If you are living in Taiwan, teaching English in one-to-one private lessons is a good way to supplement your income. It seems that every foreigner who arrives on the Beautiful Isle ends up teaching their own language, even if they had no intention of doing so, and therefore you probably don’t need help from me to get started. You will find ways to find private students if you want them. If, however, you’re curious about how to do a good job as a tutor of adult students, this article offers some suggestions.

A crucial issue is choosing material to teach. Some students arrive with very clear ideas about what they want to study: they need to pass the TOEFL writing exam, or they are preparing for an English job interview. But many students have no idea, and they usually say they just want to practice conversation. In my experience, the second kind of student is much harder to teach than the first. It is not at all easy or enjoyable to have a 90 minute lesson “just talking”. Few Taiwanese English learners have the ability to chatter away happily, telling you interesting details about their lives while asking you interesting questions about yours. Instead, you will feel like you are pouring energy into a vacuum, trying to keep a conversation going by yourself. I imagine that some tutors avoid this dilemma by just talking at the student for 90% of the lesson, giving them “useful” information about Western culture and world politics, but if you feel impelled to help the student’s English improve, you may want them to speak.

My suggestion is to make each lesson about something. If you are teaching IELTS or TOEFL, this is easy, because you focus on exam questions every week. If it’s “just conversation”, give the students short stories to read for homework, and give them a talk to prepare for homework - that way you’ve both got something to discuss once you sit down. I gave my students stories by Guy de Maupassant (e.g. “Jewels”) and Bernard Malamud (”The Magic Barrel”). Find a book of stories for English learners, and prepare photocopies of stories and discussion topics for twelve lessons. I suspect that you can teach well (and not bore yourself senseless) only when you have a framework and a plan.

Most of your students will not improve at all. Think about how much Chinese you would learn from a once-a-week class back home. You’d get a little, but once you reached an intermediate stage, how could you perfect your accent or grammar. The students who do improve seem to do so because they have a desperate interest in English, or because they have to work with English speakers every day (mistakes are humiliating). Try to give your students extra work: show them sites on the Internet which they can listen to (the BBC, for example), encourage them to practise English with friends, ask them to write you essays.

Most of the tutors in Taipei charge between 600 - 1,000 an hour. It’s a huge range, clearly, and I think it’s based less on teaching ability than chutzpah. If you can persuade students to pay you a thousand, great. But the issue that will affect your income just as much is what you will do when students cancel their lessons. And they will. If you teach several different students a week, expect that one or two of them will call you to cancel the class. You need a plan to deal with this, perhaps merely by taking more hours each week than you really want, knowing that you will probably never teach them all. Or by simply stressing to your students that the lessons are your livelihood, and asking them not to cancel (this works fairly well). I’m sure you can think of other solutions.

Another sad fact of teaching one to one lessons with adults is that sooner or later, they will stop studying with you. Few students last more than six months, especially if they are paying for the lessons out of their own salary. Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that both you and the student get tired of each other. You have nothing left to talk about, you’ve used up all your sample exam questions and short stories, and the lessons drag and drag. Either find some way to rejuvenate your classes, or accept your teaching hours will go up and down over the year. If you simply want to make a lot of money teaching in Taiwan, you should probably get a standard job in a school that gives you 25-30 hours a week, as private tutoring is not very dependable. It’s a great way to learn more about Taiwan, and to discuss all kinds of issues with adult Taiwanese people, but it’s a near-constant marketing effort to keep your hours up.

One last thing. Teaching one to one lessons is illegal for most foreigners. If you are on a standard ARC (Alien Resident Card), then you are only supposed to work for your employer. This is one of the laws that no one in Taiwan follows, but perhaps you should still be a little careful, especially if you are teaching at home. If you start up a small group class in your living room, you maybe running the risk of someone reporting you to the police. I have no idea if this would actually happen - just take care. If you stick to teaching one to one lessons in cafes, you’ll be fine.

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