How to Find an Online English Teacher

[00:00:00] In one of my recent videos, I gave some advice, saying that if you want to improve your English, you may need some help from an English teacher.

I'm not just saying that because I'm an English teacher, but I know the value of having someone who is an expert that can identify some of your weaknesses and tell you those weaknesses and then help you focus on them and bring them up.

So, your overall level increases and you become a more confident and better English speaker.

[00:00:31] So today I'm going to show you how to find a good English teacher online because there are tens of thousands of them. Some of them better than others, and I want you to have the best quality education you can.

[00:00:47] Okay, so I'm going to use the website Preply. This is the biggest online tutoring website I know of.

There are others and you can probably apply the same rules that I'm going to show you today to different websites like italki, for example, but I teach on Preply, and I have for a while.

[00:01:08] I've stopped doing it as much because I'm focusing on my online community at the moment, but I'm very familiar with Preply. So, this is the website I'm going to show you.

And I think there are some great tutors on here. So, if you go over to the Preply website, you will be able to “unlock your potential with the best language tutors.”

[00:01:29] Let's have a look. So, you can actually get Preply to use the algorithm to find you some tutors, but I think we can do it ourselves.

So, you will be able to kind of… get started here and go through some of your goals and things. But I like to just choose from the 23,000 available. So, let's have a look.

[00:01:49] Make sure you select the language that you want to learn. So, for example, English. Second of all, you have your price per lesson. There's no point looking through tutors that you can't afford.

English lessons can be expensive. They can also be very cheap. You will find some teachers charging £2 per lesson.

[00:02:09] And there will be some tutors who charge £100 per lesson. So, there is a wide range of prices available. Let's imagine that you have a budget of £26 per lesson.

The third filter you can choose from is country of birth. Now you have a wide range of different countries here you can choose from.

[00:02:30] You can choose people from Argentina. If you want to speak to an Argentinian, but a lot of people choose countries that are natively English and mostly if they kind of work with a specific nationality.

So, one of my students works with a lot of British people, so he wanted a British tutor. Some people are moving to California, so it's probably better if they learn from someone from the United States of America.

[00:02:59] But there are great tutors from many different countries, even non-native speakers. Some non-native speakers know the English language a lot better than native speakers, especially grammar.

So don't be put off just because someone is not originally from the United Kingdom, or the United States, or any other English native speaking country.

[00:03:20] But for this example, I'm going to press the United Kingdom. You can also look at the times available as well.

So, if you know that you can only take lessons in the evening, you may as well put evening and put the time slots. So, between six and nine, there's no point looking at tutors if they're not available during the times that you're available.

[00:03:42] So with these four filters, we can narrow it down. So, I want to learn English. Less than £26 per lesson from the United Kingdom available in the evening. That 23,000 tutors has now gone down to 1,271.

So, let's see who we can find. What is the next step? The next step for me is by sorting.

Instead of choosing our top pick Preply has an algorithm that no one quite understands, and they choose some tutors to go up the top of this algorithm and they punish other ones due to many things.

[00:04:19] What do I think you should go by? I think you should go by years of experience and reviews.

You will probably find some tutors that are cheaper if they are newer to teaching and they might be more hard working, they might be more passionate, they might actually be naturally better tutors.

But with everything usually experience pays and they’ll be able to provide more value to you and they’ll be able to identify those weaknesses better.

[00:04:42] So what you can do on Preply is sort by number of reviews. I think reviews is the best way to see that someone is a good tutor.

This guy, Ali A., 234 reviews with an average 4.9. This guy looks like a great tutor. He's got years of experience, 12 years experience. The reviews speak for themselves. I don't know this person, by the way, it's just an example.

[00:05:07] If we go back there… you'll be able to find so many different tutors with excellent reviews and these people you can trust because the reviews are there. There are a few other different filters that you can do.

So, if you want to focus on British English, or if you have an IELTS test coming up, if you want to focus on business English or conversational English, you'll be able to find some people who specialize in specific things.

[00:05:32] I'm just going to put conversational English, British English. If you want someone who speaks the same native language as you, or has another language apart from English, then you can press Spanish, and see which English teachers also speak Spanish.

This guy, John B., he's got 162 reviews, 4.5 on average, and he also speaks Spanish and intermediate level.

[00:05:54] You can choose a native speaker or not. The next one is tutor categories. So, there is a thing on Preply called a super tutor.

This doesn't really mean that they're a better tutor. It just means they're more consistent on the platform, and it's just a way of the algorithm kind of rewarding specific tutors.

[00:06:11] But yeah, if you want to choose a super tutor, that's fine. For example, Ryan C. is a super tutor. This guy looks like a good tutor as well.

He's got 53 reviews, 5 of them five star, almost had 3,000 lessons on the platform, and he's only £12 per hour? He speaks Arabic at B2, Italian A1, German A1, Spanish A1, okay.

[00:06:34] And has five years teaching IELTS and general English… for £12 an hour?

Like having a month worth of lessons with him or two months of lessons with him could really just find those weaknesses and then you don't have to continue learning with these tutors.

You can just say, thank you. You've taught me for a month.

[00:06:52] I find… I found the things that I can focus on by myself now. You don't need to pay any more money and there you go. That can really just improve your English just by having a few lessons with a few great tutors.

They will be able to help you. They'll be able to redirect you in… in a way that would be really beneficial.