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A question students who want to study online often have is how the practical side of an English course works. In this post, I would like to show you how technology allows people to do that just like in a face-to-face lesson. Below are a few important things to consider:

What does an online English lesson with two students have in common with face-to-face lessons?

• Both students can talk to each other and interact with the teacher in real-time ( ✓) 

• Students’ questions can quickly be dealt with ( ✓)

• Students can help each other ( ✓)

• Each student can take private notes and share them with the teacher during the lesson( ✓)

• Conversation games and dynamic activities are easy to create ( ✓)

What does an online English lesson with two students have that a f2f one doesn't?

• Students don’t need to be in the same place( ✓) 

• It is not necessary to have an elaborate physical structure; students can have class in a meeting room, at their office desk, at home, on their phone, at the airport, at a hotel… Pick your place! ( ✓)

• No commute ( ✓)

• The teacher can take private notes about pronunciation and grammar without distracting students and provide both students with real-time feedback ( ✓)

• Content can be recorded and consulted in the future without elaborate equipment ( ✓)

Wanna see this in practice?

I have selected two snippets from lessons that have demanded a lot of interactivity between me and my students to share:

Lesson 1. My students and I revised legal English vocabulary. Their core goal is to speak English like lawyers, which often means we need vocabulary. In this lesson, we had a quick review on the terms we had covered before. I wanted to see how much they retained from that class, and how much they could produce themselves. Bearing that in mind, I proposed a discussion on lawsuit success:

Lesson 2. Business-related conversation: this is a snippet from the final moments of a lesson where we did lots of conversation. I created a fictional case study about a company and had them debate. At this stage we discussed their mistakes and I performed corrections:

Thinking of studying online?

Let’s talk about it:

Here are a few things that might encourage you: