Most people have heard of the 80/20 rule. This law was coined by mathematician Vilfredo Pareto. The concept is simple: in anything you do, 20% of your efforts will yield 80% of the results. What is this 20% in language learning? What should you focus your efforts on to get 80% of the results with…
Guest Posts
6 Things You Think Are Helping You Learn English… But Are Actually A Waste Of Time
Have you been struggling to learn English for a while and don’t know why you can’t take the next step? A lot of articles talk about things you should add to your learning plan, but you only have so much time in the day. Instead, I want to focus today on things you should take…
Guest Posts
How To Improve Your Social Media Game If You Teach Online
Imagine a brand new suitcase with a broken handle. You can’t throw it away because it’s new, but can you use it? There’s a saying in Russian about “a suitcase without a handle — heavy to carry, but hard to throw away,” which refers to something we can neither let go nor keep. Does managing…
Guest Posts
Is It Better To Work With Your Own Students, Work For A School Or Build A Profile On A Tutor Site?
When I started my business, I thought I’d be working for language schools. I did work for one briefly, but once I started learning about the world of online teaching, it’s not the road I decided to take. Now, five years later, I only work with my own customers. I’m not going to argue that…
Guest Posts
How To Quickly Build And Remember Vocabulary
“How can I remember new words?” “How can I memorise new vocabulary and make sure that I don’t forget everything a day later?” As an English language teacher, I hear questions like these from learners all the time, and as a language learner myself (currently studying Japanese), I’ve even asked them too. Learning and remembering…
Guest Posts
5 Secrets From The Shallow End To Improve Your Listening
Do you like swimming? I do. I love being in the water. I’m a keen swimmer so I’m happy in the deep end, immersed in the water. I can move through it easily. When I got my swimming certificates as a kid, they said “Cara is swimming like a minnow” (a small, agile kind of…
Meet detectives Baumgartner & Momsen and learn German effortlessly with special emphasis on idioms and natural language crammed with humor and suspense.
learn more Online Teaching
3 Things Online Teachers Worry About For No Reason
About 10 years ago I got into crocheting. I felt like this was one skill I had to work on if one day I wanted to be a “good wife and a mother.” The project ended up being a total disaster because in my over-confidence I thought I would start with the most ambitious task:…
Guest Posts
“Why don’t my lessons sell?” – Marketing Tips For Online Teachers, Tutors and Trainers
A few weeks ago I did an intense 2-part #GetStrategy training for online teacherpreneurs, and one of the questions I received prompted this post: “I have no problem recruiting students on italki. Why can’t I do the same on my own site?” This goes in line with other questions I have been asked where teachers…
Guest Posts
Online Teachers: What are You Selling?
For Nike, it’s not just the shoe’s features that sell the shoe. (Source) Sales. That word you hated the moment your girlfriend began selling Avon, and you suddenly ran out of things to talk about unless you talked about cosmetics (Avon cosmetics, that is). The very reason you chose Humanities is so you would never…
Lifestyle
You’re The Alien! How Learning A New Language Gives You A Radically Different Perspective on Life (If You Let It…)
When I lived in Bangkok for four years, I often found myself stuck in the sprawling megacity’s notoriously bad traffic, staring out at the bustling sidewalks, and there was a certain recurring sign that never failed to catch my attention. It said: “Marriage for Alien“. Despite knowing better, I always imagined an almond-eyed couple with…
