It’s uncommon for people to talk about career development for tutors, and when the issue is brought up, it’s often in the context of getting a teaching certificate. 

However, this advice doesn’t apply to a lot of us. First of all, some of us are already certified, and others might have trouble getting certified due to financial circumstances. 

So, what other options are there? Below, we’ll go over five ways to develop our career as a tutor — all without certification.

This piece was originally posted on our Linkedin.

1. Specialize

One way to develop our career is to specialize in something. The most popular specialization for tutors is test prep, because as long as there are tests, there will be a need for test prep services.

To give you an idea of how to do this, let’s assume you want to specialize in IELTS, specifically the speaking test. You’d want to:

• familiarize yourself with the structure of the speaking test with these free practice exams.
• understand the evaluation rubric. To this end, you could take the official IELTS Teacher Training Program (free), which will train you to think like an examiner.
• check out test prep books and courses to see how they prepare students. We recommend our free IELTS speaking materials, designed by a teacher with over a decade of experience teaching IELTS classes.

Another popular specialization for online tutors is Business English. After all, there’s no shortage of business professionals looking to improve their English to level up their career.

Business English involves teaching students email and phone etiquette as well as language used in meetings, reports, negotiations, interviews, and other professional situations. You can start with these free resources:

• Cambridge Assessment English’s Business English test.
• This online course or this online textbook on Business English communication.

Finally, online teachers for kids are also highly sought after. The main difficulty with teaching kids online is keeping them engaged across a screen. However, if you do this well, you’re guaranteed to have extremely grateful parents who’ll introduce you to more parents, ensuring a steady pool of students.

If you’re interested in specializing in kids English, we recommend taking the following free online courses:

• Teaching Young Learners Online (courtesy of the British Council). 
• Teaching Languages in Primary Schools: Putting Research into Practice (courtesy of the University of Southampton and the University of Essex).

2. Broaden Your (Teaching) Horizons

In addition to (or instead of) specializing, some tutors find it helpful to do the opposite: broaden their horizons.

Many certification courses can help you do this by equipping you with a solid foundation in teaching English.But did you know that even if you don’t get certified, you can still take certification courses for free? 

A great option is Arizona State University’s courses on Coursera. For example, their TESOL certification series includes several courses on different aspects of teaching. 

You can take the units in the course that are most relevant to online tutoring (e.g. this one on listening, speaking, and pronunciation or this one on teaching language online) and ignore those that you don’t need. 

Just keep in mind that the free “audit” versions of the courses don’t give you access to graded materials, such as the answers to certain quizzes. 

3. Gain More “Hard Knowledge”

As a tutor, there are probably things about your job that spark your curiosity or specific things you want to get better at. 

For example, many of our tutors are interested in getting better at teaching pronunciation or explaining grammar. After all, students will ask us questions about these things even during conversation lessons. And as tutors, we’re expected to be able to explain things that teachers don’t have time to explain during regular classes at school.

So gaining the “hard knowledge” that makes us better at explaining technical aspects of language can help us stand out. 

But how do we do this? 

• Find tutorials on Youtube: Youtube has plenty of useful tutorials from expert teachers.
• Take online courses: You’d be surprised at the variety of online courses out there. First think of what technical aspect of teaching you’d like to learn, then search for an online course. For example, if you want to get better at helping students develop vocabulary, there’s this course on research and strategies for teaching vocab.
• Learn applied linguistics: Applied linguistics courses cover the essential technical knowledge language teachers need. You can start with this one by the University of Leicester or check out the syllabi of universities with top-ranked linguistics programs to find the best books to read.

(Last but not least, read Engoo Tutors’ Blog! We do our best to distill the technical aspects of English into fun, bite-size blog posts.)

4. Improve Your Soft Skills

If you’re not into hard knowledge, you may be interested in developing your soft skills. Soft skills won’t just help you with online tutoring; they’re also transferable to a range of other professions.

Some soft skills you can work on are:

• Cross-cultural communication: Cross-cultural communication is at the heart of tutoring students who live thousands of kilometers away. We cover it occasionally on our blog, but there are also free courses like this one on intercultural competency.
• Storytelling: Storytelling is a useful skill in many fields, including business. It can also help you teach better. To learn more, take this free course: Fundamentals of Storytelling in Education for Teachers and Trainers.
• Coaching: Being a tutor is sometimes more like coaching than teaching. If you want to become a better coach, check out this free course from Imperial College London.
• Counseling: Students often open up to foreign language teachers about their personal issues, and tutors are no exception. If you want to be better equipped to help your students, check out some basic courses on counseling.

5. Learn a Language Yourself

Finally, there’s no better way to put yourself in your students’ shoes than by learning a language yourself. You’ll not only become a better tutor; you’ll also come out of it speaking a new language.

You can pick a language you’ve always been interested in, but it’s even better if you pick the one that your students speak.

For example, if the majority of your students are Russian, and you take up Russian, you’ll realize how different the languages are and better empathize with your students’ learning struggles. 

Sharing a few (poorly-pronounced) words here and there in Russian during the lesson can also make your student feel at ease. After all, hearing your mistakes will help them realize that they’re not so bad after all!

There are plenty of free language learning resources, so we won’t introduce them here. They all have different approaches, so just look around to find the ones which suit your learning style. 

📌 Takeaways

To sum up, here are five ways you can develop your career as a language tutor:

1. Specialize in test prep, business English, kids English, or anything that interests you.
2. Broaden your horizons by taking online courses.
3. Gain hard knowledge to become better at explaining technical aspects of language.
4. Work on soft skills that’ll transfer to many other careers.
5. Go through the process of learning a language yourself.

Happy tutoring!

And if you haven’t already, make sure to give online tutoring a try! Apply here to become an Engoo tutor.