Weighing the Options

I can vividly remember the time when I decided to fully work at home, that was the time I had my first pregnancy. There were crucial points that I’ve considered before jumping into the bandwagon of home based online teaching.

Benefits

I was an expectant mother so first thing I’ve considered were the benefits of working in a company, I don’t have to worry about health insurance, social security and of course if I get sick I could still be paid. Not to mention the 13^th month pay. On the other hand, working at home means “no work, no pay” and I have to shoulder the payment of health insurance and social security system. Though I’ve experienced working as a part-time online tutor before, I have never really thought of doing it as a full-time because of the perks in the workplace.

Working Time

The thing about working at home is you can set the time that you wanted to work. It’s very flexible.  I teach from early morning and evening so I had the whole mid-morning and afternoon to myself. It’s really great because if I go grocery shopping, there’s not so many people lining up in the counter or getting stuck in the traffic jam. Also, I was able to take care of my baby while working.

Salary

I could earn the same amount of salary that I earned when I was working in a call center or even slightly higher depending on the number of hours I input. I work an average of 160-200 hours a month. Other tutors could work 15-18 hours a day!

Travel Time

I worked in a call center at that time and I got out from the office at 7 in the morning. You can just imagine the rush hour. Travelling to and fro from the workplace, getting stuck in the traffic jam jarred me and thinking about working at home is a kind of dream job. I could save 2-3 hours of my time in a day.

You are your own boss

One of the great things about working at home is that you don’t have the pressure from your bosses. If you plan to have a vacation you can do so. No need to file a leave of absence. Of course, that would be without pay. It’s like having your own business.

If you are also surmising about working at home, you might want to consider these things.

Check out my next blog on how to prepare yourself in working at home.

 

Two Simple and Easy Tips to Enhance your English

I notice that my readers usually come from Japan so I decided to publish this blog. These are some easy tips I would like to share to my students.

Improve your vocabulary 

Reading would greatly boost your vocabulary. Ask yourself what kind of reading materials you would like to read. If you are a person who loves to check out the current events, then I suggest that you read the English news after reading your favorite Japanese newspaper.  If you love reading manga, you could check out some comics sites. When I was young I loved reading Archie and one of my favorite character there was Jughead. You can check out this comic book if it suits your taste.

Immerse yourself in an English environment

 This is difficult especially if English is not commonly spoken in your area, so how to do that. If you are into music, you can listen to English song. Try to hear out the words. You can begin with simple slow songs. Try to imitate how they pronounce it. Mind you some songs don’t have perfect grammar. However, listening to them can make you more familiar on some words that you don’t know of.

If you have time to watch then maybe you can indulge yourself to watching an English drama series or movies. You could turn on the subtitle at first and second time around you can try to watch it without the subtitle. Test yourself if you could still hear out the words they’re saying. Some expressions are not that easy to understand. Take note of that expression and you can ask your English tutor to explain more about it.

If you are not into music or movies, you could also check out some podcasts or documentaries. What’s important is that you are enjoying your free time and at the same time you improving your English.

With these two tips, you can improve your vocabulary, grammar, listening and pronunciation. Of course, for you to check your development you need your English Teacher to guide you. You can use the words you’ve read and heard and the teacher can evaluate if you were able to use them properly in the class.

How I ventured into Teaching English

As a teenager, I really wanted to become a teacher. However, I ended up graduating with a business major. My parents didn’t want me to go to teaching profession because according to them it is very difficult to get employed. That was actually true, it’s hard to get a permanent job as a teacher so I acquiesced to their decision. Well, now I don’t really regret it because I could still use my background to have a business lesson at present. So how come from a business major, I became an English Tutor?

I was at that time unemployed, I just came back from Taiwan after working there for a year. Economy in Taiwan was so bad in 2008 that a lot of Filipino overseas, I including, were forced to go home and as to be expected an increase of unemployment. I lived in the outskirt of a small city so it’s much harder to find a job. I then check out the newspaper publication for job openings and lo and behold I saw a job advertisement of teaching English to foreign nationalities. As I had dreamed of becoming  a teacher, I thought that this would be perfect opportunity for me instead of working in a bank or call center.

