Pros & Cons Online Learning

Learning a language on online platforms is becoming more and more popular and is, especially during Corona lockdown, being used with increasing frequency. Not all of you have experienced such a way of learning yet and many of you might wonder about the effectiveness of such classes. We thus want to assist you in your decision whether or not to give online lessons a try by pointing out some advantages and disadvantages of online lessons.

 

Advantages

 

Disadvantages

 

Flexibility

Online lessons offer great flexibility that one doesn’t get with offline teaching. It gives students the opportunity to study at their convenience and balance work and private commitments with their language studies by planning their teaching times around the rest of their day.

It gives you the opportunity to plan your schedule of classes the most efficiently, which is especially convenient in cases where you need intensive language study, e.g. more than twice a week. Student and teacher can agree flexibly on the specific teaching times and then meet online.

No face-to-face lessons
Some students prefer face-to-face lessons and feel more comfortable with sitting in front of the teacher. They may feel uncomfortable communicating by means of technical devices instead of talking face-to-face.
Diversity
It makes lessons more diverse and effective as it enables the teacher to use a variety of multimedia, such as videos, news articles and podcasts to create an efficient and interactive lesson. Worksheets and other useful documents can be easily sent to the student before or during the lesson. Unknown vocabulary can be typed in the dialogue box. The Skype function for example “Demonstration screen” replaces a real whiteboard in the offline classroom.
Internet connection and technical equipment needed

Learning a language online largely depends on the proper operation of equipment and a high-speed internet connection. Without these, effective lessons are impossible.

Time-saving

It saves precious lesson time compared to offline lessons! Unknown vocabulary is directly typed in the dialogue box while teaching, thus the student has a full vocabulary list at the end of the lesson without spending time for copying words from the board. Also, one doesn’t have to spend one’s time in travelling to the course anymore. This not only saves precious time that one can better invest in learning the language, but also money, which can be much better spend in other things than commuting.

You first need to understand the tool

You need to understand the online platform first and make sure you can work it. There are a lot of features that could be beneficial if you know how to use them.

Most comfortable learning environment

An online language course allows you to develop your language skills in the most comfortable environment for you. A virtual lesson just needs a working internet connection; thus, students can attend classes wherever they feel most comfortable. Students can learn the language in a cosy environment, where they feel at ease and where they can best concentrate on language learning.

 

Not the best for children

Skype is not the best learning tool for very small children as it lacks the face-to-face interaction with the teacher. We recommend online lessons for children of at least 6 years.

An online tutor travels with you

As long as you remember to pack your smart phone or laptop, there is no reason your language learning has to stop just because you travel to holiday or for a business trip. Online lessons can even take place in your office, e.g. during lunch. By this you can save precious time to free up your evenings for private plans.

Perfect for pronunciation training and concentrated learning

Online lessons are perfect when you want to focus on your pronunciation! When using headsets, background noises don’t interfere your classes and the teacher is able to hear every smallest mistake in your pronunciation. Audio recordings, made with the teacher, can help you to not forget how to pronounce new words and phrases.

Furthermore, it enables you to learn more concentrated and focused as online lessons naturally have fewer environmental distractions.

Additional digital instructional tools

The teacher can send you any time a great variety of documents to support your language learning process like text documents, spreadsheets, audio files, links, videos or presentations on the topic being studied. Audio recordings, made with the teacher, can help you to not forget how to pronounce new words and phrases. In addition, you can always quickly find the information on the Internet. Thus you are able to use study-related websites while having classes,- a flexibility that is not always easy to arrange with offline classes. At the end of the class a student has not only learned the language but is also equipped with a great variety of material to support the language learning process.

Multisensory

An online lesson is multisensory as you train audio, reading and typing as well as sight at the same time. This helps you to faster reach your language goal.

No waiting anymore!

No waiting for the teacher or other students to arrive, lessons are instant the moment you are connected.

You can even meet for just one unit

As you don t have to drive to your classroom and are able to arrange classes flexible, you can even meet several times for just one unit, switching between online classes and self-study to have time to internalize the taught topics and get a perfect command of the language.