example. One thing that I think is important to help
continue rapport throughout the course is to make sure that the students aren't entirely focused on the
teacher. So there isn't just a one-way interaction between the student and the teacher.

I think it's important to encourage the learners to build relationships with themselves, as it really helps
when you're trying to take complete tasks in an online classroom, if they get to know each other as
well as possible, as well.

Developing rapport and motivating learners - In the previous step we talked about how
establishing good rapport with a learner and maintaining their motivation can be more challenging
online than in the face-to-face classroom.

You shared some of your ideas for developing good rapport with learners and motivating them during
online lessons. Now, let’s hear from our teachers.

Task - Watch our online teachers talking about techniques they use to establish good rapport and
motivate learners. Put techniques A–H in the order you hear them.

A: Give encouragement and praise

B: Be friendly
C: Chat to students before/after a lesson
D: Bring in your personality
E: Encourage learners to get to know each other
F: Personalise the lesson
G: Get to know your students
H: Smile

1.14 Tips for new online teachers of English

So what advice would you give to a new online teacher of English? Well, I think the first thing is to get
to know your student. Find out what they're interested in. Find out why they're learning English, but
also do some diagnosis. Find out what they're good at, what they're not good at, also what they think
they're good at and not good at. I think needs analysis is really, really important. I agree. What about
you? I think planning is really key, in particular having a backup plan. We always plan. We know what
we're going to do, but thinking about what we're going to do when things go wrong.

12
So you set a student some homework and you want them to have done that homework for the lesson.
It's really important, but they've not done it. What are you going to do-- things like that. It's a matter of
planning. You really need good ideas that are going to fill the time. So if you're teaching online for an
hour, you need an hour of material that naturally has variation in pace because you're not physically
in the room with someone. You're limited in how you can change the pace. So it's thinking very
carefully about the types of activities.

The advice I'd give to anyone who wants to become an online teacher is to plan, plan, plan for all
eventualities because of tech difficulties, basically. That's the number-one issue you're likely to have.
For one thing, making sure your technology 100% works. So I know that sounds like the bare basics,
but technology fails you. And so I, for example, one time a headset that I have used lots and lots of
times on the exact same computer. Just my very first class ever actually, it just did not work. So you
have to understand your platform and how it works before you start. And then, ideally, you should
have a practise with somebody else on the other end because actually it's really difficult.

Because if you're trying to teach and you have sort of information in your head that you're trying to get
across or a direction that you're trying to push the conversation in, that's one thing. So then you are
speaking. You're obviously kind of arranging your teaching materials at the same time, and then
there's this chat going on which you can't actually read when you're speaking, although some people I
guess they can. So then there's this chat, and then maybe you're responding to people in the chat
and you're trying to speak again, and then a flag comes up to say that someone else is ready to do
something. So the management of that environment can be quite overwhelming when you start.

I think just making sure to review the information beforehand because every now and then it still
happens to me that I'm going through the slides and I accidentally say something that's not exactly
what was the plan. I use a different vocabulary word, for example, say talk instead of chat when chat
was really the word that they wanted to focus on-- so just reviewing the material a little bit more. I
think it's important to make sure the students are comfortable with how the class operates, make them
comfortable with each other.

Before you even start teaching a class, you might invite your group or your learner to a session where
you do a quick orientation to make sure that they can use the tools from their perspective, to make
sure that the internet connection works. So you might just do a "getting to know you" activity, check it
all works, check they can all write on the blackboard or the whiteboard that's on the screen, and check
that you're happy with the interaction. And then when that session's over, you can welcome them into
the first real lesson, but you already know them. You've already formed a relationship with them.

So it's a little bit easier for everyone to start communicating and focusing on the language because
they're not so worried about the technical side of it. Yes, definitely prepare everything. Review all the
materials that you're going to be working with. But it's just like working in any other classroom
environment, just with a camera rather than in person. And be prepared to use your face a lot.
[LAUGHS]

Tips for new online teachers of English

Whenever we start teaching in a new context, we find ourselves having to spend more time
researching and planning. We also need to pay more attention to the techniques we use during
lessons to ensure they are effective and to deliver lessons which are as effective as possible.

Task - Watch experienced online teachers of English share their tips for creating effective online
lessons. Complete each sentence below with a word.

1. Get to know your student, do a needs _____.

2. Planning is key but have a _____ plan.
3. Plan fully and make sure there is a _____ of different materials.

13
4. Check that the _____ works.
5. Understand your _____ and practise using it.
6. _____ the teaching materials beforehand.
7. Make sure the students are _____ with how the class works.
8. Run an _____ session before you start teaching.
9. Be prepared to use your _____ a lot.

If you’re planning on working for yourself, you’ll need to plan how you attract students. Read Cecilia
Nobre’s article here giving you tips on how to market yourself as an online teacher.

1.16 Overview Week 1

Hello, everybody. Hey, Lindsay. Welcome to our first end of week video. Hello, Mary Therese. Hello,
Lindsay. Hello, everyone. It's lovely to see you all here today. And isn't it exciting and fun? It is. It's
been a great week we've really enjoyed reading your comments, so thank you very much. We got,
amazingly, over 10,000 participants - Great - from 168 countries. So it really is global Absolutely.
Yeah. We've got a lot of people from the UK, Russia, Brazil, and India. But really, we've got people
from so many other countries, from all four corners of the world. We've got Democratic Republic of
Congo, people from Mali, Bolivia, Guatemala, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Madagascar, Jamaica,
Argentina, Mongolia. I mean, it's just incredible. Absolutely fantastic.

Welcome, everybody, especially those of you - my compatriots in the Caribbean. And also I think,
Lindsay, the other thing that's really interesting is the kind of diversity of experience that we have on
the course. So we have people who are really, really experienced teachers. We have teacher trainers
that have been - that deliver DELTA and CELTA courses. And we have people who have just come
off CELTA courses, so people with very, very little experience and people with loads of experience.
And then online teachers - we have people who have masses of experience, people that have their
own businesses teaching English online.

And we have people who have no experience, whatsoever, and kind of find this a whole big, new,
scary world. [LAUGHS] So the thing it's really great is that we able to kind of pool that experience and
bring it all together. And people are so gracious with their comments and sharing their experience.
Isn't it lovely? It's wonderful. It really is. Yeah. And people are doing the course for a whole bunch of
different reasons, as well. So we have, for example, Viv says that she's just come off a CELTA course
and she's doing the course because she wants to set up her own business. We have Mardy, who
says, and I quote, he wants to enlarge his teaching horizons.

I like that comment. And we have John, for example, who's been teaching for many, many years, and
has been teaching online, as well. But he says he wants to do the course, and I quote, "to teach
online properly, rather than muddle through." And John lives in Westgate-on-Sea, which is where I
went to school. So that's why I picked that one. [LAUGHS] We also have Christopher, who I liked his
comment. He said he's very sceptical about online teaching, so he's here to be convinced. I mean, I'm
not sure it's our job to convince him, is it? You know, it's up to him. But we would be very interested to
hear at the end of Week Four, what you think, Christopher.

So do let us know. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's the way of the world now, isn't it? It's the present.
It's not the future anymore. And I think also, Lindsay, we looked this week mainly, I think, it's how to
start teaching. And we looked at the technology and platforms. And we covered three platforms,
which we chose them really because they're free, they cost no money, and also because they work
well. We looked at Skype, we looked at Zoom, and we looked at WebRoom. And I think it would be
useful for everybody if you could give a little recap. So can we start with Skype? I give you one minute
to talk about Skype.

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So Skype is probably the most common, and therefore it's comfortable for students and teachers
because they often are familiar with it. However, it's not designed for teaching. So it doesn't have all
the tools that you might need as a teacher. You can share your screen, though, so you can show
Word documents and PowerPoint slides and web pages. And you can use an interactive whiteboard
elsewhere, so something like Miro, as we suggested. And you can share your screen so students can
see that. So it's entirely possible to teach by Skype, and it's completely free. It does sometimes have
video and audio issues, as well.

If we move onto Zoom and WebRoom, they have the whistles and bells in terms of platforms, sorry,
features, tools in the platform. So it's got the interactive whiteboard. It's got the chat box. It's got the
breakout rooms for pair work if you're teaching groups, which is fantastic. WebRoom, though, is
limited in the sense that you can only use it on Google Chrome and Firefox, and only later versions of
those two. If you had an old device like my iPad is an iPad 4, I can't use it on that. Zoom - the issue
with Zoom is - oh, by the way, WebRoom, you can have up to eight students in your group. Yeah. And
it's entirely free.

With Zoom you can have one-to-one lessons for as long as you like and as many as you like. But if
you want to teach a group of students for longer than 40 minutes, then you do need to pay a monthly
fee. Yeah. And I have an account with Zoom. We should say also, Lindsay, that we are using Zoom
right now. Yeah. I'm in my house, you're in your house. And I'm in Cambridge, and you're in some
God forsaken place in the middle of nowhere. [LAUGHS] I'm in Devon. There you go. There you go.
And we're using Zoom. So for us, it's really user-friendly. I have an account with Zoom. It costs 11
pounds a month.

The fee has actually recently gone down. It must be the only thing in the whole world that's gone
down in price, but I think it's worthwhile to have. So to recap, if you use Zoom, one-to-one free. Up to
40 minutes for any - for up to 100 men in the group is free. If you want more than 40 minutes for
group work, then you need to pay the basic upgrade. OK. OK. So we hope that that makes it a little bit
clearer for you, the three platforms that we're suggesting. And we have a lot of people, I think, also on
the course that have a kind of anxiety about the whole thing.

I keep reading comments where you explain I'm not techie, I'm not techie I don't know what to do. And
Lindsay, a bit of advice about that? I think it's just taking it step-by-step. So obviously, we can't take
you to every platform step-by-step ourselves because you'll be using a different platform. But choose
one, follow the video tutorial, just follow what the person is showing you step-by-step. And then
employ a friend, employee a family member, get them to be your student and try it out with them. Just
play with it. Yeah. Absolutely. The practice is the only thing really that will help you with it. And
actually, they are not complicated and they are not difficult.

Speaking as old people, I think even old people can - if I as old people can learn to do this, so can
you. It is not difficult. It's not complicated. But it does require practice, and it does require a little bit of
exploring. OK, Lindsay, so the other thing that we were going to look at, as well, were questions. The
interactive - the white board. The white board. Yeah. Oh, goodness gracious, I forgot the best bit.
[LAUGHS] [INTERPOSING VOICES] Because we talked about interactive white boards, we thought
we'd just a little demonstration so you can see how it might look in the classroom.

So you probably saw a bit of this in the video clips that you saw that were the live lessons. But
basically, I'm now going to share my screen. So I'm going to click on Share, which you might not be
able to see. And I'm going to choose White Board. So can you see my white board, Mary Therese? I
can see a white board, and I hope it's yours. I can see a pen, as well. Great, and that's mine. So I
have a menu bar, which again, might not be able to see. But I can choose Text to Draw, Eraser, and I
can choose the colours and also draw some shapes.

15
Let's imagine that we have - I've been telling you about my future plans for tonight. This is like a
grammar lesson. It's a grammar lesson. And the way that I've introduced the language is I've told you
about my plans for this evening. Right. So we've talked about it. You've shown me that you've
understood what I'm talking about, what my plans are. And now we're going to do the grammar
clarification stage. OK. So I've said this sentence already, and I've said other example sentences
already in the lesson. And now you're showing me about the grammar. Exactly. Yeah. So I've got an
example sentence here, and we're going to have a look at it. I'm going to see a film tonight.

Yes, thank you. So I'm going to draw under the natural grammar that we're looking at. And now I'm
going to ask you to tell me the form. So you've understood the meaning. We're not going to look at the
form. So it's about plans. You asked me some concept questions before, and I answered. And we
discussed that this grammar means using this language when I'm talking about future plans. Yeah. So
we have the subject, and then we have am or - So subject plus am or - If it's he, she or it. It is is or
are. They are - And the next word? - going to. And what word comes after it? Infinitive, see.

OK. So we've analysed the form. And I might get you to make some more sentences on that, a bit
bigger. And then I might get you to pronounce it. So I might highlight and get you to repeat - I'm going
to see a film. - the sentence, yeah. And I might use my drawing pen to actually draw the schwa
sound, although probably not very well, just to highlight this. I'm going just to - I'm going to see a film
tonight. Oh, fantastic. I'm going to see a film tonight. Very good. So we might do some pronunciation
practice of that.

And again, next step might be to ask you, Mary Therese, please type a sentence and tell me about
your plan for tonight. OK. So I'm - What's your plan for tonight? So I need to activate my bit of the
white board now. So I go to the top of my screen where it says View Options. And I click on Annotate,
and then I click on Text. Because that will open up the typewriting part, the text typewriting for me.
And so I'm writing, I'm going to visit my friend for dinner. I don't know why I have to add that. I always
have to add something a bit extra at the end. OK. I'm going to visit my friend for dinner.

And I'm going to put a full stop, because Lindsay always tells me off - [LAUGHS] - about the
punctuation. So can you see my - sentence, Lindsay? I can see your sentence. Thank you very much.
Thank you. I'm going to visit my friend for dinner. OK. So that would be clarification. Now I'm going to
clear that board. And let's imagine, Mary Therese, that you are a younger learner. And I want you to -
I don't know. We'll use some vocabulary. So can you draw me a house? OK. And can you tell me
what you're drawing as you're drawing it, please? So this is a really fantastic tool, isn't it Lindsay, for
young learners? It is.

And so on along my - I have a bar at the top. And so I'm clicking on the squiggly line because it's the
squiggly line that makes it a tool that I can draw with. So what did you want me to draw, Lindsay? Can
you draw a house? [INTERPOSING VOICES] A house, OK. So here's a house with a - it has
problems with its roof because it is kind of sunk in the middle. [LAUGHS] But there's the roof, and
there's the wall. I'm going to put a chimney because it's the chimney that made the roof sink in the
middle.

There's with smoke coming out/ and then it's got a door, and it's got a letter box, and it's got a
number, 64. I live at number 64. [LAUGHS] Then it's got some windows. And you can see, Lindsay,
that this is such a nice activity. Because the children are drawing, but also it's generating all that
language. It is. Yeah. [INTERPOSING VOICES] It's not that easy to draw with the, with the mouse,
though, because it can be problematic. It's better on an iPad or a tablet. But it's funny. It's funny that it
doesn't come out brilliantly. Yeah. And it generates language, which is what you really want from the
student. Exactly. Exactly. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Lindsay.

I'm sure that makes it a little bit clearer. And just to say, that this is included in the Zoom platform.
Fantastic. Questions? Any questions? Very quickly. But actually, Lindsay, we're not going to answer

16
any questions. We're not, no. Because people have asked a bunch of questions about setting up
businesses and about how to run a business and how to find students. And we understand that this is
the number one preoccupation. And it's not surprising. Because actually people are doing the course
because they want to learn about teaching online, but also they want to set up - they want to find out
how to make this something that they can work on. But we're not going to answer.

Because Week Four - half of Week Four we spend talking about exactly this subject. So we're asking
you please to stay with us until Week Four, when we'll answer all of those questions. Also, Lindsay
and I are trying to be as active as we can within our busy teaching lives, answering the questions on
the platform, on FutureLearn. So please keep the questions coming. We love reading your comments
and reading your questions. And it's so lovely to see so many familiar faces. We have people who did
the course the last time around who are rejoining, which is wonderful. Nice to see you all again.
Lindsay - I think it's time to finish, Mary Therese. Week Two? Sorry?

Week Two, yes, where we're moving on to teaching skills. So yeah, we hope to see you all there next
week. Have a great weekend, everybody, and look forward to starting again on Monday. Lovely. See
you. See you, everybody. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye.

WEEK 2: HELPING LEARNERS WITH RECEPTIVE SKILLS - READING AND LISTENING

2.1 Welcome to Week 2
Hello, everyone. Welcome to week two. This week we're going to be doing reading and listening, so
developing receptive skills and we're going to be talking about how to teach them online. We're going
to think about how they're different-- online to face-to-face lessons. Yep. We're going to be looking at
how to share materials, recordings, and texts. We're going to think about whether we get students to
read a text in a lesson online or whether we would ask them to do it before the lesson, and in which
situations we might do each of those And we'll be looking at a lot of resources and materials that you
can use in online lessons. So enjoy the week, everyone.

Welcome to week 2 - Hello and a warm welcome to week 2. This week we’ll focus on planning and
delivering effective receptive skills lessons online. We’ll talk about the similarities and differences
between face-to-face reading and listening lessons and online receptive skills teaching. We’ll give you
practical ideas and suggestions for tools, resources and activities which you can use to help learners
to develop sub-skills and improve their abilities in reading and listening in English.

Outline of week 2 - This week we’ll answer these questions:

 What’s the same and what’s different about doing receptive skills work in online lessons?
 What activities can you use in online receptive skills lessons?
 What resources and tools are available to teachers and learners to use in receptive skills
lessons?

This week’s tasks will take around four hours.

