I had my doubts at first, to be honest. After all, the online English teaching industry has pedagogical issues. Debates here and there, I'm getting sick to my stomach. Why can't they just embrace technology? It's here. Could we just address those issues already?

Okay, enough ranting.

Let me tell you a story. About two years ago, a 62-year-old man, who was yet to be taught how to state his name in English, enrolled in one our beginner courses. He chose a once-a-week class, and the study time was ten minutes. I was his teacher.

With this class, I was faced with three challenges. First, the course he enrolled in is for kids. He couldn't take one of the courses for adults simply because his level did not allow him to. Anyway, this course's book has pictures, text, and characters designed for children, and thus, it's "adult-unfriendly." Adults, in general, find it condescending when you treat them like kids, and since we had to use the book, I had to adjust my vocabulary countless times.

Second, we were studying over the phone. If we were in a classroom or having classes via live video conference, I would have applied TPR or other approaches just so I could convey whatever message I wanted to convey. But no, I couldn't rely on gestures.

Last, the only English words he knew were "yes" and "no." Can you picture that?

Listen-and-repeat or parroting was tempting, let me tell you. But at the time, I was still patient with zero-English students, so I exhausted all the techniques and strategies I knew just so he could learn. After a month or so, he was able to state his name and respond to some greetings.

This is no big deal to some people (and maybe not convincing) but to me given the state I was in (once a week, 10 minutes, a month or so), it was an achievement. It was enough to turn my doubting Thomas into the Apostle who finally believed.

Ande Geronimo, EFL Teacher Trainer: Your guide to online English teaching http://queerenglish.blogspot.com/.