How To Choose The Right English Teacher

How to choose a good English teacher

Choosing a good online English teacher can be a difficult task these days... there are just so many of them!!!

In this video, I give you my top 5 tips on things you must consider when choosing an online English teacher, so that you can be sure you have chosen the right English teacher for YOU!

I discuss how to decide whether to choose a native English teacher or a non-native English teacher, whether qualifications are more important than experience, and other points you should take into consideration before choosing your new online English teacher. 

Book Your FREE Class Now!

Hello, this is Greg from English with Greg, and in today's lesson, we're going to look at my top five tips on how to choose the best English teacher for you. Before we start, please give this a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel and click the bell notification. Those three things really help me and really help you support my YouTube channel. OK, so first we're going to look at whether to choose a non-native teacher or a native English teacher in this category.

We're actually going to look at three types of people, non-native teachers; native speakers (in other words, just people from England, the States, Australia) who are native speakers but not teachers; and native speaking teachers (like me: I'm English and I'm a teacher). Now, a lot of people just are desperate to have a native teacher and don't put any importance on whether or not they are a good teacher. They just want to speak to a native speaker.

And if you just want to have a conversation with somebody from England or somebody from an English speaking country without corrections, without explanations of how you can improve, then that's fine. However, if you want to actually actively learn the language and actively improve your grammar, pronunciation, learn the things you are doing wrong and how to improve them so that you can reach a more advanced level, then you want a teacher, not just a native speaker, you need a teacher.

In this category, we have two types of people, non-native teachers and native teachers. And in my opinion, your choice really depends on why you're learning English. Now, the sad thing is that people tend to discard non-native speakers unfairly. I mean, I know some non-native speakers whose knowledge of English is excellent, they're fantastic teachers, they have a fantastic accent and a near native level of English. And they would be a brilliant, brilliant choice of English teacher.

First, I would say absolutely don't discard the option of non-native speakers just because they weren't born in an English speaking country. For me personally, and this is my personal opinion, when I was learning French and Spanish and Italian, the teachers that I remember and the teachers whose classes I absolutely loved were the classes with native speakers. And the reason for this is, for me, learning a language isn't just about passing a test. It's not just about having perfect grammar or a wide vocabulary in a different language.

It's not about that for me. What I want to do and the reason that I have learned foreign languages is to be able to communicate to people from a different country, to be able to go to their country and get to know the culture, get to know the people.

And I believe that having a native English-speaking teacher opens that door. It gives you a real insight into a different culture, not just a different language, but also a different culture, different ways of thinking, different ways of doing things. And for me, learning a language is just a fantastic opportunity to open your mind to these different ways of life. For that reason, and I'm speaking from the perspective of a student because I have studied three foreign languages, for that reason, I personally love having classes with native speakers.

In my French classes or my Spanish classes or my Italian classes, I want to feel transported to Italy, to Spain, to France during that class time. I want to feel culturally and linguistically completely immersed in that culture and language for the time that I'm in that class. If all that is important for you too, then go with a native teacher. If it's not, and your main focus is the language, then go with a non-native teacher because non-native teachers have a harder time finding students simply because of where they were born. As I said, I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's particularly nice or right. But on a cultural level, obviously, I think it's more interesting to have classes with a native speaker.

Now, the second criteria to choose an English teacher is (if you have decided a native speaker), which accent are you learning? Which accent do you want to focus on? If your goal is to communicate with Americans, to understand American films and TV shows and you are generally surrounded by American speakers, then it's a good idea to choose an American teacher or Canadian teacher, but somebody with that accent.

On the other hand, if you love or are passionate about the British English accent, if most of your conversations are going to happen with British people and you just love Downton Abbey, then choose a British English teacher. It really just depends on your interests and your needs. Now, another alternative is to have two different teachers. That's what I generally recommend in my academy. And the reason is that it's good to train your ear to different accents. For example, if you only listen to American English, if you only have an American English teacher and then you start speaking to somebody from England, perhaps it's a bit difficult for you to understand. So, it's a really good idea to expose yourself to different accents, both in terms of teachers and television programs that you watch so that your ear is not so focused and obsessed about one particular accent. Your goal should be to understand a wide variety of accents. And as I said in point one, culturally, it's brilliant. And if you can have two teachers, one from North America, one from Britain, or even one from South Africa or Australia, it's a really culturally enriching decision.

The next thing you should look at is qualifications and also experience. Personally, I don't have a particularly high qualification in teaching English as a foreign language. I have the basic one. And having got that, I started working and gained experience, created my own academy, got even more experience with that. And now, well, here I am with my own academy, teaching English on YouTube and having a variety of online courses. Really, for me, the qualifications is not as important as the experience. If you have ten years' experience teaching English, then you've covered everything. You  know the answers to all the questions the students are going to ask you. So experience is a very valuable thing to take into consideration when you are choosing your teacher. You could have somebody with the highest level of qualifications with just one year's experience and well, that's great. But I would personally prefer somebody with less qualifications and more years of experience teaching English.

Another thing to take into consideration is the teacher's life experiences and and interests. I mean, basically, you should be choosing somebody with similar interests to yours. When you're in class, you want to be able to talk freely, talk about anything and to do that, I think it's important to choose a teacher with similar interests and similar life experiences to you. And when I say similar life experiences, that could be the experience of living in a different country, it could be the experience of having young children, living in the same city. You could be looking for somebody with the same interests in literature or the same sport that you're interested in. Just something that helps connect you and your teacher on a personal level. And I think this helps you feel more at ease, more comfortable in class. And when you feel comfortable and at ease, that is the best condition for learning.

The fifth and final thing you should be looking for when you are choosing a teacher is their availability. If you are living in Europe and you want morning classes, there is no point looking at teachers who live in North and South America because guess what? They'll be sleeping when you want your classes! So just pay attention to where the teacher is living. They could be living anywhere in the world nowadays with online classes. So focus on that. Make sure that their availability matches the times that you want your classes. And if it does, bingo!

So you've found the perfect teacher. You've decided whether you want native or non-native, you've chosen the accent that is more relevant for you. You've chosen somebody with a good level of experience and similar life experience and interests as you and they're available at the same time as you want your classes... Perfect!

More often than not, it's possible to book a trial class or a free consultation with that teacher just to get to know them for a bit in person, just to see if you have a connection with that person and just to see if you have a good feeling about that person before you go ahead and buy a number of classes with them. Finding the right teacher is a really, really important part of your language learning journey, so take your time, do your research, because if you find the right teacher, then going to class isn't an effort, you look forward to it. This massively increases motivation, and finding motivation is one of the most difficult things to keep going with your English language learning. If you've got the right teacher, you look forward to your classes, you want to continue with those classes and that is the only way to keep improving your English. Let me know in the comments how you choose your English teachers and remember to like, subscribe and click the bell notification to my channel. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next lesson. Bye for now!