2.2 Teaching skills online vs teaching skills face-to-face

Receptive and productive skills lessons online and face-to-face are similar in many ways, but the use
of technology does mean there are some differences. Here, online English teacher Cecilia Nobre
shares her experiences of skills development online and discusses the key differences between
online and face-to-face skills lessons.

Task - Read the article. What key differences when teaching the four skills does Cecilia talk about?

2.3 How do online lessons differ from face-to-face lessons

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We're talking about the differences between teaching reading online and teaching reading face-to-
face. So what are the differences? Well, I think in terms of lesson structure, it's probably going to be
very similar. You're going to want to do some kind of lead in where you're encouraging learners to
want to read or motivating them to want to read the text, where you maybe activate their existing
knowledge and vocabulary so that they're really ready to read. And then when they read, they're
going to have some kind of task to complete so that they're focused and reading with purpose. And
then after they read, they're going to be doing some kind of follow up.

So it could be language from the text or some kind of discussion using the text as a springboard. Do
you agree that that would be fine? Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I think the question is of
whether you read the text in and out of the classroom. Yes. And I think that's an opportunity that
online learning provides, that there's this possibility that learners don't have to read while you watch
them read. But I think there are opportunities or necessities sometimes for learners to read online with
you. And I think two things, really, dictate that decision. The first is the age of the learners and the
second is the type of reading task or reading text.

So for example, when we're talking about the age of the learners, when they're very young learners,
you would read with them in the class online because you are developing literacy at the same time as
you are developing reading skills. But with older learners - Well, I guess with older learners, then, they
can probably read at home, can't they? Absolutely. Because they're not so dependent on you.
They've got the literacy skills to be able to do that. But I think, as you say, it does depend on the type
of text and perhaps the task, doesn't it? Yes.

I mean, if you are trying to develop, if you have a text, for example, that requires students to read for
specific information, so scan reading. So for example, you have a newspaper article with times and so
on about a cinema film that you're going to watch, and you want the students to look at the
advertisement and just say what time the film starts and where the film is on. Those are scan reading
skills. And so you would do them in the class because you don't want them to spend hours reading
every word and looking them up in the dictionary. Those are speed reading skills. So you want to
develop them online, in the lesson.

But other kinds of tasks or texts, for example, if you want them to read an article in detail. Yeah. Then
I guess there's no point. I mean, you're just going to sit there in silence, aren't you? Exactly. That's
something that really should be done at home. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then in the lesson, what would
you do? Well, then you would pick up on the task that you set them. So you would check the answers
to the task, and kind of check understanding of the material, and then, of course, you then lead on to
the follow-up activity that you planned. Exactly.

So you might get a speaking out of it, or you might get them to do a little bit of language work or that
sort of thing, in real time in the lesson. So maybe there are other opportunities for reading in class as
well. So you were mentioning scan reading and there's also, I think, reading, looking at decoding
skills. So thinking about things like - Referencing? Referencing, and substitution, ellipses, and things
like that that can sometimes prove problematic for learners. And those are the kinds of things that you
can also do in the classroom as well, aren't they? So you would get them to actually do it in the
lesson, while you're there asking them questions. What does it mean here?

What does it refer to and so on.

How do online reading lessons differ from face-to-face reading lessons? - Let’s now focus on
how we can help learners to develop reading skills in an online environment. You’re going to watch a
video of Lindsay and Marie Therese summarising what they think are the key differences between
online reading lessons and face-to-face reading lessons.

Task - Watch the video. Are these statements true or false, according to what you hear?

18
1. The structure of a reading lesson is different in an online lesson.
2. Whether learners do the reading task in the lesson or for homework depends only on their age.
3. Young learners are more likely to read texts in the lesson.
4. Adult learners are more likely to read texts in the lesson.
5. If the lesson focus is reading for specific information, the learners can do the reading in class.
6. If the lesson focus is reading for detailed information, the learners can do the reading for
homework.
7. When learners read a text for homework, the next lesson can focus on checking the learners’
understanding and follow-up work.

In the next step, we’re going to look at different reading texts and activities and decide if the reading
task is best done in or out of the lesson.

2.4 Reading in a lesson or for homework

In the previous step, Lindsay and Marie Therese talked about how the text and task can help to
determine whether learners read a text in a lesson or for homework. Now, you’re going to review
some reading lesson outlines and decide whether the learner should read the text in the lesson or for
homework.

Task - Below are six outlines of different reading lessons. Click on the link to view the text.
For each plan, decide whether or not it’s better for the learner(s) to read the text in the lesson or for
homework, and why. Think about:

 the age of the learner

 whether or not the learner will need support
 how much reading needs to be done
 how lesson time is best spent.

Reading lesson 1: Reading sub-skill focus: Understanding cohesion in a text.

Learner Text Task

A paragraph from a Identify examples of referencing words in the

A class of six B2-level
longer article about paragraph and what they refer to. Identify
adult learners preparing
ballet. examples of substitutionin the paragraph
for their B2 First exam.
View the document and what is being substituted.
Reading lesson 2: Reading sub-skill focus: Understanding detailed information in a text.

Learner Text Task

An article about a summer Answer a set of short-answer questions

One B1-level teenage learner
camp. and then select the best summary of the
aged 15.
View the document article.
Reading lesson 3: Reading sub-skill focus: Understanding simple sentences and the
grammar/vocabulary within them.

Learner Text Task

19
 A set of true/false statements
One pre-A1-level young learner Decide if sentences are true
about a picture. View the
aged 7. or false.
document
Reading lesson 4: Reading sub-skill focus: Understanding different types of questions and
their appropriate responses.

Learner Text Task

A set of questions and

Match each question with its
A class of young learners aged 9. answers.
answer.
View the document
Reading lesson 5: Reading sub-skill focus: Identifying a writer’s opinions.

Learner Text Task

A jigsaw reading task, i.e. each

Two different reviews student reads one article and identifies what
of a film that has just the writer sees as the film’s strengths
A class of four B2+ leveladult
been released. and weaknesses. Each student then
learners.
[View Review A] [View works with a student who has read the other
Review B] article and they share their information,
comparing answers.
Reading lesson 6: Reading sub-skill focus: Recognising adverbs of attitude to understand a
writer’s viewpoint.

Learner Text Task

A short text about the mobile Identify two adverbs of attitude

One B1-level adult Business
phone industry. View the (i.e. admittedly/undoubtedly)
English learner.
document and work out their meaning.

Now, check your answers. Of course, motivation also plays a part in deciding whether to ask a learner
to read in or out of the lesson. If a learner is unmotivated to read outside the lesson, then it’s likely
that you’ll need to ask them to read in the lesson, even if the text is fairly long.

2.5 Displaying and sharing reading materials

When you're planning, another really important thing is how you're going to show materials to people.
Do you have a white board setup? Do you have something that you want them to read? Do you have
like an exercise and how are you going to show it to them? So is it a PowerPoint slide? Is it something
that's a PDF and they print it off or they view it on their screen at home? Are you going to speak it and
how much text do you actually display at one time? So for example, for a reading, it kind of really
makes more sense for you to be able to show that text as a whole.

But if you show it as a whole, it doesn't really fit on your screen. So you've got to consider how you
might split that text up or whether you're going to scroll through it on the screen as you're talking. And
sometimes that can be really complicated because you're trying to read, and you're trying to
communicate, and you're trying to scroll all at the same time. So sometimes it's better just to cut it up

20
into smaller pieces, smaller chunks. So you might just pop a paragraph on the screen or even a few
lines from the paragraph and focus your attention on that part of the text.

Maybe they've got the handout with a full text, but what they see on the screen is just a smaller part of
the text. And that goes for sort of exercises and activities as well. Having a hand out with the full text
or the full information is a really useful resource because then they can see how it fits into the plan.
They can see and they can refer to other things at the same time. Whereas on your screen, you've
just got this really small square that you're looking at and it does become quite difficult sometimes to
follow the sequence or to follow a reading text.

Displaying and sharing reading materials - When teaching a reading lesson, it’s important to plan
how the text will be shared with learners. Will you display it on your platform’s whiteboard? Display it
on your screen and share it with learners during the lesson? Or provide learners with a handout to
print before the lesson? In this video Helen discusses some of the things teachers need to think about
when planning reading lessons.

Task 1 - Watch Helen and make some notes about these questions:

1. What different options does Helen mention for showing materials to learners?

2. What problems with displaying reading texts does Helen highlight?

3. What solutions does Helen suggest for sharing texts, exercises and activities.

Task 2 - Now, evaluate each option yourself. Complete the table below with the potential strengths
and weaknesses of each option.

Means of sharing reading material Strengths Weaknesses

Display the text on a whiteboard

Display the text on your screen and share your screen with
learners during the lesson

Provide learners with a handout before the lesson, e.g. via

email

Provide learners with a link to the text during the lesson

2.6 Outline for an online reading lesson

You’re going to choose a reading text and create an outline for a reading lesson. Decide on the things
below and submit your lesson outline. Another participant will peer review your lesson outline and you
will peer review another learner’s. Note that this is an optional task and may add additional time to the
course.

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Task

 Describe your learner(s)

 State the reading sub-skill you want the learner(s) to develop
 Describe the text and include comments on ways you may need to adapt it for an online
lesson and to meet your lesson aims
 Describe the tasks you would use for the lesson
 Describe how you would share the reading materials with your learner(s)
 Say whether the learner will read the text in the lesson or at home.

Click here to look at Lindsay’s example

Note: You may want to write your assignment in a text editor (e.g. Microsoft Word) and save it to
prevent you from losing work in the event of a connection issue.

ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES

The reviewers will be asked to give you feedback on the following aspects of your assignment, so you
should consider these when writing:

 How will the lesson help the learner(s) to improve their reading skills?
 How has your colleague adapted the text effectively for an online environment?
 Has your colleague suggested the learner(s) read in or out of the lesson? Do you agree this
is an appropriate approach?

2.7 Review another learner's assignment

You’re going to review an outline plan for a reading lesson a colleague on the course has written.
They were asked to decide on the things below and submit a plan.

 The learner(s)
 The text type and topic
 The reading sub-skill you want the learner(s) to develop
 The task
 Whether the learner will read the text in the lesson or at home.

Looking at the guidelines below, please provide useful feedback on the outline plan. Give reasons to
explain your answers. Highlight what works but offer a suggestion if appropriate.

Example: - Q1 The lesson should really help your student to develop their ability to scan for
information quickly as you’ve planned lots of practice of the strategies you’ll introduce. Maybe you
could get the student to reflect afterwards to find out if the strategy helped them or not.

ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES

You’re going to be asked to give feedback on the following aspects of the author’s assignment:

 How will the lesson help the learner(s) to improve their reading skills?
 How has your colleague adapted the text effectively for an online environment?

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 Has your colleague suggested the learner(s) read in or out of the lesson? Do you agree this
is an appropriate approach?

2.9 Useful online reading resources

There’s a wealth of authentic reading material available to teachers and learners online. News
reports, blogs, reviews, social media posts, advertisements, shopping sites and magazine articles
allow us to create lessons that give learners access to language used authentically.

There is also a range of useful reading materials specifically for learners of English that
teachers and learners can exploit.

Task - Below are four useful resources that teachers can use to create interesting and level-
appropriate online reading lessons for their learners, as well as websites that learners can access
themselves. Click on the link to each one and answer the following questions.

 What level of learner is it appropriate for?

 What age of learner is it appropriate for?
 Does the site provide a complete reading lesson or do you need to build a lesson around a
text?
 Might it be useful for your learners?

Breaking News English

News in Levels
Learn Kids short stories
Cambridge Assessment English – Learning English

2.10 Teaching listening skills in online lessons

Teaching listening online. What are the similarities to teaching listening face-to-face? Well, I think the
similarities are the framework. So we still have the same kind of procedures that we would follow in a
face-to-face classroom for delivering listening lessons. So you'd still have a prelistening task or
activity of some sort, a while-listening task or activity for comprehension or for developing a specific
subskill. And then you'd have a follow-up, maybe a bit of language work or maybe a speaking activity
or that sort of thing. So the principles remain the same, that we still have our kind of framework for
listening lesson. But there are some things that are different.

Yeah, I think quite often, online lessons are one-to-one, not always, but they seem to be more
commonly one-to-one. And just as one-to-one lessons face-to-face, I think quite often the teacher
becomes a listening resource. So the student listens to the teacher, and that's how they get their
listening practise. So we can use live listening tasks. But I think task is important here, isn't it? Yeah,
because otherwise, you're talking all the time. The students are supposedly listening all the time. But
who knows what is happening in their head or whether they're understanding anything. So again,
principals of having a task with whatever it is that you're doing. But live listenings are really useful, I
think, and easy for teachers.

So do you want to describe one? So it could be, for example, I describe a member of my family to a
lower-level student or group of students. And you would set the task before that. Yeah. And the task
would be pick out five things that I describe. Exactly. Yeah. And then when they give you the answers,
you can check if they've heard correctly. They know they've heard correctly. And if they haven't, you
can then help them to work out why they didn't hear correctly. Was there some linking that makes the
words difficult to understand or something like that?

But it's also important, I think, and useful to be able to bring in recorded materials as well because
then in your lessons, the students get a different accent, they get a different voice to become

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accustomed to other English. It is, yeah. And it's also important to set tasks that focus on particular
subskills of listening. Exactly. So, for example, listening for specific information, you might bring in a
recording of-- I don't know-- the weather forecast. Students have to listen for particular bits of
information for their particular area or something like that. Absolutely, yeah. It is important though
when you are bringing in audio or video from other sources that you can actually play it through your
platform. So it's usually OK.

But it's always worth, I think, just checking-- Yeah. --having a trial run, maybe getting a family member
to be at the other end as the student-- just to check that they can actually hear it. And there's also
copyright issues, which are exactly the same as they are for face-to-face. Absolutely, yeah.

Teaching listening skills in online lessons - Let’s now think about teaching listening skills in an
online lesson. When you teach a listening lesson online, the structure of the lesson is likely to be the
same as a face-to-face lesson: you’ll establish a context and engage the learner(s), set a task or
tasks while learners listen and then follow up with some kind of speaking task or analysis of language.
However, there are some different approaches when teaching listening online.

Task 1 - You’re going to watch Lindsay and Marie Therese talking about online listening lessons.
What do you think they might say about these things?

1. The main source of listening practice for online learners.

2. How a teacher can best exploit teacher talking time as listening practice.
3. The benefits of using recorded material.
4. What you need to check before a lesson.

Task 2 - Now, watch Lindsay and Marie Therese and check your ideas.

2.11 A listening lesson

OK, so today, I'm going to tell you about a special weekend. I had a special weekend in Sicily in Italy.
So this was in June, I think-- yeah, June this year. Do you know Italy, Elsie? I know Italy just when I
was four years old. But I don't remember anymore. I went to Rome with my parents. But I don't have
memories about that holiday. So a long time ago, yeah. A long time ago. So this is in Sicily in
Palermo, so in the south of Italy. OK, so I'm going to tell you this story. And I want you to write three
things I did. So write three things you hear that I did, OK? OK.

So I'm going to pause my camera so you cannot read my lips. So you're just going to listen, OK? OK.
So what are you going to do?

I will write three things you hear-- I hear that you did. Yes, in my story, very good. OK, you can write in
your notebook-- yeah, it's fine-- or in the chat box, whatever you prefer, OK? All right, so I'm going to
pause my camera now.

Are you ready? Yes. OK, so I'm going to start telling you the story. I decided to explore Agrigento in
Italy at a weekend. On a Saturday, I rented a bike and cycled for about 15 kilometres to the nearest
beach. It was fantastic. When I was there, someone recommended the Stairs of the Turks, or Scala
dei Turchi, a UNESCO heritage site in Sicily. So the next day, I decided to go there, and I arranged
for a taxi. When we arrived, the taxi driver dropped me off at the car park, and I walked straight to the
stairs, because they looked absolutely magnificent. I wanted to climb them immediately, but the guard
said we weren't allowed. So I went for a swim instead.

Then suddenly, a lot of people started climbing the steps. I got a bit confused because I thought it was
illegal. But I swam all the way there to climb quickly to the other side with them.

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They were all Italian and seemed to know it was a good time to do that. When I finished climbing to
the top, I realised there was another small private beach on the other side. Oh, my. I climbed down
and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon there. After that, I watched the sunset and went to a
lovely lounge bar to have a drink and wait for the taxi driver again. It was a weekend I'll never forget.

Go on.

Yeah. OK, so I'm going to share the whiteboard with you now. And let's see. So tell me some of the
things, the three things you heard that I did.

Three things you did in Italy? Yes, during that special weekend. Yeah, yeah. You take a taxi.

Mhm. You swim in the private-- you swim on the sea.

You decide explore the area.

You had a fantastic weekend.

You climbing on the cliffs. OK.

The taxi driver recommended to you buy a bike or rent a bike.

And you went to the place of whose is part of the UNESCO heritage.

OK, yeah, that's good.

