Now that we’re in the second wave of Covid, with the likelihood of everything being “back to normal” still a fair way off, you may find yourself toying with the idea of taking online lesssons – perhaps to update old skills, or to acquire new ones, or otherwise to enhance your job prospects, or just to use your time in a beneficial way. However, it’s possible you’re a little anxious about the efficacy of this mode of learning.
Very often people see online learning as merely a replacement for a physical face to face lesson, and an inferior one at that, but, having taught online lessons in one form or another for several years now, I can honestly say I consider them not just “as good as”, but in many respects better than face-to-face lessons. There are many advantages even when learning in a group, but it is especially the case for individuals. In this article, I’ve summed these up under 10 headings :
- Flexibility of where, when and how long
- Personal private space (great for confidence building) as you can feel relaxed in your own environment
- Ease of sharing material – both from teacher to student and from student to teacher – if you have a work project for example, that can be shared and worked on together. Both teacher and student can write on the screen and annotate the document together.
- Virtual whiteboards allows me to write/type as I would in a physical lesson, but with the advantage I can save it at the end of the lesson and send it to you so that you have a record of what we’ve done in the lesson.
- No need to take notes during the lesson (because I type as you speak, correcting your language as we go so that you have a perfect copy without having your flow unnecessarily interrupted, which really helps to build up fluency.
- Interactivity – I can share any programs I have on my computer, or a website, a video a grammar exercise, and not only show it to you, but I can even give you control of my keyboard and mouse, so that you can yourself interact with the software – as we all know, this is a much more effective way of learning, by actually doing – as well as being a lot more fun. I often create interactive language games, which even adults enjoy doing.
- Intimacy – you might think that the computer disrupts the intimacy between teacher and student – on the contrary. Because you are only just one screen away, and because we generally sit closer to the screen than we would sit to each other in a classroom, there is actually a feeling of getting close without the invasion of personal space. As well as helping build rapport, it is also incredibly helpful for things like pronunciation, where I am able to show you how to form words correctly.
- Recording of lesson is possible – great for viewing at home after the lesson
- Use of breakout rooms in a group lesson. As a teacher I can then choose who to work with and I can give differentiated support as appropriate.
- No mask! Whilst a bit of a jokey comment to finish this article with, there’s a more serious message underneath. There’s the metaphorical mask we all wear, that when we are in our home environment, in front of our own computers, we feel much more at ease about letting slip. Go for it! See what the real you can really do!
