As of yesterday, June 5, I am no longer teaching online with Live-English. There is one student, in particular, who I will be sorry to lose, Du Yang in Shenzhen. Unfortunately I have no way to contact him other than through Live-English. His English improved greatly in the short time that I worked with him on almost a daily basis. We were beginning to enjoy great conversations as he gained in confidence and fluency in speaking English. I believe that online English instruction one-on-one with a teacher is the best way for a student to improve their English quickly, especially for those who haven’t had much practice with speaking.
I was unable to teach my online students yesterday because of interference with our Skype connection. The calls kept being dropped, the sound was being pulsed so that I could not understand what students were saying even though I could hear them. The video came through clearly at first, but then soon broke up and then turned into a static screen with a bilious green color.
The first time it happened, I tried to call the student from the Live-English website instead, but I couldn’t find his name. When I tried to access the student pull-down list of names, it only gave me names ending A-L. The list had been cut in half. I wasn’t able to access the full list… and my student’s name ended in S. So I called Stephanie at Live-English, who was not at all supportive. When I told her that there was a problem with the website, she didn’t believe me, and thought it was incompetence on my part.
Finally, she berated me for not doing what I should to overcome these technical problems. I said that I didn’t think that I was tech-savvy enough to do this. I did not care for her way of dealing with these problems, which was the same M/O she’d used previous times when I needed support, so I quit. I was too frustrated with problems with Skype, but also problems with her service and her attitude.
But I am sorry to lose Du Yang as a student.
I like teaching online and I’m going to start my own consulting service as an ESL teacher. If you know of anyone who would like to study English with me online, I am charging $20 an hour. I can be reached at my email address: libertyferall@gmail.com