A listening lesson - You’re now going to watch part of an online lesson and see an example of a live
listening task in action. Live listening is where the teacher is the listening resource for the class. The
teacher talks (e.g. tells an anecdote or a story) and the students listen with a clear purpose (i.e. a task
set by the teacher). This is in contrast to listening to recorded audio or video.

Task - Watch the video and answer the questions.

1. What task does Renata set Elci?
2. Why does Renata turn off her camera?
3. What do you think happens next in the lesson?

2.12 Listening activities for online lessons

Let’s look at some examples of listening activities that can be incorporated into online lessons or set
for homework. These activities provide learners with a variety of text types. As well as that, they have
a clear learning goal and help learners develop a particular listening sub-skill.

Task - Read six outlines of listening lessons (1–6). Match them to the learning objectives (A–F). The
learning objectives focus on listening sub-skills.

Outline of listening lesson

1. Jigsaw listening – for homework, half the class watch one talk and the other half watch a
different talk but on the same topic. In the next lesson, learners work in pairs in breakout rooms and
compare the speakers’ views and justifications.

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2. A song – a young learner watches a video of people performing a song. The teacher helps
the learner to learn the words using pictures and mime, and they sing along.

3. A dictogloss – in class, the teacher reads out a short text giving factual information. The
learner listens and then takes notes about what they heard. These two steps are repeated. The
learner then uses their notes to reconstruct the text, typing it onto the whiteboard. The teacher offers
feedback and support to help the learner be more accurate. Finally, the learner compares their text to
the original.

4. A film clip – in class, learners watch a short clip from a film with no sound. They predict
what they think the people were saying and type their ideas into the chat box. They then watch with
the sound on to check.

5. Questions – in class, the teacher reads out a set of questions. Each time, the learner has to
count the number of words they hear. The teacher asks the questions again and the learner answers
them.

6. Which photo? – in class, the teacher displays six photos using the share screen option. The
teacher then reads out a sentence to describe one of the photos, saying where something is, e.g. The
cat’s sitting on the table. The young learner says which photo the teacher is describing.

Learning objectives

A. To use body language and facial expressions to understand meaning.

B. To listen for the key points and key words/phrases.
C. To implicitly learn new vocabulary and language in an engaging way.
D. To understand prepositions of place.
E. To understand the speaker’s opinion and his/her justification for that opinion.
F. To recognise weak forms and connected speech

2.13 Useful online listening resources

If you want to practise listening skills, there's loads of authentic material. So again, think about, what
does your student like, or what's your student interested, and then suggest TED Talks, YouTube clips,
news items, and get your students to listen to those. The good thing about giving a range of listening
activities is that they'll hear loads of accents, not just one accent. And it will really help them get used
to different conversations, different accents, different environments.

Useful online listening resources

There are many online listening resources that learners can use to help them develop their listening
skills independently. You’re going to review some of those resources and think about their use in
particular contexts.

Task 1 - First, listen to Mary talking about opportunities for learners to practise listening online.
Answer the questions.

 What resources does Mary mention?

 Why does Mary think listening to a range of resources is beneficial?

Task 2 - Below are four case studies of learners looking to improve their listening skills. Visit the four
websites below and review the sites. Which one do you think each learner would benefit from? Why?

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Case study 1 - Antonio is a B2-level business manager who travels abroad a lot for work. He’d like to
improve his listening skills so he can follow his colleagues’ discussions better in meetings.

Case study 2 - Katja is a five-year-old beginner learner. Her parents want her to listen to English
outside the classroom so she has a lot of exposure to it, not just in her weekly lesson.

Case study 3 - Rodrigo is a 14-year-old A2+ level learner who is taking English lessons to improve
his grades at school. He finds it hard to hear individual words when he listens and he knows he needs
to improve his listening skills, but he’s not very motivated.

Case study 4 - Lara is a B1-level adult learner who is really motivated to improve her listening skills.
Unfortunately, she’s a busy working parent so she doesn’t have a lot of time. She’d like a resource
with short recordings and quick tasks to complete so she can fit them into her busy life.

CBeebies
TEDxESL
elllo - English Listening Lesson Library Online
LyricsTraining
You can check your answers here.

You can find a list of further useful websites here which you may want to explore.

2.14 Things covered

Here’s a reminder of some of the things we’ve covered, which you can ask us questions about:

Helping learners to develop reading skills

 Deciding whether learners should read in or out of the lesson
 Online resources and tools for online reading lessons

Helping learners to develop listening skills

 Live listening tasks involving teacher talking
 Listening activities for online lessons
 Online resources for online listening lessons

2.15 Week 2 review

Hi, everybody. Hi, Mary Therese. Hello, Lindsay. Good morning, how are you? I'm good, thank you,
yeah. It's the end of Week Two, it's been another good week. Absolutely fantastic. So many ideas, so
many lovely comments, and this week we talked about receptive skills, about reading and listening.
We did. Yep. So we started with reading, and Olga said she thought it was probably the most difficult
of the four skills to teach online, because you've got to maintain learners' motivation. And, you know,
that is something to think about, isn't it, that keeping them motivated certainly with the type of text that
we ask them to read, the topic and that kind of thing.

But we looked at sort of different tasks types that we could use in reading lessons online, and also
thinking about whether we would get students to read online or at home depending on the age and
motivation levels and the type of text and so on. Absolutely. We also talked about sharing documents,
and Ross said that he'd just used Google Docs in a lesson recently to presumably share a reading
text, and he said it worked a treat. So that's great to know. Fantastic. Very good. And we also had
participants coming up with their own reading ideas, which was great, wasn't it? Absolutely. We had
lots and lots of ideas for reading lessons.

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For example, Jennifer, her idea was to get the students in your class to read the beginning of a story.
I've actually done this lots in my lessons, but actually I kind of unpicked it a little bit more in my brain.
Because before what I did was, you read the beginning of the story, and then you get them to make
up the end of it. But Jennifer's made me think a little bit deeper about this, about all the other stuff that
you could be doing. It's so generative. They could be talking about the characters, you could be
inputting language about describing character, describing physical appearance.

You could be inputting language about people, speculating, for example, using hypothetical if this
happened, then that would happen. So not only talking about what happens next in the story, but also
talking about the people, the places, and that sort of thing. Very nice idea. We also had the first
assignment on the course, and lots and lots of people have done that. And thank you everyone for
doing that, because really I know how hard it is to find a text that you think would be really good with
learners. And people found a text, they designed lessons around it, we had that uploaded for the
assignments, and people were able to give each other immediate feedback, which I think is really
fantastic.

So well done everyone. Lovely, really nice lessons. We can actually see them, because we've got
different access on the course, so it's really fantastic. Thank you so much. And then we moved on to
listening, didn't we, Lindsay? We did, yeah. And we're not going to talk too much about what we did
this week with listening but we're going to do a little demo, aren't we? Yeah.

You're going to share your, how to share audio, we'll start off with, shall we? Yeah. So we're in Zoom,
so we're going to focus on Zoom. I think we talked a bit last week about how Skype can be a bit
problematic sometimes, but with Zoom and with WebRoom you can actually play audio and video on
your device, and your student should be able to hear it. Now with Zoom you do have to allow that to
happen, so I'm just going to show you how. Now you can't see it because of the way we're recording it
at the moment, but a little pop up bar comes up at the bottom of my screen.

And I can click on the Share button, and this is what you will see here. So you'll see something like
this. So you have the opportunity to share your screen or share the whiteboard. Well if you share your
screen, it means that whatever you show on your computer, students will be able to see it. So that's
what I will choose. But before that, if you want to play audio or video, you need to make sure that in
the bottom left corner of this box the Share Computer Sound box is ticked, because it isn't usually. So
you tick it when you go into the meeting room, and then you'll be able to play audio or video
throughout the lesson.

So you tick that box and then click on Share, and then you'll be able to play it. So let me give you an
example. I'm going to bring up a web page, and I've got YouTube open, so I'm just using my browser.
And you can see that, can't you, Mary Therese? Yeah, and presumably I'm seeing exactly what you're
seeing on your screen. So you are seeing a picture of Cambridge English, this is from the Cambridge
English YouTube website, where they have samples of speaking exams. And these are two
candidates taking their speaking exam. Yep. So let's imagine that you are my advanced student
preparing for your Cambridge Advanced.

I'd like you to watch this video and I'd like you to do a little task while you watch it. So I'm going to play
it just to check that you can hear it. OK. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] It's in the drum part. And what do you do
there? I'm still at school, and I have two years to go. Oh, isn't he sweet? He's still at school and he's
got two years to go. [END PLAYBACK] Exactly. So you could hear that and see that fine, yes? Fine.
And so you'd be - if I'm your advanced student, you might be giving me an introduction to what I have
to do during the exam? Exactly, yes.

Can I just point out, you can see the video perfectly fine, can't you? It's playing very smoothly? Yes, I
can. But when the participants are home now watching this on our video of watching the video, it's
going to be jerky. But that's just because the Zoom software is obviously not very sophisticated at

28
screen capturing that video that's playing. It's not capturing it smoothly. It works. Yeah, and it's the
same problem that we have with the syncing and the recording, the synchronising the mouth and the
speak and the voice with the end of week video we had last week. I was all over the place. I looked
like I had too much to drink. OK.

So, now one thing that Diana said actually is that she's noticed that if she, I guess, shares let's say a
Word document with a task on it and then she wants them to watch the video, they're trying to juggle
between two tabs or something like that. Especially if she's got the white board open as well, so she's
juggling between two things. But you have a fix for that, don't you? You know how to split the screen.
So you can split the screen, yeah. So you split the screen, it means that you can show two separate
screens, two things that you have open at the same time.

So if you look on your keyboard, Lindsay, you'll see a Windows - you know, the Windows button? The
Windows key? Press the Windows key and press the arrow, which is the other end of the keyboard.
Press the right hand arrow and the Window keys at the same time. I think first I just have to minimise
this, don't I? So I minimise it here with the button at the top right. You didn't have to do that, but yeah.
Let's see. So I Windows and then right. There we go. And now that brings up the other things that are
open.

That brings up all the other things you have open, and you click on the other one that you want to
open beside. That's it. There you go. So now I can play one. Yeah. The student can listen to the thing,
watch the video, and look at the task at the same time. Exactly. So thank you very much. Windows
keys. Windows key and then the right arrow or the left arrow, I think it brings it up on the left hand
side, so either or. So thank you very much, brilliant. I'm going to stop my screen now, stop sharing so
that we can see each other again. Hello. Are we going to move on to questions now?

We're going to go onto questions, and we had some questions which are important I think. Nicoletta
and Matt both raised the issue of copyright, and I think this is a really good time to kind of clear the air
and say what's allowed and what's not allowed. But also it brings in the question of resources. So
maybe we should start, actually, with talking about resources and what kind - lots and lots of
questions from people about resources that you can use in online lessons. So Lindsay, do you want
to start saying something about resources? Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, you can choose - There
isn't a course book, is there? Well, people are asking, is there an online course book?

Not that we know of. So it will be a case of using a normal course book and adapting it, or creating
your own materials writing from scratch yourself, or going online and finding resources. And we are
sharing websites with you during the course of places where you can find useful resources, and
obviously participants, you are all sharing with each other lots of wonderful ideas of resources and
things like that. Don't worry too much. You don't need to know all of them, you know? Just make a
note of a small number you think will be useful to you if you're starting to feel overwhelmed. Because
you don't need to know all of them.

Yeah, I think the starting point is, is talk to the student, do a little bit of needs analysis, find out what
they're interested in, why they want to learn English, why they need to improve their English, what
skills they want to improve. And then do some analysis of their language, find out what language
areas they need to improve on. And then plan a little bit of a programme. What language areas you're
going to cover, what topics they're interested in, and then you can find materials either using a course
book or materials on particular topics and subjects online. So Lindsay, let's go onto copyright. So as
far as coursework goes, course books go, talk about what's allowed. What's allowed?

So if you are going to use a course book, then you should purchase the course book, your learner
should purchase the course book. And then if you want to scan some pages and bring them online or
use the e-version, then obviously that will be OK, because you've paid for it, your students paid for it.
That's not really going to be an issue. So you can use excerpts and so on. Using audio - sorry? Oh,

29
yeah, all right. Using audio, yeah. So using audio and video, if you stream it live from the website,
that's going to be fine.

If you show reading texts, show them on the website by bringing up the website and sharing your
screen, that's going to be fine as well. Shall I talk about what's not OK? Yes, talk about what's not OK.
So downloading PDF versions of course books. They're likely to be illegal copies, because I don't
know of any publishers or authors that would share their books in that way. Also, if you download
audio from a website that isn't offered as free as a downloadable version, or they offer it and you don't
pay for it in some way, then that is obviously going to be against copyright. Same with video. Yeah,
that's going to be an issue. Right.

So to summarise, if you buy the course book, student buys the course book, you can use anything
you want because it's yours. Be suspicious or think twice about anything that you download from a
site where you haven't been given specific permission to do that. On the other hand, anything that you
open in real time, any link that you open, any audio that you play, where you have the link, the learner
has the link, that's OK. That's fine. Fantastic. Perfect. OK, Lindsay, so I think that's it. We kind of, I
think probably need to wrap up. Just one thing. Can I just say one thing? Yes.

I just want us to mention what Willem has said, about how he's enjoying the course so much, because
he's reading all your comments. He's learning so much from you and your ideas, and we learn from
you and your ideas as well, so thank you so much for sharing. Yeah. And I think it's really a feature of
this course, actually, where people have been so generous with their ideas and so polite to each other
in this horrible world that we live in where people are, you know, routinely nasty to each other. I think
we're really blessed to have such a positive atmosphere and people being so nice. So Lindsay, next
week? Please keep the comments coming, by the way, everybody. Yep.

So next week, speaking and writing, so yep, we'll see you then. Yeah, bye bye. Bye.

3.1 Welcome to Week 3

Hi, everyone. Welcome to week three. Welcome. This week, we're talking about speaking and writing.
We are. So we're going to think about how we need to adapt speaking and writing tasks for an online
context, particularly speaking activities, where, if you have a group and you want to do pair work, but
you don't have breakout rooms, then what do you do? Exactly. And we're talking about group
cohesion as well-- how to develop rapport amongst a group of learners online. Yeah. We're going to
think about how we can help students to develop their pronunciation on online lessons. And
correction, of course-- how to give feedback in speaking and writing activities. Really important.
Absolutely.

We're going to show you some useful digital resources that you can use to create interesting
speaking and writing lessons. Good luck, everyone. Have a good week.

Welcome to week 3 - This week we’ll focus on planning and delivering effective productive
skills lessons online. We’ll talk about the similarities and differences between face-to-face speaking
and writing lessons and online speaking and writing lessons. We’ll give you practical ideas and
suggestions for tools, resources and activities which you can use to help learners to develop speaking
and writing sub-skills and improve students’ productive skills.

Outline of week 3 - This week we’ll answer these questions:

 What’s the same and what’s different about speaking and writing lessons online?
 How does a group speaking lesson differ to a face-to-face lesson?
 How can we help students to improve their pronunciation online?
 How can teachers provide learners with feedback on spoken and written work effectively?

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 What resources and tools are available to teachers and learners to use in productive skills
lessons?

3.2 Key things to remember when teaching a speaking lesson

Teaching speaking lessons online? Yes. So again, we're talking about making sure that you have
clear objectives, that you have a good reason for doing it. You're not just kind of chatting about stuff.
Also, that I think the frameworks for a speaking lesson are probably the same. You're going to have
some preparation work. Do a bit of speaking, and then of course, give a bit of feedback afterwards.
So those things are the same. But I think there are things that are different. And you wanted to talk a
bit about instructions. Yeah, I think, because you know, there is that distance when you're on an
online lesson that you need to be really, really clear with instructions.

So you need to make sure that the instruction you give is graded correctly. You know, you enunciate
correctly, all the sort of things you need to do to give good instructions. But you also need to check
them. And also give a demonstration where possible, so learners really understand what it is that
they're doing. Because you can't then, you can't then monitor and check. And fix it, exactly. And fix it,
exactly. So it's really difficult. Yeah, yeah. You might want to also type instructions into the chat box,
just to have a backup for people who haven't understood, something like that. Yeah. And also there's
this time lag thing that we were talking about before.

Yeah, there is a time like sometimes with the technology, of course. So there's that horrible thing
where you ask a question. And you get silence. There's silence. And then you panic and you feel that
you need to speak, so you ask the question again. But of course, the student just hasn't had time to
answer, because they've only just heard you at their end. So they speak, you speak at the same time,
you all speak over each other and then it gets really confusing. Yeah. So it'd be good to speak and
then one Mississippi, two Mississippi three Mississippi, four Mississippi. Exactly. You need to give a
few seconds. Anyway, it's good practise anyway to leave more wait time. Exactly, exactly.

Just to keep in mind. Yeah. And there's also a similar sort of problem to the group when who's to
speak and you need to organise who speaks when and put your hand up and that sort of thing when
you have a group, so that they don't talk over each other. Yes, you need to manage that really
carefully. Yeah. So all of those things you said are great. You can nominate. Or you could use the
audio, the microphone button, so that you can click it that to mute certain students or all of the whole
classes, so you just got one person who's speaking and can be heard by everyone else. Yes.

