Being a tutor and being a good tutor are two very different things. So how do you make yourself stand out from the rest? Teaching English is an exciting and rewarding career path that allows you to help others gain the foundations of a new language, enter lucrative MBA programs, enhance job opportunities, and grow in their English proficiency.
As a successful English tutor, you can also enjoy the direct benefits of your efforts. English tutors in Canada can earn up to $66,300 per year and the job outlook for English teachers in Canada is good, especially in British Columbia.
There is a fair amount of competition to be an English teacher or English tutor in Canada, with an estimated 50,200, while 53,700 new job seekers through 2028. You can stand out from the crowd and attract a client base using the following seven tips to become a successful English tutor in Canada.
1. Decide which subjects you’d like to tutor.
Now that you've committed to helping students with their studies, it's a good idea to narrow down your client base so that you can become more specialized and offer them a better service. If you’re set on teaching English, you can narrow your offering and cater your services to specific target audiences.
Ask yourself the following questions to narrow your English teaching pursuit:
- Will you teach private school students or public school students or both?
- What age range will you work with?
- What grade level or course will you familiarize yourself with?
- Do you want to teach ESL classes or prepare students for their GMAT?
Teach a subject and group of people that you will enjoy working with. Do you love children? Perhaps you can display past job experience you have caring for younger children and market yourself to parents who are looking for English teachers for their children.
Are you interested in teaching English as a second language? You could gather information about ESL classes and gain an ESOL certification to become a market leader for teaching English to non-English speaking individuals.
Your qualifications will prepare you to work with different demographics and English levels. Research English certifications to better understand the ideal qualifications you will need to achieve your teaching goals.
Learn what you need to take the GMAT exam for business school.
2. Familiarize yourself with the curriculum.
The curriculum is the guide to all your teaching materials and the structure and content of the courses you will transmit to your students. Teachers spend half their time preparing course content and reviewing their curriculum to excel in the teaching environment.
Once you have determined who you want to teach, you should familiarize yourself with what they want to learn and build a course structure that meets their needs.
Write down your students’ primary needs, the best course structure, when their exams will take place, their strengths and weaknesses within the subject and more. Create a detailed plan around the core subjects you will teach, from foundational English writing exercises to basic conversational English practices.
Should you become certified in order to teach English? Find out more in this article.
3. Establish your own teaching methods.
Every teacher is unique in how they use their job experience, personality, and strengths to convey their teachings. There's no one correct way of being a teacher. Anyone who has worked with children will tell you that you often have to adapt your teaching methods from class to class, from student to student.
Students will respond to you differently and you should be agile to accommodate your students’ individual needs. People learn in different ways. For example, many younger children like to learn through songs, games, and visual imagery. You can amend your teaching methods to fit the class and student you’re interacting with.
Many adults who are learning English for the first time may excel with the help of written documents with translations, auditory tapes, or basic one-on-one conversations. It’s up to you to come prepared with various teaching methods for your diversified set of students and age groups.
The more you teach, the more natural it will come however it is always good to establish your preferred teaching methods before you embark on your tutoring journey.
Find out more about qualifications needed to tutor English.
4. Encourage good communication with students, parents and teachers.
Feedback is one of the most important tools for guiding your students to improve areas of weakness and commend areas of strength. Positive feedback may help students feel motivated and encourage them to continue learning and growing.
The feedback that focuses on areas of improvement is equally helpful and points out where students can concentrate their efforts to become well-rounded English speakers. For example, a student may be extremely proficient when it comes to reading and comprehending English but needs improvement in their conversational language skills.
You can make good communication a habit by scheduling routine meetings with your student or student’s parent to discuss progress and performance. This pre-arranged phone call, email, or in-person meeting can help keep everyone informed about the impact of your private tutoring sessions.
These meetings can also highlight growth opportunities and ways you can amend your teaching style to meet your student’s needs.
Learn more about choosing the right English qualifications.
5. Become a certified tutor.
If you want to gain recognized certifications that will help you market your tutoring services and provide better lessons to your students, join a tutoring association. The Learning Specialists Association of Canada (LSAC) are, “professionals whose work in higher education institutions supports and furthers students, faculty, staff, and administrative goals by providing comprehensive learning development support through a variety of assessments, methods, strategies, and programs that are developed using scholarship, empirical data, practical experience, and sound pedagogy.”
