How to Conduct the Perfect Trial Lesson on Preply

good morning good afternoon good evening from wherever you're from welcome back to my channel the channel where speak about being an online teacher and mainly the ins and outs of prepley in today's video I'm going to talk about how we set up trial lesson what to include in your trial lesson and how to make it the most productive and get students to book more lessons as result hi my name is Alex I'm an avid traveler from the southwest of England and in 2019 started my journey as an English language tutor I've taught in places such as Prague Czech Republic and Krakow Poland and can't see this journey ending anytime soon because of the pandemic switched my focus to online teaching and have been teaching on site called preply since February 2020 so without further Ado let's jump in so I've been the teacher on prep poly for almost three years now and in that time I've done my fair share of trial lessons know they're quite daunting and quite nerve-wracking it's easy to feel really nervous before you have trial lesson with someone because you're having lesson with someone you've never seen before complete stranger in most cases sometimes you don't know what their level is and so you don't know how to approach it so in this video I'm going to give you the top tips of how to approach any trial lesson but it is very important to message your student before the trial lesson to sort of gauge two things one why they're learning English and their goals and aspirations for learning English and two what their level is these two things would be very very helpful when it comes to preparing for the trial lesson however sometimes you you don't get response from the student they might be new to the preply platform they don't know they don't sort of use the messaging system that often or don't check correctly that often unless for the time of their class so sometimes you don't get response but that's okay but if you if you do get response from your student and you can gauge their level and their goals and aspirations this will help you thoroughly now in my time on prep your trial lessons have always been an hour long but understand that at the time of recording this prepley are actually rolling out 50-minute trial lessons so this video will be for both of those so regardless if the trial lesson is an hour long or 50 minutes this sort of applies for for both scenarios the first thing you want to do and you only need to do this once is you can apply it to every single trial lesson is generate some questions to get to know your student more and these are very basic questions but recommend that you make list of these things like what do you like to do in your spare time what do you do for work best basic questions that you would tend to ask someone when you're first learning about them recommend you make list of these either on the notes page of your laptop or or just in front of you so you can certainly subtly look at this list because sometimes you you lose track of what you asked or you might forget some of the questions so it's always nice to sort of refer to that to see what you've already asked and what to ask next don't recommend that this takes up more than 20 to 30 minutes no more than 20 minutes for these 50 minute classes because it's just the getting to know each other sort of thing now during this time I'll also make it very clear that the student can also ask questions about me and these sort of questions right back at me they want might want to learn about you and you want to make it clear that they can ask questions because sometimes they're really too nervous especially since they're speaking foreign language and they might not know how to express these questions it's it's good for them to practice this to ask to you these questions and also you know they get to listen to your responses as well and how to respond to these questions so you're they're learning two key skis skills here and I'm sure they want to learn about you because you're going to potentially be their teacher too so make sure that you say to them right you can also ask me some questions too if you want to now this is always the case some students get too nervous and just don't know how to ask the questions sometimes you're always asking these questions if this is the case feel free to introduce yourself after the student has introduced themselves to so after the 20 minutes or so of asking them questions feel free to say right I'm going to introduce myself now so I've been doing this this this because I'm sure they want to hear about you but because you'll kind of be their teacher but maybe they're just too nervous at this stage to ask the questions so make sure you put some time also to introduce yourself and some things about you too now for the last half of the lesson this is really where you're going to show off your teaching qualities one of the things you're going to ask the students if you haven't already in message prior to the lesson is what are their goals and what do they really want to focus on whether that's speaking whether that's reading whether that's writing or whatever now you're going to have some things prepared or always have some things prepared for trial lesson and that either comes in form of reading if they really want to learn new vocabulary and have readings of different levels that always bring out in in the lessons if they want to advance their vocabulary or or practice reading especially and also have some grammar exercises prepared as well if they really want to focus on that and use the last half of the lesson to occupy this time with these grammar exercises all this reading exercise dependent on what they want to focus on if they simply want to focus on speaking in conversation you can continue this conversation going and maybe in your notes you could add some extra additional questions to ask them to fill up the trial lesson but why think it's important to to incorporate reading or some sort of exercises is because this gives them insight to what you would what they might expect from future lessons if they want to focus on these sort of things and also they're more likely to to book more lessons afterwards because for the reading you won't complete the reading in the last half an hour you can say right we're going to get back to it next time or we're going to get it we're going to discuss it more this time if you're doing grammar exercise you can set homework for them for next time and that way they're much more likely to buy subscription they're more likely to buy subscription because they know there's plan for next time if it's new vocabulary in reading they know they're going to cover this again or finish the reading if it's grammar then know they're going to learn bit more in the next lesson if it's just talking throughout the lesson they have no they can't gauge what your next lessons are sort of going to be like if it's just conversation so think it's really key to show off your teaching skills through that if they want to learn certain skills that isn't just conversation my third and final tip for you is really ask if the student wants to be set homework this is up to them always leave it up to them some sometimes they want to be set homework sometimes they don't want to be set homework don't want to force it on them these aren't lessons that you would get in school or things like this is one-to-one teaching that they're paying for you want to cater the lesson towards them so if they want home work set them if they don't want then don't worry about it but again this homework thing if they say yes to it is another key reason why they might book more lessons if you set them homework after the trial lesson then of course they're much more likely to buy more subscriptions because you've sent them homework to do you know if they just do that in your own time and you cannot Market because you've only had this one lesson then that's pointless at least if you've given them homework they have some incentive to do it and then join you again for future lesson so that concludes today's video about how to conduct trial lesson hope it helps somewhat if you've got any questions feel free to put them in the comments give the video like if you enjoyed it and want to see more like this and I'll speak to you very soon take care