And problems also, the same sort of problems you have with face to face, where you have a weaker
student. Yeah, and with a weaker student, you could obviously, you don't want to put them on the
spot if they're feeling scared about speaking in front of the other learners. You could actually use the
chat box so they can type their answer in the chat box to you. It could be just to you directly, not to the
whole group. So then they're actually participating, they're doing the tasks. And they're starting to
build that confidence. And you can give them some positive reinforcement. And after a couple of
lessons, you can get them. They'll start speaking. Exactly, yeah.

And of course, the chat box is a major feature for giving feedback. Yeah, definitely. So there are a few
different features when you're giving delayed feedback on speaking. You can use the chat box, as
you say. Yeah. And here I think what's fantastic is, because you can often speak to individual learners
directly, you can actually give personalised feedback. You can also use the whiteboard. Yeah. For
whole class feedback. Or you could, if you don't have a whiteboard, you could type into a Word
document and then share your screen with a student. So few different ways to give feedback there.

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Key things to remember when teaching a speaking lesson - Our next focus is on helping learners
to develop their speaking skills in online lessons. You’re going to listen to Lindsay and Marie Therese
talking about key things to remember when teaching speaking lessons online.

Task - Watch the video. What do Lindsay and Marie Therese say about these things?

1. Lesson objectives
2. Lesson staging/framework
3. Instructions
4. Managing time lags
5. Managing dominant and quiet learners
6. Feedback

3.3 A one-to-one speaking lesson

So Caio, in today's lesson we are going to talk about jobs. OK. Caio, in the future, what kind of jobs
would you like to do? I would like to be a web designer or an architect. OK, and why? I would like to
be a web designer because I like IT and I like-- yes, to design something. I'm very creative.

To give an opinion you can say I think. OK? Yes. I think. Good. Good. Which you can also use
another word. The other word would be--

look. Do you know how to say this?

With opinion.

Of my opinion, this is very demanding. Yes. This is a very demanding job. Listen. Listen. In my
opinion, this is a very demanding job. Repeat. In my opinion, this is a very demanding job. Yes. Listen
to the pronunciation, Caio. In my opinion. In my opinion. Good. In my opinion is the same as I think. I
think. OK.

So Caio, now you have the three jobs. You will describe them. Then give your opinions about them
and say what you like or dislike about each job. And you are going to choose the best one from them.
But we are going to do this like a game. OK. Yeah. Whenever you use the new expression-- look. Can
you see them here-- Yes. Whenever you use, you will get two marks. So the maximum would be It
would be 2 times 6-- would it be 12? You would get 12 marks. OK, 12 marks. Good. So now, I'm
going to give you time for you to prepare. OK. OK. Start preparing.

OK. The carpenter-- in my opinion the job is rewarding because yes, when you finish something, you
can see what you have done-- like a table, or a cupboard, or a chair-- and it's beautiful, and that's-- I
think it's rewarding.

Good. So you've used the six words, and you've won. You've got 12 marks. Good job, Caio. Thanks.
Good job, yeah. But now, let's look at the things that you have said. Can you see this screen? Yes, I
can. OK. So you used the adjectives like rewarding and challenging.

You completed the task well. Something that you-- that I really liked was when you said when you
talked about the carpenter's job. You said that it would be very nice to see what-- What you have
done. Yes. That's really nice. What you've done. It's really nice. This is-- you said this. It's-- you have
used the present perfect to talk about the result. To see something that you've done. That was really
nice. You've also used the word "rewarding." That was also very nice.

Good. OK, now-- help me here.

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There are two problems here, Caio.

I would like. That's correct. But please, don't say "I would." Say more naturally.

I want. I'd like. I'd like.

To earn. I would like. How much? To earn a lot of.

Yeah, good. So can you say that again for me? I'd like to earn a lot of money. Good.

A one-to-one online speaking lesson - An online speaking lesson is likely to be structured in a

similar way to a face-to-face speaking lesson. Learners will be introduced to the topic, be given some
useful language where appropriate, have time to prepare, have plenty of opportunities to speak, and
then receive feedback on their performance.

In this video, Cristina teaches a speaking lesson to 15-year-old Caio. The lesson objective is:

The student will be able to extend his speaking by giving opinions, talking about preferences
and giving reasons for his choices.

Task - Watch the video and answer these questions.

1. How does Cristina stage the lesson? Is it the same or different to a typical face-to-face
speaking lesson?
2. What feature of the platform does Cristina exploit to help Caio develop his speaking skills?
How does she exploit it?

3.4 A group online speaking lesson

So, we're going to talk about exchanging opinions today. And I have a couple of questions for you to
answer. So, here they are. Please read them. So you're going to work with a partner. And I'm go to
open-- Sorry-- I'm going to open breakout rooms now. We can speak about it forever. Forever. I'm
sorry, but you only have three minutes to do this. Oh. All right, so let me open the rooms.

So please join them.

So, where is our questions? Guys, you can find them in the chat box. Oh, OK.

Here we go.

Some years ago, we had one person on our project. It was on customer site. And-- maybe. There was
about one-- a new system. And my colleagues want to make a new functionality inside another. But
they was totally, totally different. So, I understood it. And I explained my opinion, and showed
arguments why we did not-- we had no-- hadn't do it, or didn't have to do it.

When we've asked for someone's opinion, this person needs to express it. So can you think of some
phrases that you can use to state your opinion? From my point of view? OK. As I see it? I think? In my
opinion? In my mind-- Great. Can you please type them in the chat box-- well, at least one phrase
from each of you?

OK, we have a puzzle here. And you need to find the phrases. So, there may be one word or several
words. You have mentioned some of these phrases. And you only need to look for them, well,

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vertically or horizontally-- so, not diagonally. You can use the tool and just circle them. Full phrase will
be in one line? Yeah, that's right.

Anton, do you have a question?

I wanted to ask about, should we find it in one directional from the left to the right, and from up to
down? Yes, yes, exactly.

Good job. Ah, something is missing on the left.

You missed a letter, for some reason-- a nice one. Yes.

So now, let's move on to task 4. Please read the instructions. Hmm.

If you're done reading, please take a Yes up on Zoom.

Mm-hmm, wonderful.

Maybe you have talked about some file, maybe we have the whole information how we can check in
this complaint. What can we do? So, firstly, I would again disagree with you, because I call him
yesterday, and I speak about his new project.

So there is another scenario. Please read it. Line 20? Line 20. OK, so now I would like three people to
have a talk about this. So you're all together on the same team. So I would just exchange opinions--
agree or disagree. Ask one another and use the key phrases. So the other three people, please type
the key phrases they use in the chat box. So, let us start. Sergei, Dmity, and Kate. So please have a
conversation. Ksenia, Igor, Anton, please type the phrases.

You can start.

Hi, guys, we have a problem. Tell me more, please.

We can't meet the deadline. So we need to extend our team, but our customers don't want to do it.
So, as I see it, we should-- I don't know, catch up somehow?

I have a phrase that I would like you to correct.

We make a lot of mistakes. Just one phrase. Really?

Yeah, so if we have a verb, then we use about. How do you feel about that?

A group online speaking lesson - Planning a group speaking lesson is often more challenging than
planning a one-to-one speaking lesson. We need to consider how we can ensure all learners in the
group have the opportunity to develop their speaking skills. This may mean using platform features
such as breakout rooms for the main speaking task, or if those are unavailable, asking learners to do
the task as a whole group.

In this video Inna teaches a lesson to a group of Russian adults in a company. The lesson objective
is:

By the end of the lesson, students will be better able to ask for and give opinions, agree and
disagree.

34
Task - Watch the video and answer these questions.

1. How does Inna exploit each platform feature below? Complete the table.

Platform feature How it’s exploited

Breakout rooms

Chat box

Interactive whiteboard

Tick icon

Share screen

2. How does Inna’s exploitation of platform features ensure that all learners in the class have the
opportunity to achieve the lesson objective?
3.5 Developing group cohesion
Group dynamics can play an important role in the success of a class. The dynamics of an online
group of learners may be different from those of a face-to-face group. This means that an online
teacher needs to actively employ techniques to ensure that a group can bond with each other as well
as with their teacher.

Task - Read the article below where Helen writes about the challenges of teaching an online group.
 What problem does she describe?
 What solutions does she suggest?

Helping to create a cohesive group - Working with a group in a digital environment can bring new
challenges to overcome. The learners are not in the same building or perhaps not even in the same
country and the distance created by the technology can have an impact on group dynamics.

Learners don’t automatically build the same relationship with each other that they might in a face-to-
face environment, so it’s important for the teacher to help them build that relationship. The first thing
you can do is to model good communication and polite, respectful behaviour. Treat your students in
the way that you expect them to behave with each other and show interest in their lives in the way
that you hope they show interest in each other’s lives.

Begin your course by giving students the opportunity to get to know each other, just as you would in a
face-to-face lesson, such as sharing information about their jobs or where they live. Set easier tasks
to complete at first to help learners build confidence and feel comfortable speaking in English with
each other. Then, in future lessons, give learners the opportunity to personalise lesson content (e.g.
topic or language) so they continue to learn about each other. Encourage them to show interest in
what each other says by nominating a learner to ask a follow-up question.

35
If possible, use breakout rooms to allow for pair or small group work. This puts learners in control of
the conversation and helps them get used to conversing online without you controlling the
conversation as usually happens in the main classroom space.

If breakout rooms aren’t available, put learners in control by asking one of them to ask another learner
a question. That learner then asks another learner a question and so on. Make sure all learners ask
and answer a question. These questions can be part of a lead-in to a topic, or they could be practice
of a particular grammar structure, e.g. questions with How often, or questions about the past.

Helping learners to establish a good rapport with each other and encouraging all learners to
participate in the lessons will help learners to grow in confidence, be more productive and enjoy their
lessons more fully.

3.6 Dealing with error correction in online speaking lessons

Lindsey, let's talk about error correction with speaking activities. So we talk about immediate feedback
and delayed feedback. Let's start with immediate feedback, how is it different? Well I think that you
would do immediate and delayed in the same way. Immediate would be more with, obviously, a focus
on accuracy, and then delayed with a focus on fluency. Yeah, so if you're doing a bit of language work
prior to the actual speaking activity, you might use immediate feedback. Exactly. Now when students
are speaking in class, and if the focus is on accuracy, you would pull a face when you want them to
correct. You might repeat half of what they said up to the point where they made the error.

And hope that they then correct. Exactly, something like that. Now when you are listening to students
speaking online, especially if your face is a little video-- They're never going to pick that up. They're
never going to pick up a funny face or a hesitation or a little noise. Exactly. Or if you repeat the
sentence, you're probably going to interrupt them. The lag might make it awkward and so that
becomes problematic. OK, so solution? Well, I think online teachers tend to do less immediate
correction. It's not fully delayed to the end of the activity, but once that student has finished their turn.
Then you might actually say, you said this, can you correct it?

Or you might, for example, agree with them that you're going to hold up a big card, or with young
learners, a puppet or something like that, and agree with them before they speak-- That they need to
stop when you hold it up. Exactly. Yeah. So I think those are some things to think about with
immediate correction. Fine. And so let's talk about delayed correction. So we're talking here, they've
done the speaking activity and now you want to give them a bit of feedback on that and pick up some
errors and maybe some examples of good language. Yeah, absolutely. We can use the chat box,
can't we, for that?

So you're listening, they're chatting, and you're typing in the chat box which involves some dexterity
and multitasking. Yeah, I do think that if you're not a fast typist it is something you probably need to
practise. Yeah, because you know you can't just write it and then write it on the board. You do need to
be sort of typing as you listen. I must admit, I tend to use a Word document, because then I can just
have a quick check before I send it to them rather than using the chat box. That's a good idea. But
actually, the chat box can also be used when you're actually doing the feedback. Would you like to
explain that?

Well as you say, we can use a chat box or a Word document or the whiteboard to share the errors.
And then I think what is great compared to a face to face lesson, actually, is that you can get the
students to all correct the errors at the same time. So you put the errors on the whiteboard, for
example, and then you say to students, can you correct them in the chat box? And you can be seeing
them correcting them and to see which ones they can't correct, which you then spend more time
explaining. And the ones that they know-- And that's definitely an advantage to online teaching than
the face to face.

36
Because in the face to face classroom, only one or two will shout out the correct answer and
everybody else just sits and watches. But this way you involve all the learners. I think that's fantastic
feedback for you as a teacher, and it gets all the students thinking which is really important.

Dealing with error correction in online speaking lessons - Feedback is an essential part of the
learning process and learners in an online environment need to know where they are now in their
learning, where they need to go and how they can get there just as much as a learner in a face-to-
face context. One element of feedback is error correction. Error correction online is likely to be dealt
with slightly differently than in face-to-face lessons.

Task - Watch Lindsay and Marie Therese talking about some error correction techniques you can use
in your online lessons. Which statements refer to immediate correction and which refer to delayed
correction.

1. We should include examples of good language used.

2. It needs practice.
3. It’s hard for students to recognise when it’s needed.
4. Less of this is done in online lessons.
5. We can use Word, the whiteboard or the chat box to elicit it.
6. It’s possible to personalise it with the chat box.
7. You could prompt it with a card or puppet.
8. All learners can get involved via the chat box.

3.7 Real-time error correction - you try it!

When I was a child, I lived within a small city without sea. And for me, long time ago, I think the
wonderful-- a wonderful holiday was on the beach. To stay on the beach. My favourite holiday was--
when I was eight or nine years old, I spend my time with my cousins in a big house, a family house.
And went to the beach, and like some activities outside. And was a real good environment. Familiar
environment. It was very nice. When I was a child, I used to go, uh, where I was born. Yes. And I went
with my cousin.

And there, also my grandparents. And is beautiful, the countryside. We can play in street, people are
friendly, I was happy in my childhood.

Real-time error correction – you try it! - You’ve just heard Marie Therese and Lindsay talking about
the challenges of multitasking when dealing with delayed error correction. In this step, you’re going to
practise typing examples of good language and examples of errors as you hear them.

In this video you will see Julia, Joanna and Carolina doing a speaking task. The task they were set
was Talk about your favourite holiday when you were a child.

Task 1 - First, open a Word document then watch the video and, at the same time, type onto the
Word document the feedback you would give to the learners. Remember that you will not want to
correct every single error but you will want to pick out key areas that the learner needs to work on to
improve their speaking skills. Don’t forget to provide praise for good responses!

Task 2 - Review your notes and make sure they’re quickly ready to share with Julia, Joanna and
Carolina as you don’t want them to sit and wait for a long time to receive the feedback from you.
Check that the notes are easy to follow and are organised clearly, e.g. errors of one type grouped
together.

3.8 Developing speaking skills outside a lesson

37
Speaking practice is no longer something that can only be done in a lesson. There are many digital
tools that allow learners to communicate outside the classroom and complete speaking tasks, both
synchronously and asynchronously. Let’s look at some of those tools and consider how they can
benefit learners.

Task - Below are links to three digital tools followed by three descriptions of the tools. Match the tools
(1–3) to the descriptions (A–C). Click on the links to visit the sites.

1. Voki
2. Flipgrid
3. Voice Spice

A. Students record themselves talking about an enjoyable trip away to practise using the past simple. They share a link to their
recording via their class online chat group and listen to each other’s. In the next lesson, they vote for the most enjoyable trip and
the teacher gives overall feedback.

B. The teacher creates an avatar and adds their voice, introducing themselves to a new student (a young learner). The student
creates their own avatar and introduces themselves to the teacher.

C. The teacher records a video, asking all of their students at an intermediate level to talk about a film they’ve enjoyed watching
recently. The students then record their own videos, completing the speaking task. Despite the fact that each student has
one-to-one lessons with the teacher, the students watch the other videos and then tell the teacher which film they heard
about that they’d like to see and why. The teacher provides overall feedback on the students’ performance.

Note that for each of these activities, the learners (or their parents) will need clear instructions on how
to use the tool. This might mean demonstrating this in a lesson and/or giving written instructions.
There are also video tutorials available on websites such as YouTube for these kinds of websites.
Older learners could watch these tutorials in English to help them with their listening skills.

3.9 Diagnosing pronunciation problems

So if you're going to teach speaking, obviously, your student will do lots of speaking in your session,
which is great. You can also get them to do lots outside the session as well. So making, for example,
YouTube videos is really popular. You can ask your student to make short videos on particular topics,
send them to you. And that's great. If your student wants to work on individual sounds - so a lot of
students quite like, yeah, seeing their improvement on particular words that are difficult. A good thing
to do is identify specific areas. Research your students' language background to realise, OK, they
speak this language. They will probably have this difficulty.

Look out for that difficulty, and then direct them to something like there's a really good app, Sounds
Foundations, I think it is. And they can practise the pronunciation of sounds on that.

Diagnosing pronunciation problems - The first step to helping learners with their pronunciation is
diagnosing issues they may have in relation to sounds, word stress, sentence stress and intonation.