The members of LSAC are starting a conversation about developing a Canadian Tutor Standard. The College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA) also offers several certifications for tutors in Canada, including:
- International TUTOR Training Program Certification (ITTPC)
- International PEER EDUCATOR Training Program Certification (IPTPC) (formally known as IMTPC)
Becoming a certified tutor is beneficial to you and your students. According to the CRLA, earning a tutoring certification can help you accomplish the following:
- Certification provides recognition and positive reinforcement for tutors’ and peer educators’ successful work;
- Certification sets professional standards of skill and training for tutors and peer educators.
- Certification increases program credibility for administrators and institutions.
6. Join a tutoring centre.
Working as a sole proprietor involves entrepreneurial initiative. You have to learn how to network, market yourself, and be self-motivated enough to recruit clients. If the process is slow to start, it may beneficial to join a tutoring platform or centre.
Tutoring platforms like Superprof can put you in touch with hundreds of new clients with the click of a button. All you need to do is upload a photo, create a brief biography on your profile, and list the services you offer. It’s that easy!
You can set your own rates, disclose if you teach in-person, remotely, or both, and set yourself as available to get started. There are many benefits to working with a tutoring centre, including:
- Save on marketing costs. Tutoring centres run their own marketing so that teachers and students can find their services online.
- Associate yourself with a credible name. Working on a site that screens your profile will give students peace of mind, rather than posting your services independently online.
- Connect with more students. Tutoring sites already receive traffic from students who have the intention to learn. You can quickly connect with more prospects by joining an existing platform.
See the available English-speaking lessons on Superprof.
7. Be flexible.
Do you want to meet students face-to-face and offer local tutoring in your area or expand your market internationally and teach online? You could also combine both and teach Canadian students in your city as well as international students from across the globe.
If you choose to teach local, you have many questions to ask yourself:
- Will you tutor from your own home?
- Will you travel to your student’s house?
- Will you pay to hire a room?
- Will you work from an unused classroom at a nearby school?
- If you are able to travel, will you add expenses for mileage?
It’s important that you offer your students flexibility. Allow students to select their optimal day and time slot to learn. Many students will be pursuing school or working full-time, and the best hours to offer to tutor could be after the typical workday ends.
You can also encourage student enrollment by making your payment plan flexible. Allow students to send online payments and pay as they go rather than paying a larger upfront fee.
Common Challenges English Tutors Face and How to Overcome Them
While few people view teaching as a difficult task, many underestimate tutoring. For some people, teaching should be a walk in the park. However, this is not so. Tutoring can be overwhelming sometimes. Although there are a few challenges in it, the rewards for passing them are far more appealing.
Most teachers often face some challenges and do not know how to solve them. Also, as a tutor, there are certain principles you have to keep to maintain a proper teaching career. The solution to most of the challenges you may face as a tutor will depend on your principle, character, and attitude toward your job. Let's view some of these challenges and possible ways to resolve them.
- A non-effective communication strategy
Some students naturally have the talent for good communication. Some of them can be so engaging and fun to converse with. As a result, tutors usually get to know these ones better by discovering the challenges they face and what they may need.
However, this is not the case for other students that lack effective communication— this is often caused by some factors, including low self-esteem, bullying, and maybe the fact that the student prefers little social interactions.
Communication among students is usually tricky to handle. However, with the right step, you'd get better results. But you need to build trust between yourself and the student. You can start by paying more attention to them and be genuinely interested in what they want and how to make them learn better. It's a process that takes time. Eventually, you can help them communicate better.
- Disciplining student
During your teaching career, you may notice that some students are uncontrollably rude and difficult to control. Everybody knows stubborn students can be a pain. You may sometimes think of quitting your job just to have peace of mind. Disciplining these students is often tasking and emotionally straining too.
A better way to solve this problem is to create rules for in-person or online teaching and communicate the consequences for those who break them. You can also make room for intervention and involve the student's parents if necessary.
- Time management
Proper time management is also a problem most English tutors face. As a tutor, your schedule can be messed up the most time. It’s either you’re marking assignments, teaching, or creating class tasks for your students. All these processes are often time-consuming, and sometimes you may miss out on some personal things you need to do. Here is what you should do. Creating a to-do list and disciplining ng yourself to stick to it could help you develop proper time management skills over time.
- Bullying and student's problems
Most students may not have access to professional therapy. This has been a major problem in the educational sector as students may have no choice but to turn to their teachers for their emotional, personal, or family problems. Although teachers are expected to be available for their students, the scope of their job doesn't completely cover aspects like this.
