How to become a freelance language teacher

Teacher
(n) tee-cheer: A multitasking educational rockstar who lives to inspire and loves to encourage.

You love languages and speak more than one, or you love your mother tongue.

You have always wanted to be an educator or are curious about it.

You want to make language teaching your full-time business or a side hustle.

Helping people to speak another language is your life purpose or something you want to try and see how it goes.

Either way, you can become a language teacher, and this article will give you insight into what you need and how to get there.

What is freelance language teaching?

A freelance language teacher works for themselves instead of a company or school.

Many language teachers start out working in online teaching companies or in-person, in languages schools. My first teaching gig was as a Spanish language assistant in a French secondary school, and, from there, I taught for years in several languages schools in Spain and abroad. It was a great way of gaining experience, but it didn’t come without limitations. I couldn’t choose my schedule, what to teach, how, or choose my hourly rate.

As a freelancer, you get to choose all those things because you run your own business. You are your own boss. You get to choose your style of teaching, your materials, your curriculum and your schedule.

Who do you want to teach? What’s your ideal student? Those are questions you have to ask yourself when starting your language teaching business. Also, another critical question is: How much do I want to charge per class?

And isn’t it wonderful that you can decide the answer to these questions?

As a freelance language teacher, you can choose to teach online or in-person, deliver 1-to-1 classes or group classes, create video lessons for asynchronous teaching or live workshops, etc. You have a myriad of possibilities and an equal amount of advantages.

Now, let’s get down to how to achieve this.

How can I become a freelance teacher?

Knowledge, experience & training.

You need either training (and possibly a certification) or experience to start teaching.

> QUALIFICATIONS

There are different schools of thought about this, and I can see the truth on every side. If you are not already an experienced teacher, you need some training on this front. I recommend you to look for recognized certifications such as TEFL/TESOL for English, or Instituto Cervantes for Spanish…

If you have never had an online business, you will also need some support to create your website, work with the socials, create content, courses, find students, etc. I offer mentoring on this front. Get in touch if you want some help and guidance from someone who’s been in business for over 10 years.

> LOGISTICS

You need to create an appropriate space where you’ll teach. This space should be quiet and well-lit. It’s really not okay to conduct a lesson in the dark or be interrupted by loud noises.

In connection with the noises, you need a headset to help you hear your student, make you sound better, and eliminate some background noises.

> PRICING

This is is a tricky one. I will let you decide what amounts feel fair for your time and experience. You need to take into account the market prices but ultimately is up to you. Start low but still consider how many hours you want to work and then, what’s the minimum amount of money you can charge per hour to cover your bills amongst other needs.

If you freelance in tutoring marketplaces, they will take a cut of your money, but they will do all the work to get students, admin and taking payments. My advice is that you get on as many language learning platforms as possible for two main reasons:

You will get students to start gaining experience.
It will allow you to give time to your own business to grow organically (through social media, website, YouTube, podcast, etc.)

Once you are armed with all this knowledge, you need to acquire experience. Experience is paramount. To become a teacher students want to hire, happily pay and refer to other students, you need to be a good teacher. To become a good teacher, you need practice.

The best way to acquire practice is to start offering your services for free. I know this doesn’t sound very appealing, but it doesn’t need to be burdensome. What about asking around your community if anyone is interested in learning the language you are teaching? Friends and family are always a good start. Also, you can start offering a free class on polyglot or language lovers groups. What about doing exchange languages in your town or online? All these are opportunities to start honing your skills.

A Myriad of Educational Opportunities

One to one lessons is not all you can do. The language learning world is vast, and if you are into languages and education, there are many things you can do, from creating self-paced courses to videos for other language learning platforms. For example, the localization company, Day Translations, was looking for Freelance Language Teacher for YouTube Video Series (check out the “Career” section at the bottom of the page). This remote and paid work can help you get familiar with recording yourself teaching a language. And being comfortable in front of a screen, be it your phone or your laptop, is quite essential for this business. Recording free video lessons on YouTube was one of the ways I started getting clients back in 2011. So never underestimate what putting your face and work out there can do!