Task - Watch Mary talking about ways to help learners with their pronunciation. Then, read the quotes
from online teachers saying how they diagnose their learners’ pronunciation issues. What different
methods are mentioned? (You can click on the image to expand the quotes.)

38
 3.10 Helping students to improve their pronunciation
Lindsay, teaching pronunciation online has some advantages. It does, yeah. I think we would teach
pronunciation in the same way we do face-to-face. We correct students. We help them to get it right.
You've got this wonderful camera on your device that you can get very close to, so the teacher can go
very close to the camera and really show the position of the mouth. And the student can really have a
look and see. The position of the teeth and the tongue and the lips and shapes. Exactly. And you can
get closer in the way that you just wouldn't in the classroom, I think, sometimes.

And also the student can then come closer to the camera and look at themselves and try and copy
and see if they're doing it in the same way. And the teacher can look at it as well and say, no, your
mouth is not around enough. Make your mouth rounder or something. Exactly. Yeah. So the student
basically has a mirror in the classroom by looking at the camera. So that's one way. Yeah. I think
recording is really useful for helping pronunciation. So for example, the teacher can record the student
and take it home at their leisure, listen to it really carefully, and identify specific areas of pronunciation
that the student has difficulty with.

The students can take the recording and listen to it after, maybe just do it again and keep doing it until
they feel they've got it really right. You could have recordings of the teacher that the student takes
home and repeats. There's also a whole world of YouTube videos and people with different accents.
And so the more the students listen, the more they improve their pronunciation. Absolutely. I think it's
important for the students to notice. They listen to the video, they really notice how people from
around the world pronounce things differently in English and choose the model that they want to
mimic and then listen and repeat, listen and repeat. Yeah. And of course, there's also using the
board.

Yeah, so just like in a face-to-face classroom, you can use the board to draw the mouth, position of
the tongue or to show linking, for example-- something like that. That would be good. Yeah. And also
there are apps, aren't there? There's sounds app that you can download, or the student can download
specific sounds to practise. Yeah, that's a really good app so students can listen to the different
sounds and repeat. And that's a good way of getting them using the phonemic script as well, if that's
something you want them to do.

Helping students to improve their pronunciation - Online teachers can help learners to develop
their pronunciation in much the same way as face-to-face teachers do: by modelling pronunciation
and giving learners the opportunity to practise that same pronunciation with feedback and tips from
the teacher. There are tools that online teachers can exploit to benefit their students’ pronunciation.

Task - Watch Lindsay and Marie Therese talk about how to help students improve their pronunciation
in online lessons. Complete the sentences with a word in each gap.

39
1. A teacher can get close to the ______ to show the position of their mouth when producing a
sound. The student can do the same to see if the position of their mouth is the same.
2. A student can ______ a lesson and listen back to evaluate and improve their pronunciation.
3. A teacher can use the ______ to show how words are linked together.
4. Students can listen and notice the pronunciation in online ______ and use it to improve
their own pronunciation.
5. Students can use online tools such as Macmillan’s ______ app to practise pronouncing
sounds.

3.11 Useful online tools for developing pronunciation

Let’s now look at some useful online tools that teachers can use in lessons, and learners can use
outside of lessons, to improve their pronunciation.

Task - Read the descriptions of the online tools and click on the links to find out more. Then answer
these questions:

1. Which tools help learners to produce sounds?

2. Which tools help learners to produce words?
3. Which tool focuses on sentence stress and intonation?
4. Which tools provide a reference for learners of English?
5. Which tools could be used in an online lesson?
6. Which tools are more likely to be used for self-study?

A free, interactive version of the phonemic chart. Click on each

Sound Foundations interactive phonemic chart:
sound to hear it or alternatively download a non-interactive version.

Study sounds and practise using them. Free version available.

Sounds: The pronunciation app:
Paid-for full version available. Includes an interactive phonemic chart.

A free pronunciation dictionary. Listen to how words, including names of places etc., are
Forvo:
pronounced by people from around the world.

A website and app. Watch a video, learn the words, record yourself copying the
EnglishCentral:
pronunciation and get a grade. Minimal free content. A lot of content with a subscription.

Tim’s free pronunciation workshop videos look at the sounds of English including weak form
BBC Learning English:
and assimilation.

3.12 Teaching writing skills in online lessons

We're focusing on writing skills now and helping learners to develop those. Yep. And, probably, it's
very much the same as in a face-to-face classroom. The actual writing will probably take place at
home. So you'd set it as a homework task. But as in a face-to-face classroom, the set-up of it would
need to be in the class. So if you are doing - I don't know, they have to write a description of
something or they have to write a letter, you would provide a model during the lesson. Maybe you'd
give a reading comprehension task for them to do. You'd talk about layout. You'd talk about the way
that the thing is organised, text structure, and so on.

And you might do some language input during the lesson for them to be able to produce that writing
task. And, of course, there's also the issue of subskills. Do you want to talk a little about writing
subskills that you might develop during the lesson? Yeah, well, you might, for example, focus on
punctuation or linking ideas or helping learners to, I don't know, use a wider variety of vocabulary or
word order or something like that. So you might do a little bit of practise of writing in the classroom.

40
Sure, things like formal, informal register - Exactly. - formal, informal language, you know, which is
appropriate for which type of letter, for example, or email. Absolutely.

But like you say, the main writing task will probably be done at home. But then, as a follow up to it, in
the next lesson, you'd do some stuff on feedback, a little bit of correction, wouldn't you? You would,
absolutely. So you'd give feedback. And I think what's great is when learners are using technology to
write rather than by hand, as a lot of learners do in the face-to-face classroom. You've got learners
sending you a Word document with the text on, so you can do quite a lot with that. There are quite
ways that you can give feedback, written feedback, and also, oral feedback, as well.

Teaching writing skills in online lessons - Let’s finish this week by focusing on developing
learners’ writing skills in an online classroom. While an online teacher’s approach to writing skills will
be similar to that of a teacher in a face-to-face classroom, there are some differences due to the
nature of teaching online.

Task 1 - Watch Lindsay and Marie Therese talking about teaching writing skills online and take notes
on the things below to help you do the next task.

Activities done in and out of the lesson

Lesson structure

Writing sub-skills

Feedback on writing

Task 2 - Imagine you’re teaching a writing lesson to a B2-level one-to-one adult learner, who’s
preparing for university. The lesson focus is on structuring a paragraph in an essay.

Read these five tasks which make up the lesson. Which are you likely to do in class? Which are you
likely to do out of class? Why? Use your notes from task 1 to help you.

1. You provide the learner with a model essay paragraph and ask the learner to identify where
the main point is stated (the topic sentence) and the purpose of the other sentences (supporting
details).
2. You ask the learner to put five sentences in the correct order to create a cohesive and
coherent paragraph.
3. You ask the learner to write an essay paragraph on a topic already discussed in a previous
lesson.
4. You ask the learner to write a complete essay.
5. You provide feedback to the learner on the quality of their essay.

3.13 An online writing lesson

Super. OK, so at the top there, the first thing you can see is paragraph development. And I've written
a short paragraph there. And there are five spaces. Could you please have a look at the words
underneath, a to e and try and pop them into the right place? Right. Yeah. So specific examples, topic
sentence, linking words, reasons and general statements. First states the main idea. And 3, number
3. There in number one. Sorry, it says "A well written paragraph usually begins with a clear topic
sentence. B, it states your main idea." OK. Yes. Yes. "The paragraph then develops with a series of

41
one or more general statements, each of which is supported by reasons or specific examples." There
we go.

You've made the change. --linking words are used. Linking words, yes. Great. OK. So we're going to
have a look at this paragraph structure, just like this. And we'll go to, later on, use some of the words
that we looked at a moment ago, some of those nouns and adjectives. If you scroll down the page a
little bit, you'll see the title, It Takes All Sorts. Yeah? Mm-hm. And I've got a box there with six different
linking words and phrases in. Mm-hm. OK. So below that, as you can see, I've got a paragraph there
all about Raphaele Mm-hm. And it's a description of him.

And I'm following the paragraph structure that you've just looked at, so the topic sentence, general
statement, specific examples. And I should have these linking words in there. But I've left them out.
So in the gaps you can see, 1 to 6, could you try and pop those linking words and statements into the
right place? Yes. OK.

Needless to say

Well, again, you're on form today. Not a single mistake. Well, thank you. OK. Are you happy with all of
those phrases? Nothing you're unfamiliar with? No. I think you've seen them all before. Yeah. Yeah. I
use them quite a lot. Apart from the last one, like needless to say, again, it's not something I use often
But I know the meaning. It just doesn't come natural, probably. Sure. OK. Not a problem. You're going
to practise that for homework. But first of all, so scrolling back up, OK, so we've got our paragraph
developments. Yeah? Could you show me, in the paragraph that I've written, where each of these
features are?

So the first one, the topic sentence, where is that in my paragraph?

OK. It should be the first one. It is. OK. It's not a trick question. It's not a trick question. OK. OK. So
that first sentence there, that's my topic sentence. And it introduces the main idea. Raffaele, 15 years
old, and he's lazy. Mm-hm. OK. So following it up, then, we've got the general statement, which is?

Which is my general statement?

Your general state--

"I say this because he's one of the laziest, least motivated people I know Great. OK. So after that,
what are we looking for?

We would be looking for D and A. For reasons and examples For reasons and examples which are
here So, let's tie everything together. At the top, you've got the structure of the paragraph. Down here,
you've got the example with six different linkers that I've used. Previously, we looked at these eight
different nouns and adjectives of personality. Yes. And you told me that candid, resolute, and valour
were three that you were not so familiar with. Yeah? Yeah. OK. For homework, what I'd like you to do
is choose one of those words-- I don't mind which one-- where you've written a little sentence for me.
Choose one of them.

And could you expand that out into a full paragraph like that, following that format of topic sentence
through on down to reasons and specific examples. Mm-hm. OK? Yes.

42
An online writing lesson - As we’ve discussed, a student may write sentences or a short text in a
writing lesson, or they might write a text for homework. In this step, you’re going to watch Ollie teach a
writing lesson to Antonella where she examines a model text in the lesson and then writes her own
text at home.

Task - Watch the lesson and answer the questions.

1. What do you think the objective of the lesson is? (i.e. what writing sub-skill is being taught?)
2. What features of the platform do Ollie and Antonella use to help Antonella achieve the
lesson objective? How do they use them?

3.14 Giving feedback on a written work in a digital environment

Antonia, thanks very much for sending me through your essay. I'm going to give you some feedback
on it now. So firstly, the introduction, then. I think this is well-structured. So you start off with a general
statement about the topic. You then go on to talk more specifically about the area of the topic that
you're going to talk about in your essay. And you finish by making a very clear statement about what
the essay is going to include. So this makes your introduction really clear. And it's also an
improvement on the way you've structured introductions in the past, so well done on that.

In terms of your main body paragraphs, you do present two points of view, one point here and the
second here. And these paragraphs are also well structured. So you start off with your topic sentence
here and here, to introduce the topic, great. And then you have your supporting points here. And then
you finish with a concluding sentence, which kind of states why you think that governments should
pay for cultural funding. Now your supporting ideas are quite short and it does make the paragraphs
quite short. And really, at this stage, you need to be expanding those main ideas more. So those main
body paragraphs more, I should say.

So think about adding one or two more reasons to support the argument, may be an example. And
that will help you to expand both of these paragraphs a little bit more. Your conclusion is fine. It
summarises the main points, OK, it paraphrases. But just be careful here, where you are giving your
opinion. You're not quite answering the question. So you say that you believe governments are in the
position to assure free cultural events, which is true. But do you actually think that it is their
responsibility, which is here in the question. So make sure you do answer the question when you are
stating your opinion. OK, let's look at some of the language then.

Just be careful that your subject and verb do actually match. So here you've got believe, people
believe, not believes, because obviously people is plural. And the same here, you've got a plural noun
so you need plural determinant with these.

I think the word you mean here is perspective. And we talk about in the conclusion.

Here you used to fund as the subject of the sentence, but actually, when a verb is a subject, we would
use the gerund. Here you've used the word exposition. I think this is probably a false friend in your
language, because in English, we would say exhibition.

Oh here, I've just noticed here, because everybody learns about history. So again, make sure that the
conjugation is correct between the subject and the verb. To introduce your conclusion, it's better to
use in conclusion or to conclude.

And while there's nothing wrong here with get less money, the grammar of the vocabulary is correct,
you might want to start thinking about using higher level vocabulary and more academic, more formal
vocabulary. For example, received lower levels of funding. This just sounds more appropriate for an
essay. So to summarise then, the strengths of your essay are that you structured it very well, four

43
very clear paragraphs. The introduction is well-structured and very clear. The reader understands
exactly what you're going to talk about.

The main body paragraphs are structured well and the conclusion is fine. But things to work on,
number one, in your conclusion, if you're going to state your personal view, make sure you answer the
question. Number two, try to expand your main body paragraphs by adding more reasons or
examples. And number three, start thinking about using more formal language. And one thing you can
do is to look at page 66 in the course book, because that has some examples of more formal verbs
and nouns that we might use in essays. So use that to help you. And we'll do more on that during the
course as well. So lots of strengths there, and clear improvement, well done.

If you have any questions about my feedback, do ask in the next lesson.

Giving feedback on written work in a digital environment - There are several digital tools that
allow online teachers to provide useful feedback to learners on their written work. Teachers can
provide feedback orally in a lesson, or you might prefer learners to receive and digest their feedback
via email or a shared link outside the lesson.

Task 1 - Watch the video which shows a screencast of Lindsay providing oral feedback when marking
a piece of written work produced by her learner. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this
format, for both the learner and the teacher?

Note that a good tool for such feedback is Screencast-o-matic. It allows you to create the video, save
it in the cloud and share a link to it with your student.

Task 2 - Now look at three other ways of giving feedback on written work. Click on the links in the
table and then complete the table with the strengths and weaknesses of each feedback type.

Tool Strengths Weaknesses

Review tools in a wordprocessing document, i.e. track changes

and comments

A shared document, e.g. Google Docs

Interactive whiteboard
3.15 - Useful digital tools for developing writing skills
There are many tools online that learners can use to help to develop their writing skills. Some of those
tools encourage creative writing, some provide support and others provide feedback. In this step,
you’re going to reflect on which tools are the most appropriate for different learners.

Task - Visit the websites below and decide which are appropriate for these learners. There may be
more than one site that you could use with each type of learner.

Learners who want to be creative.

Young learners.
Learners who want to create a product.

44
 Learners who want feedback on their writing.

Storybird Book Creator

Make Beliefs Comix Write & Improve

3.16 Things covered
Here’s a reminder of some of the things we’ve covered, which you can ask us questions about:

Helping learners to develop speaking skills

 Ways in which a speaking lesson online is different from one face-to-face
 Ways in which we can help learners improve their pronunciation
 Ways of dealing with error correction
 Useful tools for developing speaking skills outside the classroom

Helping learners to develop writing skills

 Tools that learners can use for writing in lessons
 Tools for providing learners with feedback on written work
 Useful tools for developing writing skills.

Post your questions in the comments below. Don’t forget to read other people’s questions and ‘like’
the ones you think are interesting. We’ll answer the most liked questions at the end of the week.

3.17 Week 3 review

Hi, everybody. Welcome to our end of Week 3 video. Hello, everyone. Hello, Lindsay. Greetings from
Barcelona. Yes, lucky you. Absolutely fantastic. So, Lindsay, another busy week. This week we talked
about speaking and writing. And lots of contributions, again, ideas from everyone. Thank you
everyone for doing that Yeah. We started with talking about speaking. We did. And we asked people
to think about face-to-face speaking activities and whether they they're adaptable and usable in the
online environment. And I think people recognise, actually, for the most part, you can adapt quite
easily the kinds of things you do face-to-face online. Absolutely. And we had some examples. I think I
had Gala, and Gala was talking about information gap activity.

So this is where one student reads about something or has some information that they have to share
with another student, and Gala quite rightly said that that can be done in breakout rooms. And I think I
agree with her with that. I also had Roman, who was telling me about surveys. And in a face-to-face
classroom, you would have everybody get to get up and mingle and ask everybody else in the class.
But again, that can be done in breakout rooms. You have a group of four or five students, and they
interview each other, and do the survey that way, and then share it.

You can reorganise the groups, if you want to, half-way through, so that they talk to different people.
And you had an idea as well, I think, Lindsay. Oh, it wasn't my idea. It was Christopher's idea. He
uses hot seat in the face-to-face classroom. And that's where you have a student who sits on a seat
in front of the board. So they have their back to the board, and the teacher writes a word or a phrase -
it's kind of vocabulary review - on the board, and the rest of the class call out definitions. And the
student has to try and guess what the word or phrase is. Well, he sort of flipped it.

So he's saying that you could have one student who knows the word. So he would type the word into
the chatbox to that student directly, and they would have to define the word to the rest of the class.
And I think that would work really well. Absolutely. Very nice. I think that would - so you would do that
for vocabulary review or maybe even if you were teaching and you would, perhaps. You'd get the
student to go look it up and try and define it, and then everybody else would have to see if they know

45
what the word is Absolutely. Yeah. And, of course, they're speaking while they do that, so that's also a
good speaking practice.