- Different learning challenges among students
Different students have different ways of learning regardless of class, school, or age. This could pose a challenge for most English tutors. A competent teacher needs to spend time understanding each student and how they learn. In the long run, it could help you develop a better teaching strategy tailored to fit each student. If you can successfully create a compatible teaching strategy for your students, you will be surprised at the level of enthusiasm and vigour at which your student thrive and learn.
- Pressure from parents
Most parents cannot help to see their child not doing well even after engaging the services of a private English tutor. Most of them fail to consider the learning speed of the child and how they communicate with the tutor. These could affect how much they learn from each lesson.
A child who isn't doing well in the English language is quick to blame the tutor and describe them as inefficient. It’s left for the parent to scrutinize the strength and weakness of the child and compare it with the competent level of the tutor.
Most times, the child needs a bit more time to demonstrate progress as they progress from one lesson to the other. As a tutor, if you can’t help your students perform optimally, you may feel pressured to either quit or put in more effort. Your level of resilience matters in this case.
What Do You Need to Know Before Becoming a Teacher?
For most tutors, teaching is a beautiful profession. You will enjoy bonding with students from different backgrounds. You also get to influence how they behave; you are in charge of imparting good manners and helping them shape their lives for a better future. Additionally, you get to see firsthand the incredible capabilities of some of these students. However, before starting a teaching career, there are some tips you need to take note of.
- First-year hurdle
According to research, about 18% of new English tutors quit their job within the first two years. The rate at which most tutors quit tells you that the first few years of your career as a teacher may not be easy. There'd be happy moments and sad or even depressing moments too. Your first year will not be as rosy as it may seem. You will learn and unlearn many things. But after this phase, teaching may become easier, and everything would flow naturally.
- Parents
Most times, parents can be helpful and give valuable and useful tips for teaching their children. However, in the crowd, some parents may give you a hard time teaching. They may not agree with your teaching approach. In this situation, it’s best to seek the advice of colleagues who have spent more time teaching than you.
- Your reason for teaching
Before starting a career as a teacher, consider why you want to become a teacher. Are you intrigued, temporarily enthusiastic, or genuinely wanting to be a teacher? You don't just start a career in teaching, you have to be sure of what you want and be motivated to do it. You wouldn't stay long as a teacher if you didn't have the motivation you need to succeed.
- Respect
If you just resumed a class, don't expect to be respected by the students immediately. You have to earn their respect, and they also have to earn your respect. Since respect cannot be given randomly but earned honestly, you have to do your part. It's a process that takes time, and you will gain the respect of all your students eventually.
- Rate
The rate for English tutors differs according to factors like experience and location. However, research and find the rate for tutoring jobs near me. Also, before you start teaching, you may want to consider that some parents do not pay for lesson supplies— you may have to pay from your pocket in some cases.
- Time
To be an effective English tutor, you need to understand the time commitment. Unlike other jobs, you are always on deck grading assignments, working out extracurricular activities, lesson planning, and professional development. If you want to become a tutor, you must know that all these will be part of your daily life.
- Preparation
How prepared are you for a career in teaching? It’s important to know that you will be preparing daily lesson plans and other necessary resources to offer your student. Although the task may appear overwhelming sometimes, There are enough online resources to help you prepare.
- Skill
If you want to become a tutor, you need to have some skills to improve results and work effectively. These skills include communication, listening, adaptability, patience, collaboration, leadership, and empathy. Proper development of these skills would help you exponentially achieve excellent results and a better student-teacher relationship.
As an English tutor in Canada, you can enjoy the advantages of flexibility. You have the power to create your own work hours, take days off, and work flexible hours throughout the week. Do you want to work longer days and work a four-day week? You can master your own schedule and experience the freedom of flexible work.
Get Started With Superprof
Do you think that teaching English is the right career path for you? You can get started easily by building your profile on Superprof. Superprof hosts thousands of teachers and hosts hundreds of subjects on the platform, from painting and singing to data science and English language lessons.
Every teacher on Superprof is carefully vetted and reviewed before they are able to teach students. After gaining more experience, you can receive reviews and recommendations from former students and build your profile to increase your clientele.
Teaching online has never been more simple. Start your teaching journey today by building a professional profile and help students across the world learn the English language.
We hope this information helps you as you set up as a tutor of English!
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