Teaching Languages Online

How to teach effectively, efficiently and confidently online.

What you’ll learn:
How to teach languages effectively online. Build your confidence, effectiveness, efficiency and professionalism as an online teacher of languages.
What are the essential pieces of software and hardware we need, how to improve sound and lighting, and use tools, tabs, bookmarks, shortcuts and more.
How to present materials, give feedback and use electronic course materials, how to interact effectively with learners online with breakout rooms.
How to replicate kinaesthetic activities and add multimedia using Jamboard and Padlet, and how to spice up your lesson with games in MSWord, Jamboard & Quizlet.
The pros and cons of virtual backgrounds and what makes a good electronic course book, and how to use them effectively.

Requirements
A little knowledge of teaching practice.
A little knowledge of computers.
A willingness to learn, reflect and experiment.

Description
Thanks for considering this course. My teaching has moved 100% online and over the last one and a half years, I’ve put a lot of thought into what makes effective online teaching.

This course will build your confidence, give you new ideas, and make you reevaluate your online teaching. All the ideas and techniques shown revolve around the principles of providing a better learning experience for the learner, and reducing our stress levels and time we need to prepare and follow-up classes.

Topics include:

The Essentials and IT

What are the essential pieces of software and hardware or peripherals we need, how can we improve sound and lighting, and how to make our teaching more efficient with tools, tabs, bookmarks, shortcuts, virtual backgrounds, aliases and an organised PC.

Interaction

How can we engage and interact with our learners and deal with the problem of poor eye-contact? When should cameras be on and when off?

Pedagogy

How can we best present materials and lessons online? How can we use electronic course books and portals to bets effect?

How can we give effective feedback and language correction? How can we best deal with course materials and scans/PDFs. What do we look for in an electronic course book and how can we get the most out of them?

How can we exploit the multimedia potential of the web and simulate the kinaesthetic activities we had in the real classroom using jamboard and Padlet?

How can we spice up your lesson with games in MSWord, Jamboard and Quizlet?

The principles apply to the teaching of all languages, and whether you use MSTeams, Zoom, GoogleMeet or another portal.

Who this course is for
Language teachers or prospective language teachers.
Language teachers wanting to improve their confidence teaching online and get new ideas, or to become more efficient.
Whether teaching in Teams, Zoom, Google Meet or another platform, the principles given in the course apply. Jamboard and Padlet are throughly introduced, and I give you ways of using these tools and MSWord for replicating kinaesthetic learning.
The principles also apply whether you’re teaching, English or any other language.