We had the one-to-one example lesson today with the lovely Caio and also the group class with the
Russian business people. That's right. And Caio it's interesting, because we had a little bit of reaction
from some of the participants on the course saying that the pace was a little bit slow and maybe the
students were not very communicative. I think I should just say, in their defence, that they knew they
were being recorded. They knew that thousands of people around the world would be watching their
lesson. So I find it very unsurprising that they were on their best behaviour and a little bit quiet and a
little bit - Except, Caio is just - he's like 14 going on for 45.

So he's a grown man anyway. But the others, I think the business people in Russia maybe were a
little bit quieter than perhaps they are. And also, I think that Ina, who was the teacher in that lesson,
we asked her to use as many tools as possible in the lesson. And I think, sometimes, if you use too
many tools or too many of the different devices, you can drop the pace, because the students have to
kind of familiarise themselves. What do you think, Lindsay? I agree. Yeah. I think that pace can be
slower online. I think there are lots of reasons for that.

Claire actually said that in a face-to-face classroom you have the physical energy of being in the room
together, and you just don't have that online. So something does lack. That's why the rapport - we talk
so much about rapport in Week One. But I think pace might be slower. But I also think that it's about
engagement. It might not be rolling around, laughing, and sort of all fun and games that you might feel
that you're sometimes having in a face-to-face environment. But I think the students that we had were
very much engaged in those lessons. I agree. And they were doing things. I agree. They were active,
even if they weren't sort of calling out or talking at great length.

I agree. I think that those students worked really hard in Ina's lesson. And Caio as well, in the one-to-
one lesson. And I think, also, we had Helen, didn't we, who made a comment about group dynamics,
and how sometimes you get a group - Helen, I think, she was Brazilian, and she said that usually
when she has a group, everybody talks all the time. Being from the Caribbean, we all talk all at the
same time as well. And she said, but currently, she has two groups, one of whom just talk all the time.

And the other group is very, very much quieter, and she finds herself having to join in a lot more and
try and keep the pace up a little bit more. And I think that's true really of face-to-face and online
teaching. But also, I think, Lindsay, we talked a little bit about how to keep people going in breakout
rooms. That can change the pace, can't it? So rather than everyone sort of taking turns, you can put
students into pairs, get them in breakout so they have more of a chance to speak. And we just want to
do a little demo, because people are asking about how they work and also how you monitor them,
which we'll talk about in a moment.

So I'm going to do one of my little demos again, and I'm going to use, again, images, because we
can't actually, unfortunately record all the little boxes that come up using Zoom. You won't be able to
see everything. So here are my ready-made images. So let's imagine that I have a group class with
Mariana and Erika. They're very shy. They don't want to be seen on camera for the purposes of this
particular demo. And I - what I want them to do a thing, they're going to do a little presentation. And
before they do, I want them to actually go away, on their own, in a breakout room, and do a little
rehearsal on their own. Fantastic.

And I want to go in and see them and give them a little bit of feedback before they actually do it. So
that's why I've asked them to go into breakout rooms. So this is what happens - down here, on my
screen, I have the breakout room option. So again, this is Zoom. And so I click on breakout rooms,
and this box appears, and it tells you how many participants you've got, and you can choose the
number of rooms. Now, you can automatically assign participants to rooms. In which case, it will just

46
send pairs or groups to whichever room it fancies. So that means you don't have any control over who
works with who.

But you can manually assign them, which is great. So I would choose that one, perhaps. And I'll just
show you what happens. Obviously, with this one, they're just two rooms and one person per room.
So it would be easy. But if I had a larger group, and I wanted to assign it, then I would click on
Manual. And here, if I go to each breakout room and click on Assign, I could just click on the names of
the students that I want to go into that room. And then they will get a message on their screen that
says something like, you've been assigned to this room, do you want to accept?

And they click on OK or Accept, and then they appear in the room.

So they appear in the room. I don't appear in the room. But I have my list of breakout rooms, and this
is how I now go and monitor. So let's say that I want to go to - let's imagine - a breakout room and
listen to Erika. So I click on Join. It says, do you want to join, and you just click on Yes. And then you
appear in the room, and you can see Erika, and she can see you. So you don't need to speak, of
course. You could turn your video off, but your name would still appear. So they would still know that
you are in the room.

And in the room, the students have access to the chatbox if they want to use the chatbox. So you
could come in and you could actually type some little messages to them - some feedback to them. But
only the people in your room. The can look at when they've finished doing what they want to do.
[INAUDIBLE] Or you could, in other activities, they could use the whiteboard. We're going to talk
about writing in a minute. So that would be useful. So they could use the whiteboard if you wanted.
Yes. [INTERPOSING VOICES] I was going to ask - so only the people in this room can see this
whiteboard and this chatbox. Yes. Yes. Fantastic.

You can also, when you are not in a room, broadcast a message to all here. So you could click on
that and say, hey, everyone, this is your one-minute warning, to warn them that they're going to close.
And then when you click on the red box here, it closes all the rooms, and everybody just automatically
appears in the sort of open class area again. Fantastic. Fantastic. And monitoring, Marie Therese,
how would you monitor breakout rooms? So I think we monitor the same way as we would in a face-
to-face classroom.

I think that once you've set up the activity, if I was in a face-to-face classroom I would go around all of
the students to make sure they were doing what I wanted them to do. And then I would hone in on
particular groups or particular pairs and listen more carefully, maybe make a note of they're doing,
maybe make a record of some errors or some good language that I'm hearing that I can bring up in
feedback. And I think in the online classroom you would do exactly the same thing. So you would go
around to all the breakout rooms, make sure that everybody's doing what they're supposed to be
doing, and then go back to individuals.

I think the thing that makes it, for us, weird is that when you're in a when you're in a room with people,
you feel the people around you, and you can see the people around you, and you can hear them
around you. But when you go into a breakout room, everybody else is locked out, and you feel as
though you were in a little vacuum with that pair or that group. I think you just have to trust the
students, and you just have to know that that's what's happening in all the rooms. And so stay with
that group for a little while, and then move on to another group.

Whether you intervene or not intervene, again, you would use the same principles that you use in a
face-to-face classroom, I think. Yeah. I think pairing is important isn't it? Pairing, and grouping, and
making sure you've got the right people - you've got a responsible one in the room who will make sure
that everyone does what they need to be doing. Yeah. Absolutely. And bear in mind, you've checked,
straight away, that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Yes. And if you are sufficiently

47
competent that the task is going to work, then they're just getting on with the tasks while you're
monitoring one pair. But it might be a good idea to do a little bit of practice.

Again, know get your friends to join in a group session and try out the breakout rooms. Yeah. OK.
Coming onto the last part, then we talked about writing this week. And hopefully we've put people's
minds at rest, that actually, writing doesn't have to be a scary skill online - or challenging maybe.
Challenging was the right word. A lot of people thought that last week, didn't they? Yeah. I think they
were concerned that if you go into a room, if you're going to a online classroom, how do you actually
set students a task where they're writing for 15-20 minutes and then actually monitor that. But the
answer is that you wouldn't probably do that.

You might get them doing a collaborative activity in breakout rooms, using the whiteboard, where
they're working in pairs to produce something. But otherwise, you're going to focus more on helping
them to prepare to write - absolutely - and then get them to write the whole text at home. They might
write part of the text in the lesson using the board, so that you can have watching them. But
otherwise, they'll do that at home. That's right, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And I think the whole business of
teaching writing isn't about necessarily the writing itself, it's all the stuff that comes before - so the
language input that you might do.

If you're writing a letter, what useful phrases are there for opening letters, for the first line of a letter,
for the last line of a letter? How would you construct? What's the layout to the framework of a letter, or
an email, or whatever. So all of that kind of stuff is stuff that you would do in preparation, and then
perhaps the student would go home and write the letter on a Google Doc perhaps, and you could give
feedback on that. Great. And hopefully, Ollie's lesson helped people to sort of see how it would work
in action. I think we've come to the end of this week's video, Marie Therese. I think it's time for us to
say goodbye.

And I can't believe it's Week 4 next week already. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And, of course, next
week, we're going to do what everybody has been waiting weeks and weeks and weeks for us to talk
about, which is how to set up your business and how to go out there and get a job. And I think we
have a little bit of language work, as well, do we? We do, yeah. We do. Fantastic. So have a good
weekend, everybody, and we look forward to seeing you next week. Bye. Bye.

WEEK 4: TEACHING LANGUAGE, STARTING AND RUNNING YOUR BUSINESS AND

PROFESSION...
4.1 Welcome to week 4
Hi, everyone. Welcome to week four of the course, and it's actually the final week. And hasn't it
gone quickly? This week we're going to talking about teaching language, aren't we? We are.
For example. We're going to talk about how we can set context online. Yeah, you're going to
give us an example of flipping the classroom. I am. And we're also going to think about
practising language online as well, with some useful tools that learners can use. Yeah, and then
the second part of the week we're talking about how to set up your own business. And all of
those questions I asked last week, I hope will be answered.

And then we'll end by thinking about professional development, because it can be a bit lonely
as an online teacher can't it? Absolutely. But there are places you can go and things you can
do to continually develop your practice and so on, improve your teaching. So enjoy the last
week, everyone.

48
Welcome to week 4 - Welcome to week 4, our final week of the course. This week we’ll focus
on planning and delivering effective language lessons online, how to set up and run an online
teaching business and ways that online teachers can develop their professional skills beyond
this course.

Outline of week 4 - This week we’ll answer these questions:

 How can we set context in online language lessons?

 How can we flip our online classroom to allow for more practice in a lesson?
 How can we adapt activities and exploit tools to provide sufficient practice of
language?
 How can we get our online business started?
 How can we attract and keep students?
 How can we continue to develop our online teaching skills beyond this course?

4.2 Online language lessons

Show me your-- Pedro? Show me your shoes. Shoes.

Let me see them. Oh, well done. OK. Show me your socks.

There. Did they move? Where are they? Where are they? Your smelly socks. Oh, I see. Let me
see. Ah, well done. Excellent. [LAUGHS]

We have to remember that in the past when we use the past simple, we have two kinds of
verbs. We have regular verbs, remember? Yes. The ending-- how do they end? What's the
ending of the regular verbs? Is it AD? AD or ED? ED, sorry. Yes. Good. So the regular verbs
end in ED. And the irregular verbs are irregular. Yeah. So that's why they're called irregular
because there isn't really a rule. Yeah? But there are less verbs of irregular verbs I can share
with you, OK? Couldn't. I couldn't agree with you more. OK.

Oops.

Take. Take. Hm. Take, take, take. Hm. Why the-- ah, it was a new phrase for me. What's your
take on? What's the opposite of an interesting job? It's a boring job. OK.

And you find a job that makes you tired, it is? A tiring job. You're right. Now let's continue. Caio,
do you know the opposite of a well-paid job? I think it's a worse paid job. Not really. It's a badly
paid job. Can you say that after me? Badly paid job. Badly paid job. Good. So what's the
problem if a job is badly paid? What is low? Do you know? The salary. Very good.

I was a bit confused. It's fine. What I said in this story was "I got". I got. But I can use "I was". I
was confused. Yeah. Well, "I got" is because something changed. Ah, right. Yeah? Yeah. Right.
So I got confused. I was looking at people climbing. And I got confused. I was like, why are they
climbing? I thought we weren't allowed to climb. Because I want to eat. I thought it. Ah. Very
good. OK. I thought-- I thought. I thought, thank you so much. I thought it was illegal. But it was-
- And now it is. Yeah. Fantastic. It was illegal. The firefighter-- I think the firefighter is a very
demanding job, too, because it's dangerous.

A firefighter has to run into a house to help someone. Yes. He don't even know who's the
person in it.

But I also think that it's rewarding because when you save somebody, you-- you're the hero.
Are you ready for the game, Pedro? Ready? Yes. OK. Pedro, can you wear your t-shirt?

49
Ah. Well done. Excellent. One point for you, Pedro. One point. Pedro, can you wear your
shoes? Your shoes, Pedro?

Ah. Let me see. Ah. OK. Good. [LAUGHS] Well done. Yeah. Two points for you, Pedro. Now,
Pedro, [LAUGHS] now listen. Listen. Pedro, you there? Can you wear your trousers? Your
trousers.

Hm. And a zipper.

OK? Yes. Well done. [LAUGHS]

Online language lessons - As with face-to-face language lessons, online language lessons
give learners the opportunity to notice language in context, understand how that language is
used, formed and pronounced, and practise using that language in a meaningful way.

Task - Watch the video which shows clips of various lessons. What is the purpose of each
activity you see? What resource is used to make it work online? Complete the table with the
information.

Teacher Activity purpose Resource used

Cecilia

Renata

Inna

Cristina

Renata

Cristina

Cecilia
4.3 Setting Context
Setting context is really important, isn't it, when teaching language? Absolutely. Because as in
a face-to-face classroom, online classroom, when you're teaching language, the most important
thing is to show students how language is used and what it means. And without a context,
that's really hard to do. So I think there are three ways of setting context, aren't there? Well,
that's what we've decided. So the first way is teaching language in context where you set the
context in the classroom. And would you like to give some examples, maybe? Yes, sure. You
might want to use pictures. It would be nice to obviously gather some pictures and share your
screen with learners. Or put them on the interactive whiteboard, something like that.

You could also use some nice digital tools for maybe creating little funny cartoons that include
your learners with funny situations that they'd enjoy. Which maybe then maybe the cartoons
could even be using the language. Absolutely. Yeah. You could tell anecdotes. You could

50
include your learners in these anecdotes or stories, make up stories. Avatars. Avatars. Yeah,
you could have speaking avatars, which is quite amusing. Or you could have short texts. Yep,
sort of guided discovery where the language is embedded in the text, a short few sentences,
and you ask them some questions about past answers, which action happened first, and that
sort of thing. As in a face-to-face classroom.

But I think what you want to avoid is a lot of text, long readings. So you need to display on the
interactive whiteboard, don't you? So it needs to be quite short so everyone can see it clearly,
and not too much information. Exactly. And so the second type of context setting is something
that would be a kind of flipped classroom approach, where the context would be set by the
students doing a homework task prior to coming to class. Do you want to talk about that? Yes,
sure. So this would be the teacher - you - creating a little video where you're presenting the
language in a context, and probably even clarifying the language as well.

So dealing with meaning, form and pronunciation. So that's, what did we have? We had context
in the class, we had context in the flip classroom beforehand. And context, I think we're going to
talk about now where it happens unexpectedly - I think that's the only way I can describe it -
where something comes up or a student comes and presents with something that they want
you to teach them. Do you want to say about that? Absolutely. So maybe they've received a
business email and they don't understand part of it, there's some language they've never seen
before, and they're asking you about it.

So you want to explain it, and obviously you want to you know - well, I suppose there's a
context there already, but you might want to create other context to help them. So this is where
you're basically thinking on your feet. Yes. And here you're probably going to do it more orally.
You're not going have created anything in advance. So it's just coming up with ideas and then
using the whiteboard or the shared screen to give other examples in this case.

Setting context - Teaching language in context is incredibly important, as it helps learners to

understand how the language is used and what it means. Online teachers need to consider
how they’re going to set context to convey meaning. They need to ensure that the method is
appropriate for an online lesson.

Task - Watch Lindsay and Marie Therese talking about setting context in online lessons and
answer the questions.

1. When do teachers typically set context, according to Lindsay and Marie Therese?
2. Which ways of setting context do Lindsay and Marie Therese mention? Choose from the list
below.

A picture A drawing

A cartoon A short text

A film clip A video presentation

An anecdote or story Realia (props)

An avatar The learners

4.4 Useful online tools for setting context

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In the last step, Setting context, you heard Lindsay and Marie Therese talking about
different ways to set context. For example, through a very short story or pictures shared
on a platform’s interactive whiteboard. Let’s look at some digital tools that online
teachers can use to create an engaging context in language lessons.

Task - Visit the online tools below and read about what each one does. Some of them you’ve
seen before, but you might need to remind yourself about what they do. Then match each one
to the lesson outlines (A–D) below.

SMS Generator Make Beliefs Comix Sketch.io Storybi

A. Lesson objective: The learner will be able to name parts of the body. The teacher brings up
this website on her computer during a live lesson and draws an outline of a human body. The teacher
then uses the picture to teach a young learner the names of the parts of the body.

B. Lesson objective: The learners will be able to use the present continuous and ‘going to’ for
future arrangements and plans. Before the lesson, the teacher creates a comic strip which shows a
conversation between three people talking about their plans for the evening. The teacher displays this
on the shared whiteboard in the live lesson.

C. Lesson objective: The learner will be able to understand a story in the past which uses
irregular past verbs. Before the lesson, the teacher creates a short story book which involves a large
image accompanied by a short text. In the lesson, the teacher displays the story book on his screen
and shares his screen with a young learner.

