The benefits of studying online

If you’re sitting at home with a nice cup of tea, wondering to yourself whether studying English online is really for you, you’ve just hit on one of the benefits yourself. Education is becoming increasingly digital, and online courses are now offered in all sorts of topics of study, including language-learning, so let’s look at some of the top reasons for choosing to study at a virtual school from the comfort of your own home.

Five benefits of studying English online

1. It's more flexible

A really great reason for taking a course online is that it’s more flexible. You can choose times to fit around your schedule and lifestyle. If you’re at work all day, choose an evening class. If you’re free once you’ve dropped off the kids, you can choose an online course that runs in the afternoons. You can even study whilst your children are in the other room and not have to worry about having to find someone to mind them. Many face-to-face schools have set times and require you to be in the classroom for the entire day, and all week. Online courses tend to be more flexible, with lessons often running just once or twice a week, and for one or two hours a day. This allows you to build your course into your day, and not the other way around. Handy when you've got a million things to do, and only 24 hours in the day!

2. You don't need to be a tech-genius

Another great thing is that you don’t need bags of technological skills or gadgets. All you need is a laptop, desktop computer with a microphone and camera, smartphone or tablet, , and a stable Internet connection. There are a variety of educational platforms available - Education City is famous in the US for example, or you may have heard of Zoom, Webex, Skype, or Google Hangout. You’ll get sent a link to the class before the lesson begins, and you just click on it and log in. It’s as simple as that.

3. It's cheaper

Of course, an important factor for all of us, is money. Online colleges, online academies, and online schools - also often known as ‘virtual schools’ - all have one massive benefit over bricks-and-mortar educational institutions, and that is that costs can be kept down (due to the lower overheads the school has to pay) and these savings can be passed on to you in the form of lower course fees. Great for the school and great for you.

4. You can connect with people all over the world

It’s a fantastic feeling to be able to sit in one country, and with a click of a button, connect with people all over the world. Online classes are great in bringing people together from across the world. While face-to-face lessons are limited by location and travel time, the virtual classroom has no such barrier. This means that you could be practising the Present Perfect with people from Brazil and Poland, and discover that they all have the same grammar questions as you. Quite often, language students feel a bit shy when they can’t speak the language as well as they would like, and this can stop them even trying to talk. Your online teacher will help you with this, and it can be a comfort to know that other students across the world have the same fears and make the same mistakes as you do. Everyone feels a bit nervous, but you’re all in it together, helping each other, learning from mistakes, and working together to practice your skills and fluency.

What’s more, you can exchange ideas and find out more about each other’s countries. English is a global language, so it’s really important to practise with people with different accents, and online lessons can help you do this easily. You may not know anyone from Japan in your hometown, but who knows, perhaps the person you’ll be partnered with in your online lesson will be sitting in Kyoto, while you are in Kiev.

5. You can study from the comfort of your own home

Now, one of the top benefits of studying at an online school is that you can do so from the comfort of your own office or home. That means no more annoying commutes to the school when you’re exhausted after work (not to mention the expense of getting there and back). No more time wasted in travel. No more hunting around for a course, only to find that it’s not in your home city, but 20km away. Some people worry that online courses are not ‘real’ lessons and that you won’t learn as much if you’re not interacting with ‘real’ people. But don’t worry, most online schools are not run by robots (not yet, at least!), and your fellow classmates will be real, too. This means, that real learning can take place, it’s just that you won’t all be in the same room. The only thing to keep in mind with online schools, just as you would with a bricks-and-mortar school, is to do a bit of research first - check reviews, and accreditations - but apart from that, learning is learning, no matter how it happens.

And the best thing? You can be sitting there with a smart top on and your pyjama bottoms and fluffy slippers on below, and no one will ever know! So, get the dinner in the oven, get yourself a nice hot drink, and sit down to learn online with a nice cup of tea by your side and the cat snoring next to you. Learning can be that first step in achieving your ambitions and broadening your horizons - so why not be comfortable, and do it at a time and in a space that is comfortable for you? Happy learning!