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A Guide To Teaching Teenagers and Adults Online
A Guide To Teaching Teenagers and Adults Online
A guide to
teaching teenagers
and adults online
improve. Remember that these are skills that you already have, so MANAGING ONLINE
TEACHING ONLINE LEARNING
don’t let the technology get in the way. 1. What is it?
1. What is it?
Increasingly, the first place we go for anything we need to know or learn is online.
Good teaching is good teaching, whether it is done face-to-face or online. As a teacher, It’s easier and faster than ever to access the tools and information we need. But for
you will already have many skills and strategies that you can bring to teaching online, longer-term learning goals like language learning which involve the development
whatever digital tools you choose (or are asked) to use. And as a language teacher, you of knowledge and skills over time, online learning will require structure, support,
already know how to engage and motivate your students. You also know that you need interaction, and a teacher.
to give your students opportunities to listen to and practise English. In this paper, we At its simplest, online learning can be facilitated just by sending assignments by email
look at tools, techniques, and activities that will enable you to use these essential skills or on a messenger app for your students to complete and return in the same way for
in your online teaching. marking. Going further, there is a wealth of free resources, support, and easy-to-use
Variety of options tools that can help you set up and run online learning. These can enable you to deliver
There isn’t a single ‘correct’ way to teach online. How you teach online depends on tasks and activities to your students, track their interaction with the activities, collect
your context and what technologies you and your students have available. It also scores to measure attainment, and even meet face-to-face online with groups or
depends on how confident you feel using these technologies, and what you want your individual students for live lessons or one-to-one tutorials.
students to achieve. Teaching online can include: With younger learners, you will need to enlist the support of parents. There are lots of
■ Synchronous learning ready-made activities that you can send younger students to work on with their parents.
This involves communicating in real time. For example, carrying out a live lesson Check out the teacher support site for your coursebook on the Oxford Teachers’ Club.
with your students using a videoconferencing tool like Skype or Zoom. There is also the Oxford Parents site where you can find tips and activities to share
with parents.
■ Asynchronous learning
This involves communicating over time. For example, asking your students to work
with online learning materials or participate in a class discussion via email or in an 2. What types of tools are available?
online forum at a time or location of their own choosing.
Learning platforms
■ Using ready-made materials Google Classroom and Edmodo are very popular learning platforms that many
A wide range of digital English language learning materials for all age groups teachers use. They have the advantage of being compatible with tools that you can use
and on almost any topic is available online, including language learning apps, to create interactive materials.
digital reading and listening resources, grammar games, and videos. Many English
If you work with older students who are regular Facebook users, you can create courses
language coursebooks come with online tips and activities for teachers and parents,
on Facebook using a Facebook Group. Be sure to use a community group and set it to
including those that can be found on the Oxford Teachers’ Club and Oxford Parents
show the content in units. This will enable you to structure your content around themes,
websites.
skills, or grammar points.
■ Creating materials
You may need to create some materials yourself in order to supplement your Content tools
coursebook or to meet the requirements of teaching online. For example, you could If you want to create your own interactive content, there are quite a few different
create online quizzes using free websites and apps like Kahoot! or Quizlet. options. You can use free tools like Educandy and Jetpack for creating games and
quizzes for younger learners. For teens and adults, Kahoot and Quizlet are useful for
■ Using multimedia
creating quizzes and games.
Multimedia can be used in low-tech contexts, where you can create audio
recordings to share via email, as well as in high-tech contexts, where you could
create a video recording or a narrated PowerPoint presentation to share via an
online file-sharing service such as Google Drive or Dropbox.