Creative Ways to Teach English Online

Today due to the COVID19 pandemic, there are billions of people suffering from virtual education but also there are a big percentage of people getting the most out of virtual learning and says that they prefer virtual learning to offline learning. Because of COVID or not, everyone should adjust their working methods due to the environment. For now, it seems like the best way to teach is to teach in a safe environment. At the beginning of the pandemic co-founder of Decktopus saw a huge gap in classroom communication “Caleb didn’t understand the expectations for the homework and probably completed his work with an unclear goal. The teacher had failed to explain her/his expectations to Caleb and Caleb felt humiliated in front of his friends. What a failure in a presentation task that could have easily been avoided!” and released an educational discount to help e-learning perform better in the online classrooms.

To dig deeper into e-learning and trying new methods to improve the online learning process one should observe the advantages and disadvantages of online learning to decide on true strategies.

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Advantages of E-Learning

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Reviewing lectures multiple times

Students get to reach out to a directory of lessons and rewatch the lesson multiple times to take notes and understand fully.

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Reduced Cost

From accommodation to transportation, students and teachers save a lot of time and money in order to take classes.

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Easy to Follow

Since students have a class directory a lot of them saved their times normally lost by falling behind the class. Thanks to classroom clouds now they can reach out to missing points quickly and easily.

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Quick Delivery

A single class online could be a class to deliver the whole unit a lot of the time. Thanks to this teachers have more time to review examples and questions.

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Disadvantages of E-Learning

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Lack of Social Interaction

A lot of the time students shy away from unmuting themselves and communicate during class. The online learning experience pushes their comfort zone to narrow. Teachers have a harder time collaborating with students and collect feedback from their experiences.

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Time Management & Self-Motivation

Since the student is mostly by themselves they have to generate a strong self-motivation to study, review and work on their classes accordingly. Also since there is open access to all records of classes they have to build an effective time management system to work on their class at their own pace.

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Communication Skill Development

One of the biggest things about offline school is that the students interact with each other, build social interactions and do classwork together collaboratively. Online learning disables this kind of interaction and if families do not work together with educational institutions, the result may be a lack of social interaction skills.

For all these reasons teachers have a high responsibility to build a strong community more than ever. Classrooms should be designed due to a strategy to increase interaction, help students to be live in class, and get the most out of the classroom. In this article, we gathered a high amount of ideas to increase classroom performances specifically during English classes.

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Ways to Teach English Online

When it comes to topics like language especially English there are a lot of creative ways to teach. But online learning opened a new door to all educators in order to adjust virtual learning standards. To increase engagement among students, understanding, and practicalness we have a list of activities every teacher can host during their classes without a budget. Let’s recall one more time that Anatole France once said “Nine-tenth of education is encouragement.”.

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Virtual Art Show

When it comes to improving motor skills, every educator knows that encouraging students into creating art pieces is the best way. By using fingers, picking appropriate colors, and painting between the lines are great exercises for brain development. However, without an offline classroom, it might get harder to track student’s improvement. The tip we would like to give is to encourage students to create art pieces for a virtual art show. Pick a theme and give them a deadline to deliver. After finishing an art piece they will deliver the picture of the art piece via e-mail and the teacher can create an art slide slow just like that! Here are few instructions.

1. Go to Decktopus.com and log in.
2. Pick a cover layout and fill in the blanks by the class and year.
3. Pick image layout and upload images you have on your computer.
4. Write the name, surname, and the title of the art piece in the caption.
5. Add a form to vote for the best art.
6. Click on the share button.
7. Copy the embed form and paste it to the classroom website or send the share link with the classroom.

It will look like this!

Use this deck as a template!

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Pick a Topic from a Wheel

Use a wheel spinning tool and write all of the activity suggestions as a list. During online class spin the wheel to pick the next activity. This can increase excitement in class. By this method, you can also prevent the fights to choose an event.

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Online Treasure Hunts

One of the most exciting activities is to host a treasure hunt. By taking the help of tools like zoom rooms and Decktopus hosting such an event is very easy. You just need to use the required form and embed deck features on Decktopus you can create multiple quizzes for your students to work as a group. Here is what you need to do:

1. Create multiple topics to answer questions about.
2. Create multiple decks with forms and ask questions.
3. Make form submits to required to disable groups to see the instructions.
4. Add an instruction page after the form and the instructions will lead the group to the teacher. If the teacher accepts the answer teacher will give the next deck to go. If not, they have to find a new answer to skip this level.
5. The first group to finish the treasure hunt will win the competition and get a reward from the teacher.
6. If the teacher already has a website for the classroom they can embed each deck to the website in order.

Here is a sample deck for a treasure hunt! To use this deck as a sample click here.

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Fake Job Interviews

Time to get prepared for the dream job! Ask students to dress up for their dream job interview. Ask them questions about the job and host a fake job interview. This way they will learn to express themselves and talk about their dreams.

Collaborative Blogging

Another highly successful way to teach and let them practice English on their own is to start an online magazine. By participating in collaborative writing and having deadlines and topics to write about, students won’t see essay writing as a homework assignment. In opposite, they see it as an adult responsibility. For this reason, start an online club gathering and talk about topics and themes to talk about. Ask or assign each student a topic and give a minimum word limit. Each week or month everyone collaboratively read each other’s articles and give feedback to each other.

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Play Memory Games

By preparing flashcards about selected topics teachers can host memory games in their online classroom. Writing the word as a title on one page and the definition, synonyms in the next one can ask their students to answer questions. After taking answers the teacher can show the answer and talk about details of the topic. Here’s a flashcard sample deck.

Use this deck as a template!

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Host a Collaborative Q&A Session

Do you want your students to come to class prepared and you know that they hate oral exams? We have a solution for you because we know that oral exams are also an important step of learning. Pick 3 different topics and 3 different students. Assign each topic to each and tell them to come prepared and be ready to host a Q&A. In the Q&A session, other students come in with questions to ask and ask their questions to the assigned students. This is a good way to make the whole class prepared and build question-answer sentences spontaneously.

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Favorite Item Day

You probably saw the trend in TikTok where friends bring their favorite things to a hangout. If you don’t your student probably already know. Tell them you are hosting such an event. This activity is the one that your students will enjoy the most. Ask them to bring their favorite snacks, favorite clothes, favorite pen, or favorite book. Make everyone show their favorite item at the same time and try to see if different people picked the same things. Afterward, ask everyone why they love it so much.

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Movie or TV Series Day

By taking the help of Teleparty Chrome Extension teachers can host movie days. Picking documentaries, or travel shows are a great way to spend time in the class. By the extension itself, the whole classroom can chat, stop the film and ask questions.

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Adjusting to the New Age of Learning

Because of COVID19 schools across the world had undergone a shutdown and around 3.2 billion students changed their education status to online. The E-learning industry has become increasingly important and trends very quickly. According to the world economic forum, the volume of the educational market was $18.6 B in 2019 and now the market suggests that by the end of 2025 the market will reach $350 B. The market has a lot of players like online video conferencing tools, learning software, content creation software, and language learning apps.