ESL English language learning resources discussion

Link: http://www.speakoz.com/

Hi. Welcome to the Speakoz blog. My name is James and I'm here to talk to you about my jaunts around Sydney to teach English privately. Names have been changed to protect the innocent!

One of my first experiences as a private English tutor was to visit a 7 year old student in Chatswood, Sydney. Let's call him Tomo. Now, if you've ever taught English at people's homes you'll probably be familiar with the initial 'getting lost' scenario. I was charging just $20 an hour at the time - no call out fee, no travel fee, just the lesson fee, so I was hoping that this would be an easy to get to place. Uh uh.

Follow up:

It took me an hour to get to Chatswood station due to delays on the line. Then it was half an hour to walk from Chatswood station to where there house was. (It looked closer on the map)

Then it was 10 minutes waiting while Tomo finished his computer game and sat down in the study for me. After 40 minutes he was so bored (even though the lessons I gave were fun, lighthearted, and good at improving his English) that I knew doing this for 2 hours was going to be a chore. I was right.

After the lesson I put my shoes back on, grabbed my umbrella, (it was raining) and trudged back to the train station and waited for 20 minutes for the next train. Got to Central, waited another 20 minutes for a connecting train. Finally got home exhausted, glad that I hadn't planned to see any other students that day. So one lesson really took 5 hours. Definitely not worth $40!

I persevered though and was rewarded with snacks, drives back to the station, good weather, recommended short cuts and a time change that meant I could get a better connection and faster train. Even so, $40 for 4 hours doesn't really cut it so I don't recommend it for anyone.

If you plan to advertise yourself as an ESL tutor you may wish to curb your enthusiasm for travelling as you may end up wasting a lot of your time.

And if you're a student you'll find it so much easier if you meet your tutor somewhere central, like the main city, and go to a cafe or something like that. Obviously if you're the parents of a 7 year old you may not be able to do that but you could try and find a tutor that lives close to you or offer to take your son/daughter closer to the tutor.

Having said all that, I developed Speakoz with this travel problem in mind. The site contains an English language learning resources directory that will help a lot of students to learn English using their computer. There are also lesson plans and ideas that will help tutors to add more content to their lessons. Fun for ESL EFL people everywhere!

If you've got any stories regarding travelling to see your students I'd love to hear them.