ESL Teacher

When I first arrived in Perth two years ago, I needed a little extra work to pay the rent. I remembered an ad I’d seen for online English teachers and got in contact with the company, and I was soon spending my evenings on the telephone to students in Japan, running half hour conversation lessons with them and picking up some decent pocket money.

In principal, the online or telephone English learning idea is mostly about making money, but then again, a lot of ESL education is focused on the bottom line, isn’t it? Matching up students somewhere – anywhere in the world is possible – with native speakers, wherever they’re living, and setting up short one-to-one lessons – is what these schools are all about.

On job boards like Dave’s ESL Café job list, you can still see ads for these kind of jobs. The pay may not always be great – although that probably depends on the cost of living where you are at the moment – but it can be fun work and a nice way to get a bit of extra cash together.

I ended up having quite a few regular students and discovered that yes, it was possible to build a great teacher to student relationship on the telephone or on Skype. Just a couple of these students also had a web-cam and that certainly enhanced the experience even further. Of course, Skype or other internet communication capabilities depend on the internet speed where the students and teachers are located, but it’s certainly possible in many situations. I’d recommend it to ESL teachers who might be wanting some part time work or just some extra cash; I had a lot of fun.

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