Bowie: I Want To Teach English Online

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

I Want To Teach English Online

The English teaching market is massive and growing. For a lot of people from the US, UK or commonwealth countries, it’s a great way to travel while young and experience more of the world. Online teaching is growing at an even more explosive rate—14.2% per year in Asia, 13.8% per year in Latin America. (Ambient Insight: 2011-2016 World Wide English Language Learning Market Overview)

Why teach English online?

Teaching online has a few advantages over traditional classroom teaching. It’s flexible, it’s efficient and it’s also becoming the first place aspiring students look.

Working online tends to be flexible

If you’re teaching online, you can teach from anywhere. This means you don’t have to worry about visas. You don’t have to travel if you don’t want to. Or you could move to someplace really inexpensive in Eastern Europe or SE Asia and teach students from first world countries at a salary much higher than you would earn locally. It’s fantastic work for a Digital Nomad who wants to save more money.

There are several ways of teaching languages online that fairly closely mirror the experience of teaching at a university or in a cram school. Those are pretty inflexible, but there are also a lot of options that give you more scheduling flexibility. TutorABC is kind of a middle of the road option that will give you some training materials and guidance, but expects you to get a TEFL certificate and to be available during certain times that have high student demand. At the top of the flexibility spectrum, Italki and Verbling offer the teacher full freedom to chose the hours they are available.