I passed the interviews and trainings for ESL Teaching and that helped me a lot how to teach students effectively. I taught Korean students in that offline school and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. It’s not the usual classroom setting wherein a student would mostly listen but more of an interactive one. I’ve gained insights to their culture and find it exciting. There were of course some challenges along the way but these obstacles made me what I am today. So that’s how I ended up becoming an ESL teacher.

 

Getting Ready: Your Tools to Online Teaching

After deciding upon yourself if you are in this kind of job whether be it a part-time or full-time, you might want to check out these things.

Computer/laptop, headset and a camera

If you already have these things then that’s nice and good. You just have to make sure that your computer is not that slow since you would be opening an application for your audio/video class and a browser.

Internet Service Provider

Check out the internet company that’s available in your area. I recommend DSL or cable company since they offer a more stable internet. When I first started out 5 years ago 1Mbps download speed was enough to conduct the class. Internet connection is a lot cheaper now than before so if you want you could choose a higher speed just in case other family members would also want to use the internet. I currently subscribed to a plan with a 6Mbps download speed.  I’ve tried broadband several years ago but it’s just a headache due to its intermittent connection especially on a rainy day.

Materials

Most online schools have their own curriculum so you just have to familiarize yourself on how to conduct the class. For freelancers like me, I check out online sources that would best suit my students. You have to have a variety of materials since you would be catering to different ages with different levels of English and with different reasons of studying the English language. You can make your own lesson plan from these sites.

I’ve bookmarked a lot of English sites but here are some useful sites I frequently go to;

For Beginner Students

I use ESL books like Side by Side, Talk Talk Talk, Interchange and Can you believe it. You can access some websites like http://www.slideshare.net or http://www.scribd.com to check out these books for free. You can also use other ESL books that you can come across.

For intermediate students

http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/

This site offers a lot of exercises like vocabulary, pronunciation, listening, grammar and discussion. I ask the student to read it in advance so we could focus more on discussion. Some students however don’t have time to have an advance study and since it only is a two-paragraph essay it is easy for them to comprehend it. This is especially good for students who could already express their ideas in sentences.

For Advance Students

http://www.ted.com/

You can pick some interesting videos here. This is a good exercise for them to check out their listening comprehension and vocabulary. You can choose a shorter version so the student could just easily watch it during their free time. To make a lesson plan out of it, you could check out the transcript and look out for the idioms, deep vocabularies, and slangs that the speaker used and make an exercise out of it. It could be a multiple choice exercise or a matching type. Also, you can prepare some comprehension questions and of course discussion questions that is related to the topic.

If you are not yet sure on how to conduct the class you can check out my next blog.

Weighing the Options

I can vividly remember the time when I decided to fully work at home, that was the time I had my first pregnancy. There were crucial points that I’ve considered before jumping into the bandwagon of home based online teaching.

Benefits

I was an expectant mother so first thing I’ve considered were the benefits of working in a company, I don’t have to worry about health insurance, social security and of course if I get sick I could still be paid. Not to mention the 13^th month pay. On the other hand, working at home means “no work, no pay” and I have to shoulder the payment of health insurance and social security system. Though I’ve experienced working as a part-time online tutor before, I have never really thought of doing it as a full-time because of the perks in the workplace.

Working Time

The thing about working at home is you can set the time that you wanted to work. It’s very flexible.  I teach from early morning and evening so I had the whole mid-morning and afternoon to myself. It’s really great because if I go grocery shopping, there’s not so many people lining up in the counter or getting stuck in the traffic jam. Also, I was able to take care of my baby while working.

Salary

I could earn the same amount of salary that I earned when I was working in a call center or even slightly higher depending on the number of hours I input. I work an average of 160-200 hours a month. Other tutors could work 15-18 hours a day!

Travel Time

I worked in a call center at that time and I got out from the office at 7 in the morning. You can just imagine the rush hour. Travelling to and fro from the workplace, getting stuck in the traffic jam jarred me and thinking about working at home is a kind of dream job. I could save 2-3 hours of my time in a day.

You are your own boss

One of the great things about working at home is that you don’t have the pressure from your bosses. If you plan to have a vacation you can do so. No need to file a leave of absence. Of course, that would be without pay. It’s like having your own business.

If you are also surmising about working at home, you might want to consider these things.

Check out my next blog on how to prepare yourself in working at home.