D. Lesson objective: The learner will be able to make arrangements. Before the lesson, the
teacher creates a text conversation between two people making arrangements to go out and saves it
as an image. In the live lesson, the teacher displays the image on the shared whiteboard.
4.5 Flipping your online classroom
This would be the teacher-- you-- creating a little video, where you're presenting the language
in a context and probably even clarifying the language as well, so dealing with meaning, form,
and pronunciation. So it would be a very short video. And you can simply just get out your
phone. And you can just record yourself even standing in front of a white board or a little mini
white board or something like that. Or you can use some really nice apps where you have an
interactive white board on your device that you record your voice over as you're typing or
writing on it. So you create these little videos. And then you share them with the student. And
they-- Set a task.

They set a task, yep. So they watch the video. They do the task, and it's sort of checking their
understanding. And then when they come to the next live lesson with you, you obviously check
they've understood the video. You do some little short clarification tasks to make sure they've
really understood how to form the language and so on. And then in the lesson, they would do
practise. Loads and loads of practise, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, fantastic. You don't have to make
your own videos, either. You can curate them. So you can find other videos online of other
teachers also presenting that language. Yeah.

Flipping your online classroom

Flipping the classroom has gained popularity in recent years. The flipped classroom stemmed
from subject teachers’ desire to provide learners with more application of the things they learn.
It involves learners receiving input via a video from the teacher for homework and spending
lesson time putting that knowledge into practice with teacher support. Some English language

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teachers have been experimenting with this approach in order to provide learners with more
practice during lesson time.

Task 1 - Watch Lindsay and Marie Therese speaking about flipping your online classroom. Put
the lesson stages in order.

The learner spends lots of time practising The teacher creates or curates a short video
the language. presentation of the language.

The teacher checks answers to the task Learners watch the video for homework and
and does some short clarification tasks. complete a task.

Task 2 - Lindsay mentioned different ways of creating or curating video presentations of

language that learners watch at home. Click on the links below to watch four different types of
videos. What do you think are the benefits and potential drawbacks of each type?

A screencast made by the teacher.

A video made by the teacher.
A curated video from a website (e.g. engVid.com).
A video which accompanies a coursebook (e.g. Macmillan Gateway series).

Task 3 (Optional) - We think it might be a good idea for you to practise making a video or a
screencast presenting a grammar structure or some vocabulary itemsto learners you
typically teach.

 Choose a grammar structure or some items of vocabulary.

 Think about how you’re going to present it in context and how you’re going to clarify
the meaning, form and pronunciation.
 Create a video that’s no more than about five minutes long.
 When you have finished, share your video on our Padlet here.
 Watch one or two other videos and think about how you could improve yours.

Note - some advice from Lindsay

If you decide to create a video, we suggest that you do one of two things:

1. Use the Video option in Padlet and record it directly onto the site.
OR
1. Use the camera on your mobile device or laptop/PC, save the video in the cloud (e.g.
Google Drive or Dropbox) and then share a link to that file on our Padlet.

If you choose to create a screencast, you could use one of these tools: app Explain
Everything (a small cost), or Educreations (free for a basic account). Alternatively, if you have
a recent edition of Microsoft PowerPoint, you can use the Record Slideshow option in Slide
Show (top menu bar). You can find tutorials on how to use each of these tools on sites such as
YouTube. Search for the name of the tool and the word ‘tutorial’ and select one that’s fairly up
to date.

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Once you’ve created your screencast, save it in the cloud, sharing a link to our Padlet.
Remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect! In class, you might stumble over your words a little. If
you do the same in your video, it’s fine. It just makes you come across as natural.

4.6 Practising language in online lessons

When teaching face-to-face, we use a variety of activities to give learners the opportunity to
practise language. These include role plays, class surveys and questionnaires. While some of
them can be used in an online lesson with little change, others need to be adapted and some
are unlikely to work effectively at all. In this quiz, you’re going to decide whether different
language practice activities can be used in an online lesson or not.

Question 1 - Could a role play activity used in a face-to-face one-to-one lesson work in an
online one-to-one lesson? i.e. a shopping role play with a shop assistant and a customer.

Yes, with no modification. Correct

Yes, but with some modification.

No, it won’t work in an online environment.

A role play can be used in an online one-to-one lesson just as it could in a face-to-face one-to-
one lesson. The teacher will have to take the role of the shop assistant while the learner takes
the role of the customer. Just as in a face-to-face lesson, the learner might need two or three
minutes’ preparation time to plan what to say.

Question 2 - Can a ‘find someone who’ mingle activity be used in a group online lesson? i.e.
learners ask other learners in the group if they’ve done activities on a list to practise the present
perfect simple.
Yes, with no modification.

Yes, but with some modification. Correct

No, it’s unlikely to work in an online environment.

It’s unlikely that a ‘find someone who’ activity would work in an online classroom as learners are
unable to mingle in the same way they can face-to-face. Having said that, they can work in
pairs in breakout rooms so it would be possible for an online teacher to pair learners for two
minutes and then re-pair them with a different partner for another two minutes, etc., so they
speak to a few different partners. It would be difficult for them to speak to everyone in the class
though.

Question 3 - Can a questionnaire be used in an online group lesson? i.e. learners work in pairs
and ask and answer questions they’ve created from prompts using vocabulary related to
holidays.
Yes, with no modification.

Yes, with some modification. Correct

No, it’s unlikely to work in an online environment.

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Yes, learners can complete a questionnaire in pairs in an online classroom, but it would require
modification. Learners would need to be given access to the prompts that help them form
questions. They would need to be placed into breakout rooms to work in pairs. They could work
with one partner to form the questions, and then a different partner in a different breakout room
to ask and answer the questions.

Question 4 - Can half a crossword activity be used in an online one-to-one lesson? I.e. one
person has a crossword with half the items filled in and the other person has a crossword with
the other half of the items filled in, e.g. with adjectives describing personality. Each person
defines the words in their crossword so that their partner can complete their crossword.

Yes, with no modification. Correct

Yes, with some modification.

No, it’s unlikely to work in an online environment.

Yes, half a crossword activity can be used in an online one-to-one lesson. The learner can have
one half of the crossword and the teacher can have the other. However, the crossword will
need to be shared with the learner via a handout.

Question 5 - Can a class debate be used in a group online lesson? i.e. half the class argue for
a topic and the other half argue a different point to practise language of opinions, introducing
reasons and giving examples.
Yes, with no modification.

Yes, with some modification. Correct

No, it’s unlikely to work in an online environment.

Yes, a class debate can be used in a group online lesson, although some modification will be
needed. The teacher will need to make sure that all learners have the opportunity to practise
the language while not speaking over each other. This can be done by learners clicking on the
‘hands up’ icon in the platform to show they want to speak, or the teacher muting all learners
except the one person that they want to speak.

Question 6 - Can a written gap-fill activity be used in any online lesson to practise grammar or
vocabulary? i.e. learners complete a set of 10 sentences by adding in the appropriate word.

Yes, with no modification. Correct

Yes, with some modification.

No, it’s unlikely to work in an online environment.

Yes, a gap-fill activity can be used in an online lesson to practise grammar, although a teacher
needs to question whether it’s the best use of class time. Class time is better spent on oral
practice of language items, whereas written practice can be done at home. Having said that, a
few gap-fill items displayed on a whiteboard can help an online teacher to check learners have
understood the meaning and/or form of a language point before they move on to oral practice.
Learners can give their answers orally or type them into the chat box. The latter gives all

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learners in a group the opportunity to answer. If you would like to see all of the questions and
Lindsay’s answers, click here.

4.7 Useful online tools for grammar and vocabulary lessons

We’re now going to look at some online resources that can be used when teaching language
online, either during a lesson, or when setting learners homework, or if you’re encouraging
them to do some self-study.

Task - You’re going to research three digital tools for use in language lessons.

Click on the links below and find out what each one does if you’re not already familiar with
them. Then, answer these questions:

Is it for use in lessons, for self-study or both?

For what purpose can it be used in online learning?
What age group(s) of learners is it appropriate for?

If you’re already familiar with it in the face-to-face classroom, how might it work differently in an
online environment?

1. Kahoot - Kahoot is an online tool designed to check learners’ understanding or knowledge.

2. Quizlet - Quizlet is an online tool designed to help learners memorise information, e.g.
vocabulary items.
3. Quiz your English - The Quiz your English app is a language game which learners play with
other users from around the world and compete for points.

https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/learning-english/games-social/quiz-your-english/

4.8 Attracting students to your online teaching business

One of the best ways of attracting new students is to quite simply go out and meet people. If
you're interested in working with state schools in the area, go to the schools, meet the
coordinators of courses. Likewise, if you're interested in business English, go to companies in
the area, meet the people in HR, advertise your services face to face. A personal website
where I advertise my services and people know who I am and can find me online wherever they
are. Having a blog nowadays is probably one of the best and fastest ways to attract prospective
students. So be clear about the services you offer and the digital products that you use in your
work.

Encourage comments, and be ready to respond. You can also ask your current or former
students to share their feedback. Nowadays, something that works really well is advertising on
LinkedIn. You can advertise all types of courses on LinkedIn, including young learners' courses.
The reason is that the parents are on LinkedIn. Another way to attract students is through the
use of social media, especially three social media channels, which are Facebook, YouTube,
and Instagram. I would like to talk about Instagram especially. You can post videos with tips,
grammar tips, pronunciation tips, challenges, quizzes. It's really effective. I would suggest that
you create a flyer. I did that.

It's a one-page document in the learner's first language in which I talk about the types of
courses I teach, the duration of the courses, the length of the lessons, and I include some
information about methodology as well. If you do a good job with the students that you have,

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word of mouth, your name will spread and you will get calls. Creating a shortened video
showing an online lesson in which I teach three learners. Whenever students come back to me
asking questions about the types of courses I teach, I can send them the link to the video. They
can watch it, see me in action, and this is a way of getting to know me.

From my experience, there are two ways to keep students. One is with quality and flexibility of
the lessons that you provide. And that's true of anything, really. If the quality is good, people will
return for the same service. I think it's important to show that you are there for them, you
support them in this learning journey. So I would create, for example, WhatsApp groups with
the students. I would say one of the best ways to keep students is to customise your course. So
focus on your students' interests and needs, and be flexible. To show my students that I can
use their time well, I always give them a study outline.

A study outline is a course programme that shows the content of each lesson not in a very
detailed way. It's concise. And it shows what students can do between sessions. You also need
to make sure your online course is user friendly. So try out different digital tools and online
learning methods to make online learning simple, diverse, and effective. I always refer to
assessment. Assessment will show your students that their performance is being monitored,
their progress assessed. And this is a way of keeping them, because it shows them that the
learning objectives are clear and are being met.

Attracting students to your online teaching business - If you decide to start your own online
teaching business, you need to be able to market yourself in order to grow your business. In
this step, you’re going to hear tips from some of our online teachers about ways to attract and
keep students.

Task - Watch the video. Note down the tips that the teachers give for:

1. Attracting students
2. Keeping students

4.9 Running your online teaching business

The document is a contract that bonds the teacher and the students. It is in the learner's first
language, and it is signed either by the student or by one of the parents. I ask that they read
and sign an agreement with me. The agreement is in two parts, really. First and most
importantly is outlining the objectives. So what do the students want to achieve, and what do I
think is realistic in the time frame that we've agreed upon? And the other part, which I think is
equally important, is that the student agrees that they will do self-study and that they will
complete homework.

I usually do an interview before the first class so I can assess my student, this potential student,
assess their level, their objectives. And in this interview, in this meeting, you can talk about your
conditions. But make sure you have them written and signed. So they will sign a virtual
contract. There is a website called SignNow. And there are other websites where you can sign
digitally. So they are able to sign the document digitally and send it to you. Something else that
the terms and conditions should refer to is your cancellation policy. For example, if a student
contacts me 24 hours before the scheduled lesson, it's absolutely fine to reschedule it. It's not a
problem.

However, if they write to me one hour before the scheduled lesson, in this case, it's not possible
to postpone it. It's as if the lesson were given, and it must be paid. But this is only possible
because this type of information is highlighted in the terms and conditions document. To get
paid, I send invoice at the end of every month, detailing exactly what I've been doing with the
clients. And I always give a pay-by date. So it tends to be 30 days after receipt of the invoice.

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My students pay for the course in advance. And they pay for a minimum of 10 lessons. So they
make a bank transfer. I give them my bank details.

And they can do the payment like that. Currently there are plenty of online money transfer
service providers. So it might be a good idea to do some research beforehand and choose a
couple most suitable options. One of the best things about being a freelancer or starting your
own business is that you finally get to organise your own teaching schedule. And this is a
wonderful thing. However, it can mean you end up working too much. So keep in mind that it's
very important that you do leave time aside for yourself. You need to be flexible. Clients will be
asking you for lessons in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening.

And it's possible that you'll fill that time up every day of the week. But you mustn't. Keep some
time set aside for yourself. I hardly ever teach two back-to-back online lessons. The reason is I
need at least 20 minutes between sessions. I need time after the session to download and save
the recorded video. I also need time before the next lesson. There is no secret to
administration. It's just a matter of being organised. Write down absolutely everything. You
might want to use an online learning management system. That could make it way easier to get
access to all student-related statistics, for example, the amount of lessons conducted, your
students' performance, and their attendance as well.

At the end of the course, I always send to my students something like a certificate in which I
describe what they learned during the course in relation to the programme taught. And I always
list three or four points for further development. Go slowly and make sure you do things
correctly and do things well. There's no point rushing things. Lay a solid foundation and build
things up from there.

Running your online teaching business - Once you’ve attracted students, you need to
ensure that you run your business effectively so that you maintain good relationships with your
students, get paid on time and keep good records. In this step, you’ll hear more tips from our
online teachers on running your own online teaching business.

Task - Watch the video. Take notes on what tips the teachers give about each of the things in
the table.

Topic Useful tips from online teachers

Terms & conditions

Getting paid

Your teaching schedule

Administration

Other
4.10 Testing new students
When you start teaching a new student, you’ll probably want to assess their level of English so
that you can plan and deliver the most effective lessons you can. While you can assess the
learner’s listening and speaking skills through an interview, you might want to use a more

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formal test or encourage the learner to self-assess so they can set their own goals. In this step,
you’re going to look at three online tools you can use with new students.

Task - Click on the three tools below (1–3) and find out what each tool does. Then, match it to
its description (A–C).

1. Test your English

2. European Day of Languages
3. British Council

A. A simple version of the European Common Framework of Reference for teachers that
learners can use to self-assess their English.

B. A free online test which helps learners to select the best Cambridge English Qualification for
them. Even if your learners aren’t planning on taking a Cambridge exam, this tool can be a very
useful way of finding out a learner’s level when you begin teaching them.

C. A quiz that helps learners to self-assess their language skills.

4.11 Privacy, security and copyright

One aspect of teaching online that a teacher must consider is online security and privacy. It’s
important to be aware of online data and privacy laws in your country and the country in which
your learners reside. You will need to do some research on this before you start teaching,
although there are areas which will be common across all regions. Think about the data you
store on your learners and how these learners’ privacy may be affected when you ask them to
use your platform or other digital tools.

Task - Look at the activities below. Which do you think are acceptable? Which do you think are
not acceptable?

1. A teacher records some lessons for her own 2. A teacher gets a teenager’s parent’s
professional development. The learners are permission before logging onto a website
unaware of this. outside their normal learning platform.

4. A teacher has a list of their students’ email

3. A teacher shares a learner’s work on social
addresses on a noticeboard behind their desk
media to highlight something interesting.
where they teach their online lessons.

You can read more about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)here which governs
privacy in Europe.

Copyright laws - Copyright laws that apply to online teaching are basically the same as those
that apply to face-to-face teaching although these may differ from country to country. This
means that we shouldn’t use or share copyrighted material that we don’t have permission to
use online. You can read more about copyright laws in the ‘See also’ section below.

4.12 An overview of professional development

In the last part of the course, really, we're going to talk about professional development. And I
think we need to begin, really, by talking about lessons themselves and about getting feedback

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from learners. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really key, isn't it? Because it's-- when you're
teaching online, you're often alone at home. You're not in a staff room, so-- Yeah. Professional
development is very different. Yeah. And the first thing you can do is, obviously, get feedback
from learners. Now if you are employed for a company, the learners will probably be required to
kind of give feedback on lessons anyway. And sometimes parents do as well. Parents, yeah.
So then that's obviously a good source of feedback for you.

And if you work for yourself, I think you need to devise some kind of feedback form that you ask
learners to fill in on a regular basis, so that you can really think about your lessons and about
whether it's giving them value. Absolutely. And you might find, if you're advertising through a
sort of a platform then, you might get feedback through that too. So it's not just actually getting
the feedback as it is acting on it. Absolutely. I think it's oftentimes that we get feedback. And if
somebody says something we don't like, we kind of say, oh, phht. Phht. And we don't bother so
much about it.

Or we feel terrible about it, and then spend the time worrying about it. Worrying. Yeah. We
need to do something about it. Absolutely. And so I think it's a question of looking back at that
lesson, or looking back at those lessons, and saying, OK, how can I change this to make them
different? Because especially if you're self-employed, that feedback is key, isn't it? Because if
you're not consistently getting high ratings, that's going to impact on the amount of customers
that you're going to get, or the learners that are going to want to have lessons with you. Yeah,
yeah. So feedback was the first thing.

