We encourage you to have a good relationship with your students, and to keep in touch with them.
There are several ways you can communicate with your students:
- Lesson records and comments on lesson records. A student is not notified that you have commented on their lesson record unless you are replying to them. If you are the first commentor on the lesson record, they will not be informed. Use another method in that case, or hope that they notice it!
- TEFtalk is ideal for contacting students who are currently logged into the site (you'll see the green dot signifying they are online), or sending students a message that they will see the next time the log in.
- Skype IM/chat If your student has a Skype contact, you may wish to use that. Some students are active on Skype, some are not.
- Contact form. On everyone's profiles, there is a contact link. You can use that to send messages to the student's email. If you cannot see this link, the student has opted not to be contacted in this way, and you should probably go through support (email support@theenglishfarm.com and ask for help).
Reasons for contact
Please ensure that you are have a legitimate reason to contact the student. These include the following:
- when you need to cancel a class, for whatever reason.
- if you need to get some information from the student (e.g. test results and so on).
- to touch base when they have not taken classes for a while — this is important for maintaining motivation, but be gentle!
- to be friendly.