5 Creative Ideas for Boosting Results and Adding Fun in Your Online Language Lessons

One-to-one language lessons are a favourite resource in any successful learner’s arsenal, and most smart learners have long discovered that they can easily meet tutors online (check out italki if you haven't tried it yet).

But for many learners and tutors, it’s not always easy to stay excited about lessons...

…if all you ever do is talk about last week, language lessons quickly get boring

…if you don’t feel like you’re spending your money on a good tutor, you might give up

And teachers, beware: If there’s no creativity in online lessons, no one gets to have the results or the fun that they should have.

Be sure to check out my blog post on 13 essential online language teaching tools that will help elevate your lessons and make them more fun and engaging!

So what can you do to make sure you’re on to a winner?

In today’s blog post, we will talk about 5 online language lesson ideas that you can use no matter if you’re a learner or a teacher. As long as you are hanging out with someone to practice your target language, these ideas will really kick you into gear.

Ready? Then let’s discover how to improve your language lessons right now.

Contents

1) Create a Study Plan Together
2) Boost Your Listening Skills on Togethertube
3) Let the Student Correct the Language Tutor
4) Tired of Talking About Your Day in Language Lessons?
5) Write a TripAdvisor Review
Frequently Asked Questions
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1) Create a Study Plan Together

If you are in the market and looking for a new tutor right now, chances are you’ll want to know what you’re getting for your money. And if you’re a tutor taking on a new student, you’re keen to reassure them that they’ve made an awesome choice.

You simply get together and talk about where you want to be and what your language goals are for the next weeks and months (Create Vision and Path Goals from the Language Habit System® ), and it’s the tutor’s job to help break down these goals and outline which resources you will be using.

Lesson planning takes 30-60 minutes, and I definitely recommend doing this activity together as a solid start to your student-tutor partnership.

2) Boost Your Listening Skills on Togethertube

One of the biggest risks of relying on a single person to be your regular language practice partner is over-reliance on their accent and voice. You may find that weekly conversations get easier, but it takes a multitude of voices for you to understand language at native speed.

I recommend watching online videos together using Togethertube. You can easily control the player, stop the video and discuss what’s going to happen next.

I was super excited about this tip because I had no idea Togethertube existed, and especially because it plays Dailymotion videos…and Dailymotion is the home of Deutsch Plus, my favourite cheesy 90s German learner soap.

3) Let the Student Correct the Language Tutor

You’re probably used to being corrected all the time by your tutor, so how cool would it be to turn that around? The next online language lesson idea is for teachers to finally allow learners to correct them! The tutor prepares a text containing mistakes like wrong words, grammar errors, or a punctuation mistake. The student’s job is finding and correcting each mistake.

I’ve used this idea in my own lessons. It works with groups and individuals, and the challenge always helps to create a productive and focused lesson. After all, who can resist showing off their knowledge?

If you want more fun ways to engage students, check out my blog post on language learning games that you can easily incorporate into your lessons.

4) Tired of Talking About Your Day in Language Lessons?

Nothing can kill a good language lesson quicker than running out of things to talk about. You’re likely working with a tutor to improve your speaking skill, and if you’re nervous about starting to talk the following tip is guaranteed to help you loosen up.

Select a range of pictures that inspire conversation (you can find great pictures on Unsplash or Pixabay). You can ask your tutor to select them with you, or to surprise you with something really weird. It’s the student’s job to describe what’s happening, what might be shown in the photo, and what the people in the picture might be saying.

Take it to the next level with AI

In AI Language Club, we have created a library of easy ideas for spicing up your studies with AI tools. One of our most popular ideas is creating an image with AI. You can do this in tools like ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Copilot, and in a language lesson it’s fun to come up with multilingual descriptions and ideas.

5) Write a TripAdvisor Review

Everyone loves creating reviews, and especially getting to share their travel experiences, so this is perfect. In Lindsay’s book, she gives 3 great scenarios and ideas that tutors can use to write those ideas with you right now. For example, why not go all out and describe your dream trip, somewhere you’ve always wanted to stay, and write about the hotel from heaven?

This activity is awesome because it encourages writing, but it’s so easy to combine it with reading real trip reviews online and even watching hotel promo clips. I love this so much, and I know my students are into travel and have a lot to share…can’t wait to read their holiday experiences!

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Teach Languages Online?

To explore my full guide to becoming a language tutor working from anywhere, check out this course: Live Lessons Strategies for Online Teachers and Tutors for practical tips and resources.

When it comes to online language teaching, setting yourself up for success starts with a few key principles:

Understand Your Audience: Identify who your students are and what their goals are. Tailoring your lessons to their needs will make your teaching more effective.

