How to Stay Productive While Teaching English Online

Boost online English teaching productivity with TEFL certification, stress reduction, distraction-free workspaces, effective scheduling, and self-care strategies.

Staying productive while teaching online is crucial, but by taking measures to obtain the right qualifications, reducing your stress, managing your time appropriately and investing in yourself, you'll find coping with the demands of your career much easier.

Staying productive is always important, whatever your career path, but it's especially crucial when you're teaching English online. Not only do you have to deliver effective classes, but you also need to ensure that your learners are engaging well, that they're participating fully and achieving their goals.

Therefore, while using efficient tools, for example, when communicating via video when you're teaching English online is important, it's just as crucial to focus on yourself and how well prepared you are to perform to your top capacity.

With this in mind, here are some top tips to help you maximise your productivity while you work.

How Do I Know How To Deliver Effective Lessons?

The top tip to improve your productivity when teaching English online is to become TEFL-qualified, as this will equip you with the skills and knowledge to deliver the most effective lessons.

Teaching English as a foreign language (or TEFL) isn't always easy, but with the right knowledge under your belt, you'll understand the best ways to deliver high-quality classes that keep your learners engaged and enthusiastic about their learning.

As the TEFL certificate is also a world-recognised qualification, it's highly sought after amongst recruiters for both online and physical language schools across the globe when reviewing applicants for teaching posts.

Nevertheless, there are many different providers of TEFL courses, and not all are created equal. Therefore, you need to choose your course provider wisely, selecting one that is accredited by a reputable organisation. If you learn how to teach English online through accredited courses like those provided by The TEFL Org, you can be certain that you'll receive top-level training in everything from subject matter to classroom management techniques, setting you on the right path for success.

How Can I Reduce Stress?

You can reduce stress while teaching English online by practicing relaxation techniques, keeping your caffeine levels down and surrounding yourself with a calming environment.

If you're stressed, getting things done is far more challenging. If everything is building up and getting on top of you, it's much harder to focus and cope with the everyday tasks involved in delivering lessons and managing your online classroom.

Here are some tips to help:

• Try using a diffuser to release calming essential oil aromas around you while you work.

• Practice meditation and breathing techniques regularly for better mental and emotional well-being.

• Limit your caffeine intake to help avoid overstimulation.

How Can I Avoid Distractions?

You can avoid distractions by wearing noise-cancelling headphones, working in quiet spaces and turning off your phone while you work.

Getting distracted is all too easy, particularly if you're working online, so finding ways to minimise the things that could sidetrack you and prevent you from focusing couldn't be more important.

Selecting the most suitable environment is key to keeping distractions to a minimum, so take care to choose a spot away from outside noises and keep music and televisions switched off when you're planning your lessons. It also makes sense to keep your mobile switched off so you won't be tempted to check for emails and messages when you should be focusing.

How Can I Schedule My Work Effectively?

Preparing to-do lists and prioritising your tasks in advance is the best way to effectively schedule your work and stay on top of productivity.

While you'll learn a lot of key things when taking your TEFL course with The TEFL Org, one thing that you'll need to face independently once you're qualified is the challenge of coming up with an effective work schedule.

It's advisable to develop a routine of writing lists of key tasks to accomplish and important goals to reach at the beginning of each teaching period, each week, and each day. That way, you can stay focused on your short-term and long-term objectives.

To maximise your productivity, it also makes sense to plan what you need to do and prepare for each class you need to deliver well in advance of the lesson and have everything ready to go before you log on, so that you don't waste valuable lesson time searching for resources.

How Can I Take Care Of Myself While Teaching English Online?

You can practice good self-care by eating well, getting enough rest and taking exercise in your leisure time. It's also important to invest in your own skills and knowledge to keep yourself at the cutting edge of your career.

Thinking clearly and feeling your best is key to being a productive and successful online English teacher. Taking good care of yourself is therefore vital to keep your immune system on an even keel. You can achieve optimal wellness both mentally and physically by:

• Eating a healthy and nutritious diet.

• Getting plenty of sleep every night and maintaining good sleep hygiene so you're well-rested and ready to concentrate the next day.

• Take some exercise each day to boost your energy and alertness.

Investing in yourself and your own skills is also a good way to boost your overall productivity and effectiveness as an online English teacher. Feeling confident in your abilities will put you in the best place to deliver successful lessons and keep your students engaged with your classes.

You can achieve this by doing plenty of reading and research on TEFL and the broader world of education. You'll pick up top tips that will help your learners achieve their objectives while also helping you to steer clear of common pitfalls and errors that teachers can face all too often in their virtual classrooms.

By adding this knowledge to the base skills you've developed while studying with The TEFL Org, you'll find it easier than you imagined to be the productive teacher you've always wanted to be!