The second thing is really about reflection and changing your lessons, which I think we've
talked about as well. And what's the third thing? Observation. OK. So if you're fortunate to work
for a company who provides trainers or managers, perhaps who give do observations of your
lessons and give you feedback. Because that's not always the case. They might observe your
lessons-- And not give you feedback. For sort of quality control. But not necessarily
developmental feedback, which obviously, we as teachers-- we do need, don't we? Ummm. We
might reflect ourselves-- Yeah. But we do sometimes need someone else to come in and tell us
about something that we haven't really noticed.

Yeah, but if it's not possible, I think you can record your lesson and observe yourself. I agree.
And do some reflection on that. Or ask a colleague. Ask if you go to a conference and you meet
other online teachers, or if you meet them online, then you can also ask them to observe and
give feedback and do peer feedback which is useful. And I think this online community thing is
an important thing. Join an online community is another important thing. If you're teaching
online, you don't have a staff room, unfortunately. And when you start teaching, the staff room
is the best place to learn. So you really need to think about how you're going to replace that.

If you're working for an organisation, they might have a good mentoring system. But if you're on
your own, or you work for an organisation that maybe doesn't have as much peer to peer
professional development, there are other places you can go. So look on Twitter. Look for
weekly chats about teaching. Look for courses, such as this one, on how to develop online
teaching skills. Really connecting with another online teacher is probably the most useful thing
to do.

An overview of professional development

We’re now going to turn our attention to professional development for online teachers. Online
teachers tend to work alone, which means they don’t always benefit from the kinds of
professional development that teachers in a physical school receive. An online teacher is likely
to need to seek out professional development opportunities themselves.

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Task 1 - Watch Lindsay, Marie Therese and Mary talking about different ways that an online
teacher can develop their teaching skills. What do they say about the development activities
below? Take notes.

Activity Notes

Feedback

Reflection

Observations

Replacing the staff room

Task 2 - In what ways do you develop your teaching skills at the moment? Go to our poll to
choose the best answer for you. Is it similar or different from other participants of this course?
You can view the results of the poll here.

4.13 Self-reflection activities for online teachers

You’ve just heard Lindsay, Marie Therese and Mary talking about the importance of reflecting
on lessons. Let’s then think about some specific reflection activities that online teachers can do
to help them develop their online teaching skills.

For example, if a teacher is worried that their classroom instructions are poor, they can record a
lesson, then watch it, focusing on how they give instructions. They can note down the strengths
and weaknesses of their instructions and plan to overcome the weaknesses in their next
lesson.

Task - Read the four situations (A–D) and answer Questions 1–5. (You can click on the image
to expand it.)

Screen reader accessible version of situations A-D

1. What reflection activity could you do in each situation?

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2. What is the focus of the reflection?
3. Would you reflect during the lesson or after the lesson?
4. Would you need to record the lesson?
5. What would you need to do after the lesson to actively make improvements to your
teaching skills?

4.14 Joining an online community of teachers

Lindsay, we talked earlier about being a bit lonely being an online teacher and how isolating it
can be. But there are online communities, aren't there, that we also mentioned earlier? Let's
explore that a little bit more. There's Twitter, isn't there? Yeah, there is Twitter. So that's a good
place to meet other teachers. So if you go on and follow a few teachers that are already on
Twitter or search for some of the people that you're familiar with, people who've written books
that we know on Twitter - - that we've probably mentioned earlier in the course, haven't we?
Absolutely.

And if you can follow them and you can see who they follow and you follow those people, then
you start to develop this personal learning network. Yes. And you can comment on things that
they post. You can post things yourselves. People will start to follow you. And this network
grows, which is lovely. Nice. And there's Facebook, of course. There is. So you can create your
own Facebook group and invite other online teachers that maybe you've met at conferences or
something like that. You can invite them to join. Yeah you could - - and you can share
materials, can you? Share materials, share ideas for lessons. Absolutely, you could.

Yeah, you could share videos of your lesson if you've got the learners permission, of course, so
that you could do observations of each other and peer feedback. Or you can join groups that
are already created. So if you go onto Facebook and you search something like "online
teachers" or "online teachers of English", or even just "teachers of English", you're going to find
other teachers. You can ask other teachers if - Sure, sure. And there are people that do regular
blog posts as well, aren't there, that are very experienced already in teaching online? So again,
look it up on Google. Absolutely. So you can search for it online, look for online teachers online
teaching English.

And then you know you need to comment I think, don't you? Comment on the blogs, get
involved in the discussion. And also it might be a way of helping solve problems that you have.
Maybe you have problems with a learner that you can't get motivated. Post a question.
Somebody will answer it, won't they? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. People are so helpful
online. It's great. I agree.

Joining an online community of teachers - You’ve heard Lindsay and Marie Therese
suggesting that online communities are a good way for online teachers to connect with each
other. They’re now going to suggest ways in which you can join an online community.

Task 1 - Watch Lindsay and Marie Therese talking about online communities. Which specific
online communities are they referring to with these suggestions?

1. Follow a few teachers that you know or people who’ve written books.
2. Create your own group.
3. Share materials and videos of lessons for peer feedback.
4. Join a group that exists.
5. Comment to get involved in the discussion.
6. Post a question to get a solution to a problem.

Task 2 - Join a new online community. Here are some suggestions:

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 Go to Twitter and follow three teachers you haven’t followed before
 Go to Facebook and join an online teaching community
 Find a blog on language teaching and add a comment
 Choose a social network you like and find an online community of language teachers
on there.

4.15 Course review

In the final week of the course, we’ve talked about these things:

 Setting context in language lessons

 Flipping the classroom
 Using tools and adapting activities for practising language
 Attracting and keeping students
 Running an online teaching business
 Testing new students
 Copyright, privacy and security
 Professional development for online teachers

4.16
Hello, everybody. It's our end of Week 4 video. Hi, Marie Therese. Hi, Lindsay, how are you
today? Hasn't it's gone quick? I know. I was just thinking that earlier. I can't believe how fast it's
gone. It's quite scary. No, absolutely. Don't get old, because it goes even quicker. So this week
then, we were talking about language. Yeah, absolutely. We talked about language to begin
with and we talked about setting context, because context is king. And we talked about ways of
doing that. And what we meant there really, was how do you create a context where you show
the learners the meaning of the language so that it's clear when to use it and why we use it and
so on.

And we had lots of different kinds of context, ways of creating contexts that people talked
about. To start off with, lots and lots people talked about video. Yeah. And I think that's a really
useful source. I think it was Veronica said that the problem with it is, that sometimes it's really
hard and time-consuming to find a video that has exactly the language you want to teach. You
know, the words are coming out of the mouths of the actors that you want to teach. And I just
wanted to say, that of course, there's always the possibility of turning the volume off. So you
use the pictures in the video to create the context.

So for example, if you're teaching the language of ordering food in a restaurant, you could just
have a scene from a video where there's a waiter and some customers. Take the volume out
and you put in the language. Elicit from the students what they would say, and then teach them
something that would be appropriate in this situation. And we had other types of context as
well? Yeah, we did, yeah. So Marietta uses Film English, which is a really useful website. It's
got lots of little lessons created around, or lots of little lessons. They've got lesson plans
created around short videos. So that's a really useful tool.

Nino actually uses items in his fridge or items he doesn't have in his fridge to create a shopping
list to teach - [INTERPOSING VOICES] Which is great. And Michelle, she was saying that she
actually uses the learners' context. She teaches business students and she gets them to
actually bring material from the workplace. I guess it's business correspondence and reports
and that kind of thing, so they can actually look at the language that a learner really needs to
use, which I think is a great idea. Absolutely fantastic. And I think also there were comments
from other people. I think Vivienne mentioned this business of getting the learners to bring in
material for other kinds of lessons.

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You know, if they want to read an article, bring in an article. And I think that's fantastic, because
it gives the learner ownership of the lesson and then you don't have to worry about if they're
interested in the topic or not. That's true. OK. Yeah, motivation. We moved on to flipped
learning. Yeah. Yeah. So we've had some nice videos there, haven't we? Yeah, yeah,
absolutely. But I wanted to say that everybody, including myself, congratulated you on your
video. And I think it's such a good example, because actually, I think it shows that it does, if you
don't mind me saying, it doesn't have to be perfect.

You know, it doesn't, you dropped the pen on the floor, but you didn't, you didn't make the
whole thing again. And I think it was a really good example of how you can really just use one
website, create a screen, screen-o-matic or whatever, show the meaning, show the form
pronunciation. But, Lindsay, I think it'd be quite useful for, I think there was a little bit of
confusion about what we actually mean by flipped classroom. It's not about just bringing in,
getting students to do stuff at home instead of in the lesson, is there? Would you just say a bit
more about flipped classroom? Yeah, sure. It actually came from sort of state schools in the
US.

Seems to be kind of sciencey really. I think teachers were a bit frustrated that they were very
teacher-centred in the classroom. So they would stand for most of the lesson explaining
information to the learners. Then they would give them some kind of tasks to do for homework,
which required them to apply the information. But often they weren't clear and they didn't have
a teacher to ask for help. They couldn't do it, and then they came the next day and the next
lesson and the teacher would explain something else. And so, you know, the students were
constantly confused or never quite fully understanding. So they wanted to be more student-
centred.

So what they did was, they started to create these little science lessons at home, these little
videos, where they explained the principles. And then in the classroom, they used that time for
application and discussion, where the students could ask the teacher for help. Now in an
English language teaching context, if we take grammar as the example, then Carol worded it
very well. She said that the video is giving the basic information about the language. So you're
basically creating a video where within a context, you provide some example sentences within
which the grammar appears.

And then you help the students to understand the meaning, the form, and the pronunciation, so
that when they come to the classroom, you don't have to spend 45 minutes going over that.
You can just spend the whole hour of the lesson actually practising, practising, practising, which
is what learners really need, isn't it? Absolutely. And so it takes away that sort of time of, and it
allows the learners also to process stuff about the basic, about meaning, form and
pronunciation in their own time. Yeah. And they can watch it as many times as they like.
Absolutely. You know, if you do that presentation in a lesson, they really only get the one shot
at it.

And if they haven't quite got it, you know, they haven't, they can't just go over and watch it all
over again. Which if you do it, they do it at home, they can watch it as many times as they like.
Absolutely. And then of course in the courtroom at the beginning, you make sure you've got
time to clarify the language to answer any questions that the learners have, check they've
understood it before you move on to the practice. That's really important. But then you've got
lots of time to pick up on issues and to help the learners to understand it, which is useful. Just
going back to my video though.

Yeah, I mean, when I did, it when I first started trying flip learning as an approach, I spent a
long time doing the videos, and soon realised that I'm not perfect in the classroom. I'm myself. I
drop pens, I make mistakes, I misspell things on the board sometimes. And therefore, it's not

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terrible if I do it on the video as well. No, exactly. [INTERPOSING VOICES] You have that kind
of, yeah, you have that kind of relationship with your, I mean, this video we're making now isn't
perfect, is it? No, not at all. Yeah. Fantastic.

And of course, we had a couple of contributions I think from people on the course showing us
their, because, well, and thank you so much, everyone, for trying. Because we know how time-
consuming these things are. We had Simon, who showed us around his apartment. And he was
teaching vocabulary of like sofa and table and washing machine and dishwasher. And so, very
simple, very simple video, but very effective. And we had somebody whose name I don't know,
because she didn't put her name, teaching 'me gusta', which is, 'I like'. Yeah. I like doing this, I
like swimming, I like eating, and I like going to the zoo.

And that what I thought was very effective, a small little white board where she wrote the target
sentence. And you can do that. You can use some pictures to show what swimming is. You can
use some pictures to show what going to the zoo is, that sort of thing as well. So thank you,
everyone, it was really fantastic to see you having a go at doing flip classroom. Lindsay, I think
we ought to move on to questions, because we've had loads and loads of questions this week
about setting up business, which setting up your business and starting teaching online, which is
what the whole course is about.

And all these poor people have waited four weeks for us to get to this. So thank you so much,
everyone, for your patience. First question's about pay. So you talk about that, Lindsay. How
much should they charge? Yeah, well, people are asking, yeah, so how much per hour? And
we think, well, actually, you should probably just charge what you would charge face to face,
because you're still giving your expertise. Yeah. You are giving your time. And so that is really
valuable. And of course, if you're competing against language schools, then you're going to be
charging what the language school would pay you. But the language school would charge the
learner much more than that. So you're still being very competitive.

I do think that you do need to think, though, if you're going to operate in a market outside your
own country, because you need to do some research about what is going to be acceptable in
that country. So you need to think about that. You might have to charge less, or you might be
able to charge more even. Absolutely. But you can be more competitive or help learners
through group lessons. Yeah, I think if you find, if you feel that you, the learners in your area
can't afford your fees, then you can perhaps start with two learners, and then they would share
whatever your hourly rate is. Two learners would share that. Or maybe have a larger group.

Maybe have four learners, who between the four of them, would share your fee. I think you
would charge the same if you were teaching a group or teaching one to one. Perhaps a group
lesson might involve a little more preparation, but not necessarily. But I think certainly, that we
should not be under-charging. You shouldn't be saying, oh, it's an online lesson, so I can
charge less, because I don't have to travel. I don't, I'm not buying that argument. Because I
think you have the same qualifications and your going-rate will be whatever you would get paid
in a face-to-face situation. We also had questions, Lindsey, about people setting up a website.
Should they make their website?

Should they go on social media? Should they set up a Facebook page? I think, yes, set up a
Facebook page. Yes, go on Instagram. And yes, create a website, why not? Yep. And Joanna,
no, it wasn't Joanna. Joanna was asking about flip learning. We'll put a website up for you,
Joanna, for that. No, we were, who was it? Samira was saying, is it expensive to have a
website? And the answer is no, isn't it? I mean, there are websites like Wix and Squarespace.
Yeah. Where you create a website for free. And it's really easy to do. You don't need lots of
pages. You could just have one page with the information on.

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You basically drag and drop things and type your information, add pictures, it's lovely. If you
want to use your own domain name, if you want to not have the website's logo, then you would
need to pay more to upgrade. It doesn't necessarily have to cost a lot of money, but I think you
can do a simple one for free, to be honest. Yeah, absolutely. And there are YouTube videos as
well, aren't there, Lindsay, in how to, for example, Wix, how to make a Wix website? Yeah.
There are tutorials on YouTube that you can have a look at and just follow the instructions.
Absolutely. Yeah.

We also, we had, this week we looked at how to find out the level of your learner in a placement
test. Yeah. We've also had quite a lot of questions about assessment in online teaching. And
we haven't really talked a lot about that in class. So perhaps we should spend a couple of
minutes doing that, talking about assessing your learners. Maybe 90 seconds, Marie Therese.
OK. That'll be a challenge. OK, assessment. So, for me, you're not going to sit in silence for 10
or 15 minutes while a student does some kind of progress test when you're doing online testing.

You might give that test for homework, but in the classroom that students are paying for, you're
probably going to do a lot more formative assessment. So listening to the students all the time,
assessing what progress they're making and what they still need. But also getting the students
to reflect at the end of every lesson on what progress they've made. Yeah. How they're
improving and what they still need to do. Yeah. I think that's really important. And also
remember you can use the recording. So you can record the student at the beginning of a
lesson doing an activity, and then record the student at the end of the lesson doing the same
activity, and let them see how they've improved.

It's not a good thing to do incidentally, if the student hasn't improved at all. But if they have, they
can see the difference that having a little input a little feedback on an activity can make. So,
Lindsay, I think we've got to go, because we've been blabbing on as usual for ages. But before
we go, can I just say, thank you so much to everyone. For all of your contributions. You stayed
with us for the whole four weeks. And we've learned bundles. I've learned bundles anyway.
Yeah, it's been brilliant. You've been brilliant. You've really collaborated together, and it's been
a fantastic experience for us. I hope it's been for you. And you know, good luck with your online
teaching Absolutely.

Good luck, everyone. Bye. Thanks for being with us. Bye bye.

End-of-course video and further reading - We’ve reached the end of the course and, in this
video, Lindsay and Marie Therese look back at some of the things we talked about this week
and in previous weeks.

Further reading - Below are books and articles that you may want to read in order to find out
more about teaching English online.

Teaching Online by Nicky Hockly and Lindsay Clandfield

http://ihjournal.com/teaching-online-by-nicky-hockly-and-lindsay-clandfield
How to Teach English Online and One-on-One Like a Pro
https://store.busyteacher.org/products/how-to-teach-english-online-1-on-1
How to get started as an online teacher of English by Emma Segev
https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/how-get-started-as-online-teacher-english
Tips from experienced online teachers on planning and resources
https://www.teachingeslonline.com/resources-planning-online-english-lessons/
Facebook page created by Miguel, a participant who took part in the first run of this Teaching
English Online Course Reach and Teach

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