Set Clear Objectives: Define what you want your students to achieve by the end of each lesson. Clear goals help keep both you and your students focused.

Choose the Right Platform: There are many platforms available for online teaching, such as Zoom, Google Meet, or specialized language teaching platforms like Languatalk and italki. Choose one that suits your teaching style and technical needs.

Can You Teach Yourself a Language Online?

To successfully teach yourself a language online, start by setting clear goals and defining what you want to achieve with realistic milestones. Another crucial part of learning a language by yourself is expanding your vocabulary. You can incorporate effective techniques for memorizing and using new words to boost your fluency by checking our blog post on the best vocabulary learning techniques.

Consistency is key, so aim to practice regularly even if it’s just for a few minutes each day!

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What To Do When You're Overwhelmed In Language Lessons

What do you feel when you're in a conversation practice and find that you struggle to say a single sentence without interruption?

Have you ever experienced the OVERWHELM of being corrected too much?

If your answer is yes, the I've got some great tips and answers to help you get over that feeling and create effective progress in language learning.

In this podcast episode, you'll hear an insight into how I work in "coaching mode". Language coaching is a process where you can learn from an experienced polyglot or tutor, and focus on how to learn best.

I was contacted by listener Andy who was felt overwhelmed in his Russian lessons. He contacted me with a question about grammar - how to memorize and master all those grammatical changes and words in Russian, so that his tutors can focus on having a real conversation.

But as we dug in more, a few things emerged. We were looking at two completely separate issues:

1. The technical issue of memorising grammar, which isn’t the problem Andy feels strongly about
2. The OVERWHELM of being corrected too much

The Unseen Problem In Language Lessons

Any well-meaning teacher is likely to correct you at times.

This is great on the one hand - you get feedback, information on your errors, and lots of info. But when correction becomes too frequent, it starts to get in the way.

Overcorrection can

• Knock your confidence
• Give you too much to focus on in the moment
• Distract you from understanding the other person
• Stop you from knowing your target language!

What can you do when you feel overcorrected?

Know what you are there for! Is it speaking practice, exam preparation, business language, something else?

As Andy and I dug into more detail about what his aims and techniques are, he :

My goal in learning grammar is to learn enough grammar to express my thoughts, which tend to be complex. (..) Of course, I want to understand what the other person says, too.

This shows that Andy is not aiming for perfection and will be happy enough to express himself. He’s not at a C1 mastery stage, and as such, it’s possible to let things go. What matters is that he’s understood, and as a tutor it’s possible to compensate for this.

4 Steps To Success With Language Tutors

If you feel that heavy corrections are holding you back in your own learning experience, these 4 steps to success will help you get back on track.

1. Be culturally aware. Some teachers have a full-on teacher mode (drill sergeant) and their goal is that you use the language as correctly as possible.
   • Careful not to stereotype.This does not just vary between cultures, but also individuals.
   • With Andy, I believe that this did play a role in his experience. He mentioned being corrected a lot less in fact-to-face meet ups (one indicator), and as a white American guy your tutors from the Far East may have been a lot less willing to correct you than a Russian tutor
2. Be self aware: Maybe you really are trying to do things that are too difficult for you at this point. There’s no shame in that, and it’s a sign that something in your study plan isn’t delivering.
   • When you make a mistake, native speakers will notice. That’s inevitable.
3. Be goal aware: Do you aim for perfection, correct usage, being understood? This matters for the next step.
4. Most importantly: Direct your tutors. Tell them what you’re there for. Make it clear that conversation is what you want, if that is the case. Be confident and clear at the start, as it will pay off. But also do your homework.

Listen to Episode 90 to learn more about how to prepare for language lessons on Skype.

What Tutor Strategy Helps?

As a tutor, it is difficult to resist correcting a student but resisting can be extremely helpful because this tells you what exactly they’re getting wrong.

When a student cannot even say one sentence to you without interruption, their goal is not being achieved. What is going on there? Here's how to find out:

• Stop correcting and start listening
• Start looking out for a pattern
• Model correct usage — try and reply with a demo of the correct usage instead of picking the student up on theirs, with stronger emphasis on what it should be
• Switch to a grammar explanation and drill, plugging the gap of what is missing in your student's toolbox
• If you know they’re in over their head, but they have grammar knowledge and confidence, prompt the use of specific concepts

How Do You Deal With Overwhelm?

What about you? Do you ever feel overwhelmed by corrections in your language lessons?

How do you deal with this problem? Leave me a comment